jyeager

I respect your opinion, but wanted to offer a counter point. Just adjusting the PHB length when you lift your truck is not a very acceptable solution. If the PHB isn't level, the static ride height doesn't have the axle at the apex of it's arc. You end up with negative side effects in the rear suspension performance. It's never a bad thing to have the axle centered under the vehicle at static ride height, but the PHB should be level too. This requires a drop bracket if you've lifted your vehicle.

You have been focusing on air/fuel delivery issues. Consider a spark issue. Read your resistance on the plug wires. An old plug wire will cause misfires. You might not be having a miss long enough to trigger the misfire code. But your symptoms sound consistent with a miss. ps. It wouldn't hurt to pull plugs and check their gap either.

Alright, so this makes me curious....would we all bend our exhaust if we have the rear sway bar removed? Your AC lift doesn't change the stock up-travel limit, does it?

How about the knock sensor? It's a pain to get to it if/when it goes bad. Might be worth a preventative replacement?

How did you bend your rims? Are you sorry you procrastinated on that armor? What did you learn about the strengths and weaknesses of the Pathy?

Buffalo, I think you should first completely rule out wheel balance first. You simply said that you can tell it doesn't feel like wheel balance...but I don't trust your pronouncement! (I don't trust myself in this regard either). Here's why. You put in manual hubs and it went away for a while, then came back from the rear? I will bet you rotated your tires while you were installing hubs? Even if you didn't, wheels out of balance will cause vibration to come and go as the various imbalances line up just right to cancel each other out. So if you haven't rotated, rotate them now and see if the vibration comes back to the front. I suggest you have all 4 tires rebalanced by a reputable shop. Also consider you may have a bad tire carcass that is out of round. Then, check your driveshaft alignment with the pinion. Put a dial indicator on the driveshaft at each end, then spin the driveline and look for any runout whatsoever. You said the dealer replaced the U-joints. If the tech was in a hurry and sloppy they might not be bolted on perfectly straight. Next thing to do is check the pinion angle. I know it's all stock, so pinion angle shouldn't be off. But perhaps wear over time?

Thanks. I have a straight die grinder, not an angled one. I can see why it would be handy for certain sections of sheet metal that are still mounted to the vehicle.

Hey, your Q has the automatic 4-wheel drive system, right? I don't think that is compatible with manual hubs.

Ah, well that's a handy skill to have! Based on your recommendation, I just ordered an air body saw from harbor freight. While I was at it, I picked up an angle head air drill...I recently needed to drill some holes and couldn't get a drill in to the needed location. Did you use a fine blade or coarse blade for this application?

You said your truck is a 2003, but your profile says 2004. Can you confirm the model year of your truck?

I'm confused as to why your wife's switch didn't work. Did you accidentally have the window lock button pressed? Before telling you where to find one, you need to ensure that it's your switch that's bad. It may not be the switch. Since you have tried a known good switch, you need to assume it's not the switch (unless you made the aforementioned mistake). As a triple-check, remove your switch and use a paper clip to jumper 2 pins in the connector that should roll your window down (or up as the case may be).

You are one all-around intelligent individual. I want to hang with you after the Zombie apocalypse.

Your plan sounds great. Without a winch, that mounting point would not be a problem. And if you tie your 2" receiver in to the tow hook points it will be strong. I don't know if theexbrit is still hanging around these forums? I hope he checks in soon and gives us his thoughts.

I have the same question about the bumper's bolting location. I'm not clear on what brackets you bolted this to? The only location that seems acceptable for 8000+lbs of winching load would be the factory tow-hook mounting locations. I'm curious if that's the location you are describing or not?

sorry to confuse you. I was talking about the mismatched ohm loads you would have front vs. rear if you replaced your fronts with 4 ohm speakers...your new rear speakers are 2ohm as I understand it. There are so many options, I guess it's hard to keep from getting confusing. What do you want out of your stereo? Besides for your rear speakers to work as they should?

I don't know about what the mismatched ohm load might do to a head unit so if you want to go this route, definitely check in to what Kingman has said. If that is a show stopper for your plan, consider this alternative plan.... From where you are now, you can just add an aftermarket amp and be done....and the amp can be one with a 5th channel for a sub. The amp will be able to handle mismatched ohm loads just fine and will provide different gain settings front and rear so you can adjust for volume differences you would see with mismatched ohm loads. Here is an example: http://www.crutchfield.com/p_530PN5640D/Soundstream-Picasso-Nano-PN5-640D.html?tp=115 You know, I've forgotten what your real concern is. I remember you replaced your rear speakers and got no volume from them. But are you wanting a new head unit? or new front speakers? Or was that all just snowball effect from the rear speakers? Please answer this question: Have you checked the wiring polarity at your rear speakers?

Yes, you did a nice clean job of it. What size tires are you using? I didn't realize you were big enough to need to trim.

Kingman, you sound like you have actual experience with the factory BOSE setup, which is important here. The FSM seems to show the front speakers being wired directly from the head unit and the amplifier in the back only supporting the rear speakers. Something you said, seems to be saying that wasn't the actual case in your experience. Can you confirm that? for Cham, you might be pretty happy with aftermarket front speakers (or components) with an aftermarket HU. Even if the front speakers don't go through the factory amp, you would have your fade setting to balance out the relative volumes. The HU would expect 4ohm speakers and do fine with it. Your rear speakers are 2ohm and the amplifier feeds that just fine obviously. But what if your front speakers are powered by your rear amp too, as I suspect might be the case? Either way, you might be OK. Obviously if that's the case, you should be able to put in 2ohm speakers. But you can probably put in 4ohm speakers too....why do I say that? Well, because I am using my factory amp and have aftermarket speakers all the way around. Apparently the factory amp does 4ohms fine.... (as I said earlier in this thread, I don't have the BOSE option, but do have front components and amp...expect they are the same amp). What happens when the factory amp sees 4ohm speakers, is it generates less power, so whatever it's RMS rating is at 2ohms, it's less with 4ohm speakers. If that's a problem, I have probably avoided that problem just by virtue of never having turned my stereo up very high. You also mentioned installing a sub at some point and simply tapping that signal off of the existing speaker wire going to a rear coaxial. That will dramatically change the ohms the amplifier gets on that one speaker wire and might not have a good outcome. What I am considering doing myself is to replace the factory amp with an aftermarket 5-channel amp. Then my amp gives me a new dedicated channel to power a sub or subs. Then I also won't have to worry about all of the unknowns I have regarding the factory amp. And I plan to find an amp, if at all possible, that I can install in the factory location.

hawairish, I read the schematic as indicating that the 6-wire plug is plugging directly in to the door speaker. If there is an amplifier there, it's embedded on the speaker itself. That seems unlikely, so what about the possibility that it has an integrated ACTIVE crossover? Now, either way the situation for replacement is the same. New component speakers go in there and get audio input from the head unit and the aftermarket crossover (that matches the components) is placed there in the door. A very small aftermarket amplifier could be installed, somewhere up under the dash, behind the radio and used to feed the front speakers if desired. There are amps as small as a dollar bill. to the OP: if you replace the front speakers and leave the stock head unit, you will want 2-ohm speakers. If you replace your head unit you will want 4-ohm speakers only. But if you place an aftermarket amp in there to handle those speakers you will have your choice of 2 or 4 ohms. Another thought about your rear speakers being too quiet. Is it possible you have the wires reversed? The direction the current flows through the speakers makes a big difference...it needs to be right.

In case anybody needs these bolts, I ordered an entire set of genuine Nissan bolts and didn't need them. I think I can still find them somewhere...

So what have you settled on doing at this point? As I read the whole thread, I realized that you had only replaced your rear speakers, is that right? And they are 2 ohm like the originals... But here's the thing. These babies are 60wRMS and your originals? I have NO IDEA. They might be 20w. In this case, you have speakers that require a heck of a lot more power to be properly driven than the amplifier is putting out. Hence the crappy performance. You will need to replace your rear amp to properly power these speakers. (if so, make sure the amp is properly sized for those speakers) And if you just bypass that amp and drive it off of your head unit directly, same problem. If you get an aftermarket head unit, you will be pretty much stuck at about 20w RMS because that's about the limit of what you will get out of the 12v supply power to the head unit. Since the stock head unit is designed to be used with the amplifiers, it's possible that the output signal going to the amps is a low-level output designed for pre-amp signals. Or, it could be a high-level signal for line output to speakers and the amplifiers are expecting the line level input. I think that it's the latter, because when I installed a new head unit, I wired the line-level output to the wiring harness and that feeds my stock amp and it works fine....however, I have the non-Bose stereo (with 1 amp in the rear), and it's conceivable that they differ in this regard. You can check this with a volt meter BTW. Also, I think hawairish might have been wrong above, regarding the Scosche adapter. I believe these are simply line adapters that will let you take a line-level output from your head unit and step it down to a low level pre-amp input so that you can feed an aftermarket amp with a stereo that either doesn't have pre-amp outputs, or in case you simply prefer to use the line-level outputs to feed your aftermarket amp because you don't want to run new RCA cables. Another misconception I see that you had is that you believe there is separate output signals being sent from the front amps in the doors to the door speaker and the tweeters. You are assuming it's already doing the crossover function for you. It's not. Both are getting the entire audio signal. They are wired in series. The door speaker can handle getting the highs, or has a built in (to the speaker) low-pass filter and the tweeter has a resistor that acts as a high-pass filter. You WILL need to use the supplied crossovers if you replace those speakers, even if you keep the original amps in the doors.

I think it's compression control you meant to say, not rebound control. If high speed bumps are causing you to lose contact with the ground, you don't have enough compression damping or you have TOO MUCH rebound damping. It's not the 'stiff' suspension that helps your WD21, it's the stiffer shocks that are paired with those springs. Also, to be fair to the OP, he didn't say he was speeding off-road. He described driving dirt roads. 80km/hr on many straight dirt roads that I've seen is very reasonable if the vehicle is handling the surface properly (like his friend's truck).

This question was ancient history, but I wanted to close the loop and describe the outcome. That extra ground wire in my harness, but not described by Crutchfield's information....I didn't take any chances and grounded it. It might be the amplifier's ground wire as something indicated (seems weird, you should ground the amp right as close to the amp as possible, IMO). Either way, I grounded it and everything is fine. It should be noted that Crutchfield does NOT know that our pathfinders had 3 stereo options. They only know about the base radio with no amp and the Bose. They don't know about the middle option...so their harness description won't mention amplifier circuits. The illumination wire..well the factory radio used the dimmer switch and the aftermarket HU doesn't. It has a dimmer function internal to the unit itself. It only uses the illumination wire to signal it to dim to the preset on the HU. So it was intended that the pin 8 : 'LIGHT SW' be the one that goes to the head unit and the dimmer signal isn't used. So when these issues were answered, I wired it up and all worked well...factory amp still in the loop. (but I'm now thinking of an amp upgrade).

My tweeters are far to big to fit underneath the pillar trim. I surface mounted them over the grill on the pillar trim. I might go back and drill a hole to 'flush' mount them....but they are too tall to recess all the way. I will only accomplish about half recessed that way.

I recommend a 4" lift via a subframe drop kit. Then get 33" tires. The tires effectively lift you 2 more inches over stock for 6". Adding more than that begins accumulating trade-offs that you may not want. And that is plenty to make a very capable back country rig.