"Lola" - WreckDiver1321's 2005 Frontier CC/SB Nismo Build and Adventure Thread

Allof75

Pathfinder
Thanks! She cleans up alright. :)

I'm shopping for the right kind of treadplate for my rock sliders now. It's kind of hard to track down, and expensive when I can find it. The Nismo trim comes with a skidplate... kind of. It's like paper thin and only covers the low-hanging radiator. It's good enough for now, but I'll definitely be replacing it with a Shrock skid down the road.

Good call, while I'll admit my 3/16" skidplates are overkill and a pain to remove, I'm glad to have them on there now. One adventure at stock height, before I had the skids, bashed in the unprotected front crossmember, and ever since then I keep the armor on. One good hit can ruin an adventure.
 

wreckdiver1321

Overlander
Good call, while I'll admit my 3/16" skidplates are overkill and a pain to remove, I'm glad to have them on there now. One adventure at stock height, before I had the skids, bashed in the unprotected front crossmember, and ever since then I keep the armor on. One good hit can ruin an adventure.

Exactly. It's better safe than sorry, and with the amount of granite I drive over, it's best to be as well protected as possible. It would also be a big help with snow wheeling to turn the bottom of the truck into a sled :D
 

MTaco

Adventurer
Lola is looking good! Did you get your front skid yet? That has been on my list for a long time...
 

wreckdiver1321

Overlander
Shrockworks engine skid - Part 1

Lola is looking good! Did you get your front skid yet? That has been on my list for a long time...

Thanks man! I'm pretty happy with her right now.

Haha funny you should mention, this showed up at my door this morning!



You can see the dark rectangle on it? Yeah, well when they sent it, they didn't wrap it up or anything. Just stuck the shipping labels to the plate and sent it off. Oh well, a little work with a razorblade takes most of the glue off. I pulled the labels off and sanded it down a little to rough it up. Then I hit the slight surface rust around the welds with a wire brush. Then I sprayed the plate down with oven cleaner (since that's what I had sitting around) and wiped it off.



Then I got to painting. Since I have a black-with-red-accents kind of theme going on here, I decided on...



Just shot a couple coats, then flipped it over.





Drying as we speak.

Now I decided to get this in bare steel and paint it myself because, let's face it, it's kind of a sacrificial part. It seemed absurd to pay an extra $35 to have it powdercoated so I could scratch it up. $5 in rattle can paint and it won't rust, and I can easily touch it up later.
 
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Dmski

Adventurer
The red will make this thing look sweet! I couldn't agree more on sliders and skids. Save the cash and just bedline or spray it yourself. Plus touch ups won't look as bad after the inevitable rock chip. Did the skid come with mounting hardware by chance?
 

wreckdiver1321

Overlander
The red will make this thing look sweet! I couldn't agree more on sliders and skids. Save the cash and just bedline or spray it yourself. Plus touch ups won't look as bad after the inevitable rock chip. Did the skid come with mounting hardware by chance?

I will have my sliders powdercoated, since they will be more visible. Powdercoating is pretty tough, so for daily driving they'll hold up really well. When they need to be touched up, it will be pretty easy since they'll be semi-gloss black. My friend will do the coating, and he has a touch up paint that matches perfectly.

Yep, came with full mounting hardware and instructions. You do need to drill two holes in the frame, but that's easy enough.
 

wreckdiver1321

Overlander
There's a subtle rattle/chatter that my suspension has been making recently. It's very subtle, almost imperceptible, but it's there. If I have the radio above 5 it can't be heard. I checked everything that I could today. There's no play in the steering or at the wheels, so tie rods and ball joints are out. I don't have a swaybar so I know it's not that. The coilovers are tight and working correctly, everything is torqued as it should be. And I'm not getting any coil bucket contact. Meaning that the noise is either loose radiator bolts, UCA/LCA bushings, or a body mounts. I'll check the radiator tomorrow, but otherwise it's nothing threatening. If it's not the radiator, I'll replace body mounts in the next few weeks.

Should be getting to install my skid sometime in the near future. Right now though I'm trying to concentrate on getting my garage cleaned out. It's been a mess for a while, and now I'm trying to make it nice and organized so I have somewhere clean and dry to store things and work on stuff. I need to tear down some shelving and replace it with some heavy duty jobbers before much more can happen though. Once I have shelving to put stuff on and I have the old shelves torn down, I can move our old Porsche into a corner where it's out of the way. Then I can focus on tidying up. Lucky for me the garage came with a very nice workbench already installed, so all I really need to do is put up some shelves and I'll have room to work on things. Needs to be swept out and the bench needs to be cleaned off, but nothing too bad. We've been having decent weather here, so I'm hoping I can get to all this within the next week or two.

In other news, I was originally planning to do OX and GONE this year, but my truck is behind schedule with what I need to spend before it's armored enough for me to really feel good about it, we would be out of money by the time the events rolled around. So there's been a change in plans. We're going to go visit my family down in FL in March, which for us is nearly free. Then throughout the summer we'll have plenty of time to do a lot of 2 and 3 day trips. KiwiKurt is coming out my way in June, so I'm going to spend a few days showing him around, and in August, we are going to head north to my parent's place in the mountains. I actually found a potential back way into their town. If I could do it right, I could theoretically make the last 100 miles of the trip without touching a single piece of asphalt. Just fire roads through the mountains. From their place, I found another mostly dirt path up north and into Glacier NP. So we'll be heading up to Glacier, spending a few days there, then making our way up into Canada, right in the middle of the Rockies. We'll be mainly in the Golden and Banff areas, which are just astonishing. So looking forward to that.

And one more update... I'll be placing an order soon to Ironman 4x4. It's a special order, so they have to put it in the container coming up from Australia, but for the price and quality, I'm willing to wait that long for it to get here. Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what it is? :D
 

Dmski

Adventurer
Special order eh?! I'd guess a rear bumper or side bush guard attachments to sliders.

That suspension noise could be rear driveline vibration? Did you shim the rear when you lifted it? A little out of spec and you can get some noise and feedback around 40mph usually. Otherwise ball fount in front?
 

skibum315

Explorer
I've also heard of front-back motion in the LCA bushings, as opposed to the radial motion you might expect with wear ... or it could be the steering rack mount bushings, those can sometimes get sloppy (and PRG has a fix for it). Maybe a motor mount or trans mount, but those are less likely to be mistaken for suspension noise.

Can you duplicate it by jumping on a bumper or door frame, when the truck is stationary?

ETA: Trip plans sound great ... I'm sure you'll enjoy. Plus Gone will be there next year, I'm sure ... just be sure to take lots of pictures on your Glacier/Canada trip, so we can all enjoy vicariously.
 

MTaco

Adventurer
Sounds like a busy Summer planned. Hope we can meet up for a trail run.

Possibly a snorkel from Iron Man? What is it, the suspense is killing me.

On your suspension noise, double check your bumper too. Mine was making the slightest contact with my fenders when I would hit a bump and I thought it was the suspension. Bang the sides of it with your hand and see if it makes any noise. Just a thought.

On another note, since you are looking at winches have you considered Engo? I might be ordering one after my tax return gets here. Super light weight and it gets great reviews, let me know what you think. $399 with free shipping HERE.

Four Wheeler article HERE.

Forgive me if you've already seen that.
 

wreckdiver1321

Overlander
Special order eh?! I'd guess a rear bumper or side bush guard attachments to sliders.

That suspension noise could be rear driveline vibration? Did you shim the rear when you lifted it? A little out of spec and you can get some noise and feedback around 40mph usually. Otherwise ball fount in front?

Good guess, but no :)

I forgot to mention, it happens when I go over bumps, and only when I go over bumps. They have to be large enough, and I don't hear it over undulations.

I've also heard of front-back motion in the LCA bushings, as opposed to the radial motion you might expect with wear ... or it could be the steering rack mount bushings, those can sometimes get sloppy (and PRG has a fix for it). Maybe a motor mount or trans mount, but those are less likely to be mistaken for suspension noise.

Can you duplicate it by jumping on a bumper or door frame, when the truck is stationary?

ETA: Trip plans sound great ... I'm sure you'll enjoy. Plus Gone will be there next year, I'm sure ... just be sure to take lots of pictures on your Glacier/Canada trip, so we can all enjoy vicariously.

I have heard of the front-to-back slop, and PRG has replacement wear pads that get rid of it. If I get to the point of doing bushings, I'd get those. I'm less inclined to believe it's a steering thing, because mine is tight as a drum. I also checked motor and tranny mounts, they look solid. Also the u-joints don't have any slack in them.

I can't seem to replicate it when stationary. The bump has to be fairly sudden, something I can't seem to do. I've lifted it with a floor jack and then dropped it suddenly, which doesn't seem to do it either. Like I said, I've checked out everything important so far, so its not something I'm worried about as far as vehicle operation.

Yeah it should be a good summer. You know me, there will be a photo dump after each outing :D

Sounds like a busy Summer planned. Hope we can meet up for a trail run.

Possibly a snorkel from Iron Man? What is it, the suspense is killing me.

On your suspension noise, double check your bumper too. Mine was making the slightest contact with my fenders when I would hit a bump and I thought it was the suspension. Bang the sides of it with your hand and see if it makes any noise. Just a thought.

On another note, since you are looking at winches have you considered Engo? I might be ordering one after my tax return gets here. Super light weight and it gets great reviews, let me know what you think. $399 with free shipping HERE.

Four Wheeler article HERE.

Forgive me if you've already seen that.

Yeah I was going to ask you when the time got closer if you wanted to do a trail run. Perhaps Independence or Goose Lake?

We have a winner!! It's an Ironman snorkel. I decided to go with them for a number of reasons. I like their design the best (which is the exact same as the ARB design) , and I know it will be higher quality than the replicas I could get on eBay. Also, the price is right. I could have gotten the Safari version, but it would be more expensive, around $500. There's an Airflow snorkel with a decent body design, but the head of it is just awful. It's also more expensive. Then there's the TJM, which has a decent price, but I'm always back and forth on the design. The Ironman comes in at $375 and looks pretty good to me. So I should be ordering that soon.

Hey, good thinking. I'll check that.

You know, I hadn't heard of them. I'll look it over, thanks for the heads up! I'm always looking for weight savings.
 

jbumx2

Observer
There's a subtle rattle/chatter that my suspension has been making recently. It's very subtle, almost imperceptible, but it's there. If I have the radio above 5 it can't be heard. I checked everything that I could today. There's no play in the steering or at the wheels, so tie rods and ball joints are out. I don't have a swaybar so I know it's not that. The coilovers are tight and working correctly, everything is torqued as it should be. And I'm not getting any coil bucket contact. Meaning that the noise is either loose radiator bolts, UCA/LCA bushings, or a body mounts. I'll check the radiator tomorrow, but otherwise it's nothing threatening. If it's not the radiator, I'll replace body mounts in the next few weeks.

Another thing you might want to check would be your Bilstein shocks to make sure they were assembled correctly. Some people in clubfrontier have reported symptoms similar to yours because their Bilstein height adjustable shocks were not assembled with the necessary washers. Here's one of the threads with more info: http://www.clubfrontier.org/forums/f26/beware-bilstein-5100-owners-65258/#post1007919
 

Dmski

Adventurer
Nice choice on the snorkel! That will definitely give it the outback look! I gotta say, the airflow snorkels are butt ugly so i'm glad you didn't go with those.
 

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