shift220

I didn't have to use limiter straps because the link bars hit the mount before the shock/spring fully extends. As for the spacers, I have no problems with them but they do limit upward travel compared to using longer springs. So flex might be a little less then stock, but the larger tires made the biggest difference. PMed you about the kit.

Thanks! I didn't replace the links in the back, but I will sometime in the future. The bushings are very soft and I can easily move the bars with my hands. I will probably make some adjustable ones to get the pinion angle back in spec. You will need a new brake line in the back, front ones were ok for 3.5" but no higher. Driveshaft (front and back) are fine at 3.75" lift, no need to extend. I don't have all the information in one file, but I do have some AutoCAD files. Everything you should need is posted up

Just use any free level app. I have one on my Android (HTC Magic) called bubble. It shows degrees. I would say they are accurate enough for use in a vehicle.

Are the coils the same ID as ours?

Will do. The nice part is having access to Titan I can get measurements off of. As for more SFD's "kits", PM me if you seriously want one and we'll talk. That would probably be the simplest way, but I'm not so sure it would be an upgrade The rear drums are actually quite large on the R50 but Titan rear brakes would be a very nice improvement over stock.

I'm not really sure about the LSV. Braking still feels like stock (except the larger tires) at normal ride height. It would probably make a difference when i'm loaded down with 4 people, camping gear and a boat on the hitch but the brakes were barely adequate to begin with. Once winter is over, i'll probably look into doing a rear disc brake conversion (titan ) ...but that's a whole other thread. And actually on that same kind of note, i'm really surprised how I don't feel like I lost to much pep out of the engine. I'm guessing my SE has the higher ratio gears which really helps. I hope to see some more SFDs in the near future!

You mean to say that the strut rod threads extend 1" above the nut? My KYB's extend maybe 1/4", but I suppose it depends on the manufacturer. Either way, the nut should be snug against the mount and not move. I would guess something was installed wrong and they bottomed out the nut on the shaft thinking it was tight. I would get it looked at ASAP.

Well another addition to the rear. I know it's not really significant to the SFD but I figure having all this information in the same place will help out better. I dropped the panhard bar 3.75" (the amount I raised the back). I left some material below incase I ever want to drop it even more. After the lift, the rear end felt like it was wandering on the highway. It gave me that bad gut feeling like the rear end wants spin out when i'm going 120 km/h. Now it feels just like stock and handles much better

90% of the time I use my air compressor with an impact gun. Other times I use a paint gun, powder coating gun and a 3/8" right angle drill. Your compressor will be fine with all these tools. I never use my air ratchet as it's to noisy and inconvenient when small bolts can be taken out by hand almost as quick. As for any rotary tools, I find electric ones much more convenient as others have said, it sucks waiting for the compressor to catch up.

Yea the steering rack has D-shaped clamps that hold it in place. I'm not sure how it sits on the subframe as I never removed it, so i'm not sure if it can be rotated with new clamps or not. I'm sure someone could machine pieces to fit in there to make a new seat. On the other side, I was looking at possibly rotating the 90 degree steering gear box. Things are sure tight up in there though so it would take some R&D. Just some things to look at... With a ~3.75" lift in the back, my driveshaft seems to be doing good. No funny vibrations and the angles don't seem to bad. I should really check them though and maybe look into some adjustable link bars. I AM getting a vibration in the front end while accelerating in 4wd. I'm thinking its my pass side CV axle and hopefully not the driveshaft.

Yup you could definitely do a 3". It should work better since the angles would be less steep. I'm curious how Alex and others did the linkage for 4"+ SFDs. Any further and it seems like mine would bind.

Here is the plan for the strut spacer positioning. I have the real Autocad file posted up back on page 3 to get the flanges cut out. The pipe I used was 4" ID and probably around 3/16" thick or so. I cut my pipe at 8.5 degrees and it seemed to work not bad. The alignment specs are within specifications. It didn't sit flat on body/spacer when I jacked the strut into place but the mount flexed and closed the gap. Time will tell how well it holds up. I can say I have put on around 2000 km since then (mostly highway) and everything is still good. The very "tips" of the pipe are what line up with the strut flange that you need to weld to the pipe (marked by the 45 degree line). It does take some thinking to get it all in line and positioned the correct way. I know I had to cut and re-tack a few times, so don't fully weld until your very sure you have everything going the right way

Here are the plans for the blocks. I recommend drilling these with high quality drill bits for accuracy and a drill press is definitely the way to go. As for hardware, I went with fine-thread grade 8 imperial bolts. (4) 9/16" x 1.5" bolts w/ washers & nuts (4) 7/16" x 1.5" bolts w/ washers & nuts (4) 3/8" x 1.5" bolts w/ washers & nuts

Thanks for the comments everyone. I'm very glad how it turned out and i'm excited to test it out off the road. The spacers consist of 4 main parts. The pipe was I believe 5" (I will check for sure) but it basically sat within the ID and OD of the spring. I welded the 1/2" metal rod on the bottom just to make it sit more like the spring did in the perch. The pipe could have just sat on the perch and it would have probably been fine. The reason it's in little sections is because 1/2" solid metal rod is quite hard to bend into a 5" diameter circle without a torch Third was cutting out a circle from some 1/8" flat plate with the plasma and welding it into the center of the pipe right up flush to where the spring would sit. This gave the spring more area to sit on and allowed me to bolt the spacer down like mentioned before. Then I welded some 1/8" x 1" flat bar around the spacer to keep the spring in place. I could have done it on the inside as well, either way is fine. And the wheels are 17" x 9" MKW Offroad M56 with 4.53" backspacing. You won't find them in black though The 255 width M/Ts clear the strut with tons of room to spare and I have only minor rubbing on some plastic drivers front. Some more heat gun will take care of that though. I will compile all the info and maybe make a PDF so it sticks around

Looks not bad. Is that weld-through primer on the steel?

A little more on the technical side, I got an alignment done and had a set of camber bolts ready for the guys to use (it looked off). Turns out the spacers keep the camber dead on (even with the addition 1/2" of lift). The toe was way out but that was before the lift as the SFD doesn't change anything with the toe. As for the rear end, it is offset by about 1" from the front wheels (towards the drivers side as expected). In the next couple days I'll make up a drop bracket

Ok ok so the weather finally cooperated today and I was able to get the Pathfinder washed. First off, here are the spring spacers I fabricated. They are nothing pretty but seem to do the job. I didn't have much time and had to get this thing back on the road. They only got a quick shot of some black paint. I didn't get any pictures of how I attached them but I basically drilled a 1/2" hole in the center of the spacer and bolted them down to a nut I welded below on the axle spring perch. Very simple and keeps them in place. Here you can also see the bottom of the shock I used. Again, its from the rear of a F350 Superduty 2wd. The ride is excellent and doesn't seem much if any rougher then stock. The shock was a direct bolt-on with some extra washers on the axle side. And finally...

Yea I know Fairview! My mother grew up there and her parents still have a place up there (farmers). Only really been up there when it was summer but I know it gets damn cold in the winter. I love the area though, very peaceful. I worked on Hine's Creek bridge during the summer a couple years ago and that was one of the best times I ever had working. Much better then working over the Yellowhead. Anyway thanks for the tips. I might look into a battery warmer, it seems like the next logical thing after the block heater. Hopefully I can get the Pathfinder started up and into the garage today!

So after finishing my SFD, I went for a drive with the new M/Ts and noticed a pretty bad vibration. I thought I would take off the rims and clean off the grimy rust build-up on the hubs (should have in the first place). Pop off the first rim in the front and I see grease all over everything. Now this was after literally a 2 minute drive with the lift in place. Rotate the CV shaft and sure enough, the boot has a tiny 1/4" split and was flinging grease everywhere. Being original CV shafts, I opted to replace it with a lifetime warranty one from Napa (not a reman, got a discount). The new shaft looked very well made and tough. I felt it was worth it. This was my first time replacing a CV and it went pretty good. Ok so this is the first real problem I've had with my Pathfinder since I got it. Its been pretty much perfect so far. Now for the last week its been consistently -30 Celsius during the day and dropping to -40c (-40f) some nights. Yesterday I plugged in my Pathfinder like I have been for the last two years. Go to remote start it later in the night and nothing. I hear it slowly cranking but no fire. Then I notice I have no power in the garage. Check the breakers and yup one tripped. Get out my fancier extension cord with a light and try plugging in the R50 again. Plug sparks and the light goes out. Breaker tripped again. So then I tried another circuit and that one trips too. Alright so this sucks. No going anywhere tonight. The next day I did some investigating (yes, still -30c and in my driveway). Cord reads open circuit (that shouldn't blow the breaker?), so I snipped the cord loose, crawled under the newly lifted Pathfinder (one advantage), reached up and yanked the cord off the block. That end is slightly melted and corroded. Great. Impossible to actually see the block heater on the block (unibody disadvantage). So what the heck? I pulled out the battery and i'm going to charge in the garage overnight. Its still the original 96 battery. Great during the summer, but might be a little weak for the -40c days. So in summary, I want to drive my lifted Pathfinder but I can't cause its frozen on my driveway.

Thanks! I'm glad to share it with everyone. I went for a quick drive yesterday and it seemed good. Our roads are all snow covered and I didn't go to far. The shocks were on the expensive side but have better valving that should help hide the application difference. Hmm I wonder which way they mount on the F350's Its going in for an alignment tomorrow with some cam bolts to adjust the camber back to spec. The report should tell me how close to stock the spacers kept it. Do the F250 springs have the same ID and OD as ours? I'd imagine the ride would suck after buts it worth a look to find out for sure.

Well.. I did make them 3.75" because the back end was 1/4" higher then the front stock so yup that was my plan. Now I have everything together and on the ground and the back end is 1/4" lower then the front . Probably due to new struts on the front. I'm sure it'll settle a little. I'll try to post picture soon. The spacers seemed to work ok, but they make weird angles with the springs. It looks good with the weight on them though. Time will tell! For everyone's information, I went with Max-Control shocks by Gabriel on the back. They measure 28" extended and 16" (i think) collapsed. The ones that fit are off the rear of a 99-04 F350 Superduty 2WD.

My best advice would be to look at old Nissans in the junkyard and see what parts you can use off the steering. A lot of the splined shafts are the same between years/models. The main thing is to maximize the distance between the u-joint and i'm pretty sure you can only use two total without any sort of "awkwardness" in the linkage. The back is going to be interesting. I just got a nice SS braided line made up today with the tee on one end. Ran me about $60 parts/labour. I'm going to cut and weld in pieces to extend the swaybar links. And my plan right now is to just make some 4" spacers for the springs. They will be pretty simple and I have plenty of scrap metal to throw together for them. Ideally we could find some spring in the junkyard that would be a direct swap but I'll save that for another time!

Thanks! You got it. That 8.5 degrees is just both angles combined to make one cut. Making two cuts should bring you to the same point but it would be difficult to line up and cut properly. But the cuts on the round tube are independent of the vehicle. It's how you weld the flanges on that determines the orientation (which you are correct, 45 degrees).

Use lock washers, regular washers and loctite. The studs are pressed/rusted in and I doubt you'll be able to hammer it out on the vehicle. Try to grind/cut away the head on the other side and you might be able to punch it out. As for the hanger, i'm not quite sure off the top of my head.

Haha yea it does need a wash. Not anytime to soon since it just dropped to -30c here... As for the strut spacers, I got them close enough that the strut mount took up the little bit of difference (it is made to flex a little). If I made them exactly 3.5" (the amount of lift/drop of the SF), they would probably have been perfect. But anyway, both ends of the pipe are cut at the desired angle and then the flanges are welded on both at the same orientation. The angle is simple. Since the 12 degrees and 5 degrees are perpendicular or 90 degrees to each other, you can simply take the average. (12+5)/2 = 8.5 degrees. I went with closer to 9 degrees. I will post of pictures of the template files I made with Autocad that I used to line everything up. Basically, the drivers side spacers will look like the strut is getting pushed back to the rear pass corner (pass side spacer drops it back to driver rear corner). Now if that doesn't confuse you, actually figuring out the orientations in real life is a brain twister.