Nissan3161's 2000 xterra

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Purchased the x in 2012 to be used as a 4wd daily driver for me and the wife to use to get around in the Ohio winters. After purchasing a subaru for my wife the x became mine. I daily drove it for a while then got into wheeling it. I went through some of the same mods as the rest of you upgraded steering with grassroots center link, IAB, hd tra's, front lokka etc. after wheeling the x this way for a couple of years I decided I was comfortable enough with the truck to start tackling harder trails. I knew from what I have read on here and from my own experiences with the ifs it wasn't going to hold up to the trails I wanted to do or at least not without constantly repairing it. So I started the search for a 1980+ wagoneer front Dana 44 after searching for a while I finally found one local for a decent price so I snagged it up and went from there.

Now for some pics... earliest pic I have of the x painted fuel door and 265/75r15 cooper discoverer at3s
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Current pic as of 9/28/18 one of the few pics I got from WENT this year
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I used the Bonney Motorsports leaf spring hanger kit with rancho rs44044 wagoneer lift springs, currently I'm running 315/75r16 mastercraft courser mxts. I have more pics of the sas process I may post up later along with a more detailed mod list and more pics. I have lots of future plans for the truck some big some small I'll try to post them up as they happen.
 
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harryron

The Grumpiest of Mid-Westerners
Location
ohio
Definitely highlight of my day seeing your truck. It's awesome now to talk my wife into letting me do mine.
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Thanks. I ordered some new wheels for it last week but they are on back ordered so they won't ship out till around the 6th of December. They are 16x8 d window steelies with 4.25in back spacing. I like the way the stock wheels look on it but unfortunately they don't have enough back spacing to keep the tires from rubbing the leaf springs when turning sharp and the shock hoops when stuffing a tire even with a 1.5in spacer on the front so new wheels it is. I have some other plans in store for it but I'll keep those a secret lol
 

jg8992

Hi, my name is Brandon
Location
Spotsylvania, VA
Thanks. I ordered some new wheels for it last week but they are on back ordered so they won't ship out till around the 6th of December. They are 16x8 d window steelies with 4.25in back spacing. I like the way the stock wheels look on it but unfortunately they don't have enough back spacing to keep the tires from rubbing the leaf springs when turning sharp and the shock hoops when stuffing a tire even with a 1.5in spacer on the front so new wheels it is. I have some other plans in store for it but I'll keep those a secret lol
Wife has those same wheels pro comp
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Just a small update not much has happened but I have gotten some stuff done on the x the biggest thing was removing the 2 inch body lift which meant relocating my rear bumper that I made which took way more work than I wanted it to because when I built it I didn't think the body lift would ever come out but it's moved now and it should actually be stronger than it was before after I add some gussets/brackets to it.
I left the front bumper at the two inch body lift height I already smash it into things enough as it is so I didn't want it hanging down two inches lower and catching even more stuff. So I cut the front fenders where they meet the bumper and made room for it to stay at the two inch bl height and with the frontier grill I'm using I already had a gap between the bumper and grill that happened to be exactly two inches So it lines up nicely with the bumper. I did loose the front mounts for the fenders and the bottom mount for the turn signal lights but the fenders don't really moved around a lot the marker lights do so I'm planning on taking the marker lights out and making some sort of bracket that mounts to the bumper or body that holds leds for turn signal and marker lights I'm going to also put at least one mount on the front fenders at that time also.
I also took advantage of the front bumper at 2in bl height to use all 4 mounting holes on each side of the bumper (2 for non bl and two for bl) and drilled through the frame horns and mounted the front bumper with 8 grade 8 1/2 bolts 4 per side it isn't going anywhere now before I would have to loosen it up after each wheeling trip and realign it because it would move this should help with that I hope may end up reinforcing the frame horns also not sure yet.
Other than that I had to bend/ remake one of my cross members that goes under the bellhousing because evertime I hit a small bump my diff would hit the mount something I should have done a while ago but at least it's done now I cut a section of the mount out and drilled a new hole for the crossmemebr bolt then bent the crossmember slightly and reinstalled it.
I do have a question for those of you with a RLC front bumper when doing all this work I was looking at my bumper and noticed that the main section of the bumper/ winch plate is bent and it looks like it is from using the winch. It's hard to explain but the way it's bent isn't from me smacking into anything with it it looks like it is starting to pull up. I'll try to get a good pic tomorrow along with pics of the rest of the work I've done. Just wondering if anyone else has looked at theirs and noticed it's bent where the winch mounts
Ok I think that's it lol I will leave you with this long winded post and tomorrow when I get better lighting I will post pictures
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
IMG_0538.JPG IMG_0539.JPG IMG_0540.JPGSnapped a couple of pics today to show where the truck currently sits seconds pic gives you a idea of what I cut out of the fenders. Please ignore the bad paint on the fenders lol plan is to touch all of it up/ possibly paint the whole truck when it warms up this spring. Still lots of stuff to get done the list never ends but at least I'm making some progress. Tried to get a pic of the bent section of the bumper but today was a cloudy rainy day with bad lighting I couldn't get a good clear pic
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Well I have decided to take the roof rack off of the x it was catching on branches (one part of the rack is actually broken from a low hanging branch) and it was catching and holding onto a lot of mud other off-road related debris under the supports that bolt to the roof which caused the roof to rust so I now have a hole in my roof I get to fix yay me lol plus it fits in the garage without the rack on it before I was swapping out to tiny 205/55r15s I got off a car at work and mounted on my old snowflake rims to make it fit in the garage and while swapping the small tires was no big deal taking the 35s on and off the truck was getting old quick they are heavy lol.
here are the pics I'm going to eventually fill the holes in on the roof differently but the screws will work for now even though they stick up further than I thought they would
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
I also took a good pic of the dd/ tow rig last weekend I'm not very good a taking good pics so when I got this one I was pretty proud of it so I thought I would share it, I know it's not an x but it's close enough :)
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Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Well nothing has been done to the x at all and went is quickly approaching so it loooks like I'll be scrambling to get things done before then but the good new is that the wife and I went on a 6 week road trip around the US with my frontier. It was just shy of 10,000 miles and covered 20 states. I won't get into a lot of details but I'll list the states and what we did in each state for those who are interested. I have lots of pics I'll post up some of the ones I took of the frontier when we get them all sorted out and moved onto a real computer.

List of states:
Ohio start point
Michigan: stopped at macinaw city, drove over mackinaw bridge and through the upper peninsula.
Wisconsin: passed through
Minnesota: visited Duluth
South Dakota: badlands national park, Mount Rushmore, hiked Harney peak (7242elavation)
Wyoming: yellow stone national park, grand titon national park
Montanana: glacier national park, stopped at pole bridge a tiny town of like 20 year round residents about 20 miles from Canadian border
Idaho: passed though
Washington: drove through the north cascades, stopped at anocortess island and went on a whale watching boat and saw lots of killer whales and other wildlife, stopped at mt St. Helens.
Oregon: Columbia river George, drove down state route 5 all the way down the pacific coast into
California: redwoods (drove though two of them lol)
Nevada: passed through
Utah: Zion Canyon national park, Bryce Canyon national park, arches state park, vistited moab and wheeled frontier
Colorado: Rocky Mountain national park, visited nisstec :) did not leave with any goodies though :( stopped at a hot spring resort
Kansas: passed through
Missouri: went up in the saint louis arch
Illinois: passed through briefly
Kentucky: passed through
Tennessee: passed through
Georgia: trip ended here visiting friends stayed for two weeks then came back to Ohio.
Might of forgot a couple of stops but that's the trip in a nutshell
Pic is a map of the route we traveled highlighted in blue it's mostly accurate except for a couple of times i highlighted the wrong section of road lol
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I'll post a few more pics soon hopefully I don't wanna post a lot though I don't want to over load this build thread with them. Things should get back to normal in a couple of weeks then I can start work on the x and start posting pics of my progress on it :)
 

harryron

The Grumpiest of Mid-Westerners
Location
ohio
Sounds like a fun trip, one of my goals is to run the trans American trail. hit me up if you need any help getting your x ready for went.
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
So I did some things today I cut some more out of my front fenders the lip where the plastics used to bolt just collected stuff and was starting to rust and I didn't like how far the gap was between the bumper and the start of the wheel well. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out the passenger side one is kinda funny looking it's hard to get a straight line in it with the big dent in it. I'm going to mess with the shape of the cut a little bit more tomorrow.

I also fixed my floppy side marker lights ever since I took the body lift out and whacked two inches out of the fenders my side marker lights have only had the screw at the top holding them in so they would stick out at the bottom. I was going to make some sort of bracket that went behind the fender on the body or attached to the back of the fender which may still happen but for now I solved my problem with some self tapping screws that I ran through a section of the lights into the lip in the fender so the lights bolt to the fender then I put the fender on the truck and put the screw in the top of the light. Idk how it will affect the water proffness? If that's a word but I have a spare set of lights if these get water in them. If the screws keep coming loose I'll find a different way to do it but for now it will work.
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Bottobro what would you like to know? I can take pics of how everything is set up if you would like right now my tie rod, drag link, and steering stabilizer have seen better days I bent them in the rock challenge at WENT everything else survived though. It might be time for a high steer set up I'm going to have to look into it more. I haven't decided how I'm going to fix it yet.
 

bottobro

I'm a pretty girl!
Supporting Member
Location
Long Island NY
Bottobro what would you like to know? I can take pics of how everything is set up if you would like right now my tie rod, drag link, and steering stabilizer have seen better days I bent them in the rock challenge at WENT everything else survived though. It might be time for a high steer set up I'm going to have to look into it more. I haven't decided how I'm going to fix it yet.

Looking for front end set up. That and driveshaft setup. Just getting prepped as possible before I start diving in
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Bottobro I have not forgotten you just been busy I took some pics today they aren't the best it's hard to get everything with the wheels still on the truck if you want to see some more or more detailed pics if something let me know. Front driveshaft is a 98 dodge 1500 front driveshaft that has about 4 inches removed from it with a 1330-1310 conversion joint at the diff side. Also used the rugged rocks transfer case flange so it bolts right up.IMG_0650.JPG IMG_0651.JPG IMG_0652.JPG IMG_0653.JPG IMG_0654.JPG IMG_0655.JPG
 

Nissan3161

Bought an X
Location
Ohio
Still spring under in the rear the are factory springs with a 3in/3 leaf add a leaf and 1.5in lift shackles.

Rear bumper is just some pieces of 2X2 box tubing welded together with a 2in receiver I bought from tsc. The recovery points bolted to the frame are from p&p engineering. Mounts are made from 3/16 steel it's mounted using the 3 regular rear bumper bolts and it also wraps around the bottom of the frame and uses two of the factory tow hitch mounting holes to keep it from rotating up into the hatch whenever I use the receiver to pull on something.

Rear corner plastics on
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Plastics off
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Pieces sticking out the end were ment to protect the tail light in case I slid backwards into anything haven't used them yet so I don't know how well they work yet if they work at all lol

Mount
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