Back in another R50 after 6 years

[alexg89]

Scored this little 96  about 3 weeks ago. guy said it had an overheating problem with 223k on the dash. 

Drove 3 hours to check it out and it looked promising so i got it.

5speed 4wd, clean interior, not alot of rust thank goodness. 

But come to find out the headgasket had pushed out on cylinder 4 so tore it all apart.

Upon having it all tore down cylinder 2 and 6 had some pitting in the cylinder, so took a 3 stone hone to it and tried to clean it up the best i could.

few lifters were a little beat up but we are gonna run it as is.

Get it all back together, and it fired right up. Throttle had a bit of a hesitaton when you blipped it but ran fine when you barley got into the throttle. 

Come to find out MAF was no good.

Stuck one in from my Xterra and she runs just fine.

Unfortuently the trans may be bad, gotta get it out and check the counter shaft bearing in the front, being its howling pretty bad on de-celeration. worst case i source a wd21 trans since the gearing is better. 

Plans are to source a SFD and get some 33s or 34s under it.

 

Question, being a 96 is this thing 31 spline or 33? cause id like to get some 4.9s in this thing also

 

Anywho lets see how this thing goes 

 

https://imgur.com/a/BbKLrpJ

 

[hawairish]

I recognize that X from the Nissan SAS group.  Welcome back.

 

All R50s are 33-spline...but the problem with 4.9s is that there isn't a set that fits the front axle.  R50s have reverse cut gears up front in the R200A; W/D22 are standard cut.  You're limited to 4.6s, and hopefully that's what you already have.

[alexg89]

15 minutes ago, hawairish said:

R50s have reverse cut gears up front in the R200A; W/D22 are standard cut. 

 

I appreciate the open arms! lol

talk to me about this reverse cut stuff. ive never really understood it.

As for the differential itself, whats limiting me to sticking an xterra full front diff in place of this one?

[hawairish]

1 hour ago, alexg89 said:

 

I appreciate the open arms! lol

talk to me about this reverse cut stuff. ive never really understood it.

As for the differential itself, whats limiting me to sticking an xterra full front diff in place of this one?

 

You'll probably know it as "high pinion" (reverse cut) and "low pinion" (standard cut), much like the reference on Dana axles.  The pinion line is either above or below the centerline of the ring gear.  Rotation's all the same, but the teeth on the gears are cut in opposite directions.

 

R200A from an W/D21 or W/D22:

 

R50 R200A:

 

In general, high pinion is best up front, and low pinion best in the rear due to gear mesh.  But fck Nissan for making the R50 the only high-pinion R200A application.

 

The short answer is they can't be (easily) swapped because they are mounted to the truck in completely different ways.  The long answer: