Wire you so janky (see what I did there)

More progress on the truck!  Things have been going pretty smoothly lately.  The weather has been nicer and the days are getting longer, so more time for work :)

One of the things that had been bothering me was the way the defrost vents were sticking up.  2 of them would stick up on one end because the replacement dash cap I got was slightly warped.

Notice how the left and middle vents are raised along their right sides

This wasn't really something that effected function so I had lived with it, but with the truck nearing completion I wanted it cleaned up.  I popped the 2 vents out and used a hammer and a screwdriver to bend the metal under the vinyl of the dash around until I got it bent in a manner that allowed both of the vents to seat nicely.

Middle vent fixed

And the left...

Success!

Shortly after doing this the speedometer cable I ordered arrived.  I pulled the cluster out of the dash and got to work.

There were also a couple bulbs on the idiot lights that were out.  I went ahead and found replacements for these.   The lights aren't really important but I just like to have things working.

Here's the back of the cluster just so you can see this awesome 80s tech.

That greasy thing on the left side is where the speedometer cable connects to.  There was a little odd looking bit of plastic sticking out of this that I suspected was the end of the cable that had broken off.

I was right.

The cable wasn't too hard to get out surprisingly.  3 screws and a few clips, disconnect from the transmission and just yanked it out.

It was nasty and covered in grease

Got the new one out of the box.  Here's what the end is supposed to look like.

It was a lot more difficult to install this thing than it was to remove, but still it only took about 20 minutes.  There was a bunch of grease and other buildup around where it screws into the firewall, so I cleaned all that junk off.

Notice that open area under the brake booster vaccum line, that's where the cable mounts

Here's the new one installed, nice and clean

Tested it out and it works great!  It's a couple mph behind the GPS speedometer I was using, but close enough.  I'd rather it say I was going faster than I am than the other way around.

In another couple days I got the new plugs for the headlights to replace the janky wiring that I talked about a few posts ago.  I cut the little things off the ends of the wires on the passenger side, stripped away a few inches of wire that had been spliced into, and soldered the new plug in, then heatshrunk it and wrapped it in conduit.

Before:

After:

Tested it and it works great :)  Definitely looks a lot better than those stupid wires and I won't have to worry about them falling off/corroding/shorting/etc.

The other side was ok, but the plug did have some corrosion on it and the wires on that side had been spliced as well, so I cut that stuff out and replaced it as well.  That plug pack came with 2 anyway so why not.

The boot around the headlight on the driver's side is missing.  I tried to find one at advance and a couple other local places but they didn't have any.  I got on infamous nissan and my usual parts guy (david29) had some so I ordered one from him.  It'll be in in a few days.

Here's a picture with the old plug and one of those butt connectors that was used to splice some random piece of junk wire in.

I've still got some wiring cleanup I'd like to do in the engine bay, some niceties for the interior, that kindof thing but I'm really pleased with where the truck is right now :)  It's come a long way in just a little over a year!

Interior is almost done...

Some more progress on the interior.  I finally decided to fix the environmental controls.  I got tired of ice being on the inside of the windshield and whatnot from always having the air circulating in the cab.  First thing I yanked the old one and all of its cables (the new enviro controls had cables with it, and they are attached much more securely.  Here's what the nasty old unit looked like.

As you can see, it was rather dirty and the cables were held in with those rusty metal clips.  The new one uses more like a plastic channel with some metal retaining pieces that are a whole lot better.  Unfortunately I neglected to take pictures of this.  Anyway, I got the new enviro controls in and cabled up, which is rather difficult when the dash is still in.  After this I noticed that I couldn't plug the AC controls in.  If you notice on that picture above, there's supposed to be a plug on that panel sticking out at the bottom.  This is what controls the fan speed.  The controls I bought were from a 95 truck, which uses a different wiring harness.  Luckily, I was able to retrofit the old selector switch and harness from my old controls over to the new one.

Here you can see where the selector and harness used to sit.  The 2 screw holes were what held it on, with a copper plate on the switch that slid along some strips of copper on the inside.  Just let me tell you though, that retrofitting that switch on there while the controls were still in the dash was quite an accomplishment.  It was extremely difficult as there is hardly any room to move, but I didn't want to risk damaging the unit by taking all those cables back out.  I tested it and it works great!  I still need to grease the moving parts of the thing that flips back and forth to go from circulating air to fresh air.  It's pretty difficult to move and I don't want it to break again...

After getting that done, I contacted david29 on infamous and got another jack cover panel (the last one I had ordered fell through).  This one is grey, but whatever, I was just tired of it being bare metal back there where my laptop bag gets caught on it.  I went ahead and bought the complete jack kit and whatnot from him as well, and some new defrost vents for the side of the dash.  While working back there, I went ahead and removed the rear seat belts.  They took up a lot of extra room, constantly flopped about, and also got hung on bags, jackets, and everything else I put in the back of the truck.

Passenger side, there's some storage space under this one but nothing in there

Driver's side, this is what all the spare tire tools are under

I also got some centercaps for the rear wheels, and some new lug nuts.  The lugs that the truck had were really worn (the finish is peeling off and rusting, plus they are really too small to use with these wheels) so I thought it best to replace them.  The centercaps are some cheap ones I found on ebay, but they fit and do the job.  If they start rusting quickly or something I'll probably just throw some paint over them.  I thought about doing the rear mud flaps while I was installing these but I was really tired that day and just decided to put it off until later.

I couldn't find a 6 lug set... so I have 5 black lugs and one silver, which is the wheel lock. I may paint it later,

I believe the coolant problem has been fixed.  The truck was low on coolant and must have been leaking from the old heater core.  I apparently just forgot to fill it back up after I changed the heater core out, so it had been nearly overheating when it sat idle for a while.  I added some coolant and bled the cooling system, so far after a tank of gas it seems to be fine :)

The next thing on the list is to install a proper plug on that passenger headlight that I worked on in the last update.  I ordered the part today, so it should be here shortly.  I'm planning to do some work to the wiring in the engine bay as much of it is worn or poorly connected.  I've got the valve cover gaskets sitting in a box (you can actually see it in that passenger side picture above) ready to install when I get some time.  I'm going to try to order the speedometer cable next week.  The truck is getting closer and closer to where I want it :)  I just updated the to do list with the current status.

Wheels and lights

Went for a while without doing much work on the truck, just driving it around and enjoying it being functional.  I did find a pretty good deal on some wheels (no tires) on craigslist.  I picked these up and just had a tire shop move the tires off the old wheels onto the new ones.  Both wheels are 15" the new ones are just wider, so the tires actually fit a lot better anyway.  I took these pictures shortly after having the wheels installed.

Era appropriate amirite

Dat offset

I was super pumped about these wheels. They look great on the truck and really make it look a lot better.  Plus the truck drives a lot better having tires that aren't all bulged,  hopefully this will help the tires wear more evenly also.  I had these for about 2 days before my mom ran into the truck :/ It didn't do any damage to mine, but jacked her bumper up pretty proper.  Dad decided to move the truck to a different spot in the yard, which for some reason made one of the rear tires go flat.  Not just flat like oh it has 15psi in it, flat as in there was a gap between the rubber and the wheel.  FFS.  Luckily I had kept all the old wheels, so I loaded one of those up in the Yaris the next day and had a different tire shop throw a used tire on it, balance, etc.  Took this home and installed it.  Drove the truck to the tire shop the next morning and had them fix the problem with the other wheel.  Turns out tire shop #1 used the wrong kind of wheel weights (the ones that clip around the rim) and it was causing an air leak.  I went ahead and had all the wheels rebalanced at tire shop 2 and they have been fine since then.  The truck didn't have a spare, so at least I have one of those now.  I mounted it under the truck properly and everything, so hopefully I'll be able to find a jack and toolkit that matches the truck soon.  I have a jack cover trim panel on order right now.

So, that wasn't really necessary but it really spruces the truck up.  Next I felt that I needed to knock at least something off the to do list.  I had ordered a new blinker/headlight control stick and that finally came in last week.  It doesn't have cruise control, but who even cares about cruise on a 5 speed anyway?  I replaced the switch and the interior lights work a crapton better, several of the idiot lights that didn't work before work now, and the best thing is that dim/bright work.  One of the previous owners had done something weird with the headlights and made this odd janky wire going across the front of the truck to the passenger side to power that headlight.  Dim didn't work at all so the lights were just on bright always, much to the chagrin of my fellow drivers.  After installing the new switch I began working through the wiring and eventually got everything sorted so that bright is bright and dim is dim.  For a while one light would be bright and the other dim because he had wired the passenger lights up wrong during his janky expedition to do whatever the crap he was trying to do.  After undoing all of his jank the lights worked just the same as they did before, so I really have no idea what he was trying to accomplish.

that blue wire is the one that goes to the driver side. There's supposed to be a plug here instead of just 3 wires stuck to the headlight.

dim

bright

So it's pretty awesome having that fixed.  The truck just feels better all the time.  I love that things are finally starting to come together for this little guy.

Problems continue, but I refuse to give up

As I mentioned in the audio post, the transmission on the Beast was nearing the end of its life.  A few weeks after that post I took it to the shop and had them check it out.  They said that the bearings and syncros had completely turned into powder and both the shafts were broken.  He was amazed the transmission still worked.  He said the damage inside was so extensive that he'd have to scrap that transmission, but had a source on a replacement.  I had them go ahead and do the swap.  It was expensive, but at least I have a running truck.  It was nice and quiet also compared to that constant droning noise the old one made.

Shortly after getting the transmission fixed, the noise from the driver's side front wheel was getting worse.  It seemed that every time I got up to around 30mph it would start making that whizzing noise and shudder when I slowed back down to around 20mph.  I figured this had to be the 4x4 hub since I'd replaced basically everything else on the truck.  To test my theory I removed the spring and brake for the 4x4 hub (this disabled the hub's ability to engage and effectively made the truck RWD).  Sure enough, the noise stopped.  I drove it like this for around 300 miles.  During this time the environmental controls broke -_-  Luckily I had a spare set of those sitting around I'd bought before for real cheap to have as a spare.  I haven't replaced this yet as it's pretty much always cold now so it's fine stuck where it is.  Temperature and fan speed still work, it's just stuck circulating air inside the cab and only moves between head/feet and feet/defrost rather than all the selections it should have.  The replacement panel is from a newer truck but should work fine.  I took the truck on a deer hunting trip in TN and did some off roading.  Even in RWD it did awesome.  I never got stuck and it crossed small creeks and very rough terrain with ease.  I drove it about 150 miles that day and didn't have any trouble at all :)

woohoo!

On my way to work one morning, the speedometer dropped to 0 and the odometer stopped counting.  From asking the guys on the forum, this is most likely the speedometer cable.  I haven't had a chance to look into this yet.

The truck sat for several weeks not being used because of holiday travel and a lot of long-range trips for work.  The Yaris gets such better mileage and is just easier to control at high speeds I drive it exclusively for lengthy trips.  It's also more comfortable.

I got a set of Warn Premium manual locking hubs for Xmas :)  My parents got them for me and I had to wait a little while to get some time to install them, but last night I put the truck in the garage and went at it.  The instructions are about as clear as the TN river, but with the help of a youtube video I got them installed correctly.  I haven't had a chance to test them yet, but they switch between lock and unlock with ease.  They seem to be quality pieces.  My only complaint is that the studs it comes with aren't grade 8.  I easily broke one of them off :/  I need to redo the passenger side hub anyway because I didn't do it right, it works but just isn't as clean as I like and needs to have that stud replaced.  I actually have some pictures of this haha.

Driver's side

Passenger side, note the broken stud

All the greasy parts removed from the automatic hubs were placed in bags with the respective hub and put into the Warn box.  I'm not sure if I want to keep these or sell them.  They could be rebuilt if someone had the parts, I was just unable to find them.  I'm going to update the to-do list with the new problems, but hopefully they will be pretty easy to fix.  It seems like every time I get something working something else breaks.

Audio done! Transmission is also :(

Got back to work on the truck some yesterday and completed the audio install.  It looks great!  I thought some other people might find this useful, so I detailed my speaker mount modifications more in this post.  Here's what I started with for the rear speakers.

L to R Infinity Reference 6.5" w/ grille, OEM speaker housing, OEM speaker mount, Infinity mounting bracket, foam pad

The OEM speakers looked like this

I wanted to keep the new install as close to OEM as I could, but needless to say that speaker grille had to go.  Also, the speakers that were actually in the truck are more like 6.3" or so, they are just a bit smaller than a standard 6.5, but the mounting bracket was big enough to easily accommodation the 6.5 with minimal modification.

To begin with, I removed the OEM speaker grille from the plastic housing.  The Infinity speaker wouldn't fit in the housing like the OEM one did because of the difference in diameter, so I did some measuring and figured out that I could trim away the inside of the plastic housing and some of the Infinity bracket and make them fit together.  I went ahead and mounted the Infinity bracket to the OEM housing (drilled/riveted) to make it easier to work on.

Removed 2 of the screw holes and trimmed about 4-5mm from the inside.

If you notice near the rivets there are sections that are milled out, this is where the OEM housing fits

As you can see, the height of the OEM screw holes is almost exactly the same as that bit of the bracket I milled away.  This worked out nicely and allowed me to set the Infinity right over the top of the plastic housing and mount it to the Infinity bracket, using just the pressure of the speaker to hold it down.  This also left enough room between the bracket and the plastic housing for the carpet to fit back under there.

Here they are installed, with the carpet back up on the rear cab wall.  Unfortunately due to a change in how I did the right vs left side I had to use different screws for the right one, so they are silver instead of black. I'm going to touch this up with some black paint later to make them match.  The seats don't fold down on the sides anymore, but I wasn't planning to use those anyway.  Later if I decide I want the seats to fold I will remove the Infinity speaker grilles, but for now I'm leaving it that way.

Unfortunately, Friday I learned that my transmission is at the end of its life.  I'm having problems getting the truck into 2nd gear and it makes a rumbling noise at idle when the clutch is engaged.  I made this video a few days before taking it to the shop before I was certain that the transmission was where the noise was coming from.

It's going to be $900+parts for a rebuild, or $450-650 + $400-500 for a used one plus install.  I'm leaning towards having it rebuilt just to make sure I don't inherit problems from another vehicle with a used one.

The Beast lives!

Been a little while since updating, but there's been a lot of work done.  After talking with several people I decided not to bother with changing out that damaged piece of the 4x4 hub.  I regreased the old parts and reinstalled those, finishing up the hubs.  I was so excited :)  Sure that it wouldn't take long to bleed the brakes and get the truck rolling, my buddy Louis came over and we started working on them.  Fluid didn't seem to be passing from the master cylinder into the brakes.  They had been hanging disconnected with the lines empty for a while, so Louis got out a vacuum pump and started trying to pull fluid through that way.  It still wasn't working.  Louis said that the master cylinder piston(s) may have gotten stuck from the lines being empty or something, so we took the master cylinder off.  We cleaned the outside of the master cylinder and dumped the old cruddy fluid out.  I bought some new brake fluid and some brake cleaner, so we took the master cylinder apart (couldn't get the rear piston out though) and cleaned everything real good, then tried to do a bench bleed.  We weren't having much luck with that, so decided to just toss it on the truck and bleed it at the master cylinder.  We still weren't getting fluid movement from the MC to the calipers though.  Another day, another problem.  Louis went home, defeated.  I tried again later to get the MC working.  Took it back apart and managed to get the front brakes moving fluid, but the rears wouldn't budge.  Frustrated I got on ebay and bought a new one for $47 shipped.  That arrived, I filled it with fluid, bled it, and installed.

It looks really out of place being so clean and shiny, but I opened the bleeder valves on the calipers and let fluid drain down the lines, then bled it at the wheels and everything seemed fine.  By the time I got everything ready to go and the wheels back on, it was pretty dark.  I backed it out of the garage and drove it around the yard a little, breaking the new parts in.  Steering felt great, but the brakes were a little squishy.  Later we found that I hadn't tightened the MC bleeder valves enough.  While dad was holding the brakes I tightened all those back up.  Good news I guess, is that I got a good bleed out of it haha.  Once that was tightened the brakes seemed fine.  I parked it for the night to come back tomorrow.

Old MC and a collection of rags that have built up since this project started

The next day dad and I got in the truck to drive it around the block.  The alignment was awful.  I didn't get it much over 25, but it was wearing hard on the tires.  One lap around the block and I was done.  The next day I had a local company tow it to the alignment shop.  I didn't feel like trying to do an alignment, so for $65 they took care of it.  After that, the truck was great!

Here it is chilling at a client site

I've been driving it around for about 2 weeks now and love it!  It drives so much better with the new steering parts.  Feels like a different truck!  Not having the brakes dragging means that it climbs hills and accelerates a lot quicker too.  I really enjoy it.

Since it sits outside, I installed a set of wheel locks to keep someone from jacking the wheels/tires.  Also got a replacement rear center cap since it's been missing for a while.  Installed that and retentioned the e-brake cable one evening.  It's coming together!  I still need to fix the headlight switch and finish the speaker install, but it's coming along!  I updated the to-do list a few minutes ago to reflect the current status.

MOAR steering shenanigans

Moar updates on the steering situation. Most everything is done now :) but there's still some more left. Going ahead and posting this up to try to keep post length down.

SO... last we left off I had pulled the CV boots and ordered new axles.  Those came in late the next week, so off with the old and on with the new.  Yanking the axles wasn't too bad.  I did have to remove the front shocks though.  Basically stripped the front end down to where only the torsion rod and A arms were left.  I bought a pipe wrench to use to hold the axles while removing the bolts.  Being careful, I managed not to damage the axles any.  In about 20 minutes or so both old CVs were free.  I boxed the old CVs up thinking that I needed to turn them in to O'Reilleys (I had ordered repro axles) but I ended up getting new ones instead. I haven't heard many good things about the new axles, but this was a different brand and has a 3 year warranty so oh well.

A grand struggle was had to get to this point.

yummy

Picked up the new axles and put them on in the same manner, using the pipe wrench to keep them from moving.  Putting them back on took a little longer than removal, but that's pretty normal.

So clean...so shiny

After installing the axles, I had to get those spindles back on.  I installed the remaining upper/lower balljoints I hadn't done already.  After that I had the incredibly frustrating job of mounting the spindles back in the A arms.  I ended up having to jack the A arm up as high as possible without lifting the truck off the jack stands, then use one of those awesome ratchet strap deals to pull the upper and lower together enough to get the bolts in.  Before coming to this conclusion, dad and I tried everything in our power to hold the pieces together by hand or by using C clamps.  All of those attempts failed miserably.  I had completely forgot about buying that ratchet strap deal (I got it on sale over a year ago and never opened it).  After getting the strap it took about 45 mins/side to get the spindles installed.  Got those bolts all tightened up, installed the shield thing for the rotor, bearings, and hub/rotor itself.

Getting this far took entirely too long.

After getting all that crap done, I rebuilt the tie rods and installed those.  The tie rods weren't too bad, but it did take about an hour to finish them.  Getting the old ends off required me jumping up and down on a couple wrenches after soaking them in Liquid Wrench.  Installing the new ends was easy enough.

New rod ends make that center piece look like a dog turd.

Installed the tie rods, then the 4x4 hubs and calipers.  While installing the 4x4 hubs I noticed that the passenger side free running hub brake system was damaged.  After talking with the guys on Infamous Nissan I decided it would be best to replace this part.  I'm currently waiting to get a new one.  Hoping to have it next week.

Nissan Hardbody freerunning hub brake system: limited dildo edition

So I think this gets the blog up to date.  I'm trying to make it more picture heavy and less wordy, please leave feedback on what format you enjoy more.  Here's a couple pictures of what she looks like right now.  I REALLY want to have the truck drivable next week.  All that's really left to do to get her running after the 4x4 hub is bleeding/refilling the brakes.  Hoping my buddy Louis can come over and help with that on Thursday.  Once she's working I'll do some of the smaller stuff on the to-do-list post from earlier in the year.

This is the side with the jacked up 4x4 hub part (passenger)

The driver's side, all good except one bolt on the 4x4 hub that has a dirt dauber nest behind it