Kingman

That's exciting!

That will require wiring in power and ground cables and, depending on how much you want to spend, a new head unit with proper RCAs. If you get an amp with high level input, you can keep your factory head unit and use the existing wiring for the signal but you'll still need power and ground cables. The former is way better for sound quality. Clean signal, higher fidelity head unit, tunability, etc.

Cheap rotors will do that to you. As will very uneven lug nut/rotor to hub torque. Most shops use the generic white box rotors and drums to keep the price down, they're hit or miss at best. I can understand why he doesn't want to replace the rotors again - it's quite a bit of work with the set up we have. They don't slide off. However warranty is warranty, if he's not willing to make it right again then he must not care about keeping your business. If anything a quick turn of the rotors on the car along with a solid lug nut torque will probably solve the issue. Hopefully the calipers were inspected and everything was well lubed. We have to turn every set of new drums we get before installing them to make sure there are no comebacks for shake or pedal pulsation. Rotors aren't as bad. Unfortunately it's hard to find good quality parts these days at a price the customer is willing to pay for.

Washed the '04 and noticed the effing clear coat is bubbling on the hatch above the glass. Wtf.

No problem. Any regular 6.5" speaker will be fine in the rear but the 2ohm problem is still there unless you replace the amp.

The hardest part if you were to go with a component set is fitting the tweeter in the factory spot. However since the front is already component, the wiring is already there. The cross over is already labeled. Input from the amp, woofer, and tweeter. As far as wiring goes, it's as simple as removing the factory stuff and installing the aftermarket in its place. Better around quality is always achieved with components.

No, wire size is irrelevant for the most part. The resistance of the speakers to the flow of energy is what I'm talking about. 2ohm speakers (factory) will produce a louder sound than 4ohm speakers at the same power level, basically double. That's why factory stereos can still get decently loud without a lot of power. If you buy a set of component speakers they will have a cross over already. Also if you don't want to use the factory tweeters at all and run coaxals up front you can simply delete the crossover and hook the speakers up to the input that would be going to the crossover from the amplifier. It's labeled, you'll see what I mean. Yes, those speakers will work. They have a fairly high sensitivity level so they should make the most use of the power from the amp even though they're 4ohm.

Well a few things really. The factory amp is 2ohm, almost all aftermarkets are 4ohm. Not a big deal but it'll sometimes take more volume knob to reach the same level depending on the sensitivity of the speaker you put in. The factory amp doesn't put out much power, they negate this by running 2ohm. If you leave the factory cross over and tweeters, you can run whatever speaker you want but it'll likely sound off is coaxals are all one unit and are looking for a full spectrum signal. Running a component set and replacing the factory crossover and tweeter is the way to go. Just make sure you find a set with a tweeter small enough to fit the A-pillar.

The Bose stereos have cross overs in the doors to split the signal between the mid woofer and tweeters, attached to a really nice adapter already.

There's a TON of threads regarding this on here if you do some searching around.

Jinx Adam!

It's in the fuse box in the dash. You'll lose a lot of stuff if it pops. The fusible links are the squishy wires going from the battery terminal to the black connectors, which then send power through the harness.

Damn that looks good

Are you in Vancouver, WA? I was at the junkyard yesterday and someone did the exact same thing as you... took a Sawzall to the rear quarter to access the mounting brackets.

Installed the Sway-a-Way torsion bars and Superlift UCAs that have been sitting in my garage for months. Need some low profile bump stops... rear is 17.5" from the ground to rocker, front is 17.25" Just washed it too.

Put an LED strip under the hood wired to the factory alarm switch on the core support. Worked, but seemed like it needed a smaller gap to fully open the circuit when the hood was closed as the light would flicker if I banged on the hood. Went to remove the switch to put a washer under it and proceeded to break it. Damn.

Lifetime warranty?

Cadillac Elderado with the 4.9L... oh yeah. Nightmare. All of the 3.0L Fords have them above the starter and exhaust as well. My favorite is a PT Cruiser.

Something is taking those transmissions out unless they're being replaced with other junk... QX4s use the all mode transfer case. Did he try and command the transfer case into 2wd with the scan tool?

Yeah probably. You might look into the switch as well but they hardly ever fail.

Yep. If you ground out the motor and it runs, your resistor is bad. If not the motor is. You can also ground each pin at the resistor and check that way.

Oh there's worse. Much worse.

For your needs I would go with a Pro-4x Xterra.

On a good day I have an '04 too. It's better but still needs more power.

Because driving gutless bricks is miserable...?