The Grackle

General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Atlanta, GA
Got on the interstate tonight and after about 5 minutes noticed the engine starting to stumble a bit, let off the gas and it stopped. Started again when I hit the gas, no flashing SES but it was definitely misfiring. Thankfully my exit was a couple miles later, I shut it down, restarted and it set a code. I pulled it with my OBDII scanner and it's a misfire on cylinder #1.

Every coil pack except #2 is original with 173,087 miles on them so I'm hoping new coils fix it. I have a trail spare in the cargo area that I'll install tomorrow before work. I can't remember if anything is in the the way to get to that coil pack but I really hope not.

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General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Atlanta, GA
Well crap, there goes that plan. It's supposed to be rainy and cold tomorrow so I guess I'll take an uber to work and deal with this over the weekend. Man I'm glad this came up now instead of during my Texas trip.

Went ahead and ordered 5 Hitachi coil packs from Rockauto this morning for $192, I was just about to pull the trigger on new tires this weekend or next but I guess that will be put on hold for now.
 
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General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Atlanta, GA
I swapped in the spare coil I had this morning and it's running great again. I did it without removing the intake manifold so my hands are a little sore from being wedged under it. When I go replace the other 5 that thing is def coming off.
 
Prime

Prime

Shut up Baby, I know it!
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Location
Denver Adjacent
That's impressive. Seems to be Nissan's MO. My Maxima is the same exact way. Can get to 2/4/6 right on the front of the engine. 5 is doable without surgery. But if you have to do 1 or 3, you have to pull the upper plenum.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
Prime said:
That's impressive. Seems to be Nissan's MO. My Maxima is the same exact way. Can get to 2/4/6 right on the front of the engine. 5 is doable without surgery. But if you have to do 1 or 3, you have to pull the upper plenum.
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The hardest part was disconnecting the wiring harness from the coil, I kept thinking don't fk this up because if you break that clip you're going to have a much bigger headache than just replacing a coil haha.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
Yesterday after swapping that coilpack in I finished up the audio upgrades I've been meaning to do for a while. I installed components up front and for the rear doors. The factory tweeter locations are pretty bad so I used that hole in the dash to locate the crossovers and drilled out the A-Pillars for the actual tweeters to be flush mounted. There's a ton of space inside the factory tweeter location so I filled it up with some packing foam to help reduce any noise that could come from there.
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The rear doors were a similar install process, turns out the plastic door panel for the non-RF models still has the mounts inside the door for the RF tweeters but I didn't use them because there wouldn't be enough room to flush mount the tweeters I bought. Instead I measured right next to it and drilled it out there. Came out really clean and factory looking so I'm happy and the sound quality is awesome, everything feels very balanced now.
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westslope

westslope

Wheeling
Location
Wildfire country, BC
You did not notice a slight 'spring' to your step? Nice well worn treads on those runners. :)

I lose small stuff in the stupidest of places. So I like to spend a lot of time carefully organizing parts in plastic bags, jars or dishes as I disassemble.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
westslope said:
You did not notice a slight 'spring' to your step? Nice well worn treads on those runners. :)

I lose small stuff in the stupidest of places. So I like to spend a lot of time carefully organizing parts in plastic bags, jars or dishes as I disassemble.
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I didn't even hear any popping or clunks coming from it lol. I still remember looking everywhere thinking there's no way I could have lost it when it was just right in front of me.

Yeah those shoes were really shot by the time I retired them to the ok-to-get-greasy category, I hate throwing them out because visually they look alright but the soles and foam are completely destroyed, these had about 400 miles of road on them.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
Ordered a set of Trico NeoForm wiper blades (24"/21") for the front and a 14" Trico ExactFit for the rear and went to install them today. Fronts went fine, the rear one I pulled the arm off to install a higher strength spring for the large blade, installed the spring and went back out to the truck to install it and was like wait a sec why isn't the nut on the arm stud still? It was pouring rain when I removed it and I think I was going to bring it inside and dropped it somewhere in this mess:
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Thankfully the hardware guy at Ace was able to guess the correct replacement size (6mm flange nut) on the first try somehow, I felt that alone was worth more than the 64 cents I paid for the nut. Anyway it's all back together now and working great again, this is the first time I've used the NeoForm blades but I like the connector style, it looks factory because it covers the end of the arm up.
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After that I pulled the drivers side window switch to check it out because I know it got drenched in ocean water a few weeks ago. Found plenty of beach sand on the upper portion but the design is pretty weatherproof. Nothing got inside the switch, the electronics were in the same condition as the last time I had it apart replacing LED's last spring.

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General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
Installed 5 new coil packs this morning without much of a problem. I left the intake manifold on again this time and used a 10mm ratcheting flexhead wrench for the bolt. What really made it easier though was a small step stool I picked up yesterday, for only 8 bucks I didn't have to fight just to get to the bolts which made it way easier overall.
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KC!

KC!

Bought an X
General_Tarfun said:
Installed 5 new coil packs this morning without much of a problem. I left the intake manifold on again this time and used a 10mm ratcheting flexhead wrench for the bolt. What really made it easier though was a small step stool I picked up yesterday, for only 8 bucks I didn't have to fight just to get to the bolts which made it way easier overall.
Bm1N4TP.jpg
Click to expand...
Should have tested out the Audi R8 coil pack swap!:p
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
I was noticing some really strange steering weirdness over the past few weeks ever since the beach trip, almost like one of tires would squirm or something. Really hard to describe honestly but it would still go straight but I could feel push on the steering somehow. I always suspect wheel bearing 1st since I somehow still have the originals on the truck so I checked those out first and nope, they're still tight. No idea how but I'll take it.

Then I noticed the front passenger side tire seemed to be cambered the same as the drivers side, meaning they both leaned like this if you looked at the truck from the front: //. I went and got my level and measured them and sure enough the passenger side tire had negative camber and the drivers side had positive. The UCA must have slipped at some point because it was all the way inboard so I set it back to where it should be and the steering weirdness is gone.
 
SledheadX

SledheadX

Wheeling
Supporting Member
Location
Rochester, NY
General_Tarfun said:
Installed 5 new coil packs this morning without much of a problem. I left the intake manifold on again this time and used a 10mm ratcheting flexhead wrench for the bolt. What really made it easier though was a small step stool I picked up yesterday, for only 8 bucks I didn't have to fight just to get to the bolts which made it way easier overall.
Bm1N4TP.jpg
Click to expand...
AWWW... Who's da cute wittle steppy stool?
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
I modified my Hellwig LP-15 helper leafs over the weekend and gained 1.5" of lift from maybe 30 minutes of work. I'll have to get pic of the setup but because the LP's use a dual leaf setup where there's a flat base leaf and then a curved leaf on top I was able to put a 1/4" steel block underneath the base of it, then used a bottle jack to push the end down far enough to reconnect the u-bolts.

I measured the lift amount today after putting about 50 miles on it to let it settle some and it's ground to fender 38.5" now, I finally got a some rake back which is what I was really after.

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This is an old pic and I have it on the rear of the pack not the front but the red rectangle is where I put the block.
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General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
PhullD said:
How's the ride? Did it get a lot stiffer than just the helper springs?
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Surprisingly the ride stiffness feels pretty much the same as before with maybe a little less sway. I know Hellwig doesn't market the LP series for the X and that might be because the base is too short for it to get much leverage. Honestly I didn't expect an inch and half of lift from a 1/4 inch spacer on it so that makes me think it really wasn't being engaged much before.
 
PhullD

PhullD

First Fill-Up (of many)
Supporting Member
Location
Ottawa, Ontario
General_Tarfun said:
Surprisingly the ride stiffness feels pretty much the same as before with maybe a little less sway. I know Hellwig doesn't market the LP series for the X and that might be because the base is too short for it to get much leverage. Honestly I didn't expect an inch and half of lift from a 1/4 inch spacer on it so that makes me think it really wasn't being engaged much before.
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Could be, back when I had my helpers on (Hellwig 550's) they helped a lot with stiffening the OEM pack and ride quality. You can't really "save" the OEM pack, it will go eventually, buy I got about 2 extra years out of mine with the helpers and about 1-1.5" of lift. I also had an AAL in there and some shackles, not sure how much was actual lift or just restoration of sag I had incurred.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
PhullD said:
Could be, back when I had my helpers on (Hellwig 550's) they helped a lot with stiffening the OEM pack and ride quality. You can't really "save" the OEM pack, it will go eventually, buy I got about 2 extra years out of mine with the helpers and about 1-1.5" of lift. I also had an AAL in there and some shackles, not sure how much was actual lift or just restoration of sag I had incurred.
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Yeah the OE pack is pretty sad to begin with for sure. I almost didn't even put these back on because I rebuilt the pack last year and was happy with the ride but I really wanted to get a little more positive rake back without having to mess with the coilovers. Just did the math and it now sits 4.17" higher than it was factory.
 
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PhullD

PhullD

First Fill-Up (of many)
Supporting Member
Location
Ottawa, Ontario
General_Tarfun said:
Yeah the OE pack is pretty sad to begin with for sure. I almost didn't even put these back on because I rebuilt the pack last year and was happy with the ride but I really wanted to get a little more positive rake back without having to mess with the coilovers.
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Seems to be what they are good at. Funny how we use them to correct the crappy OEM ones while other people use them when they carry heavier loads. At least that's what it said about the 550's...to adjust the u-bolts according to the desired load. I was like "max please" lol
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
PhullD said:
Seems to be what they are good at. Funny how we use them to correct the crappy OEM ones while other people use them when they carry heavier loads. At least that's what it said about the 550's...to adjust the u-bolts according to the desired load. I was like "max please" lol
Click to expand...

Haha same here, I started cranking those things down and was like man they made these ubolts way too long. Like 4 daggers coming off the rear packs. With this new setup I think I could actually back them off a an inch or so but I already cut them to the 'max capacity' length lol so they're now so short it's max or nothing.
 
General_Tarfun

General_Tarfun

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Location
Atlanta, GA
I finally have a name for my build! I was out in Texas for Christmas and on a beach camping trip I spotted this gloss black, kind of mean looking bird eyeballing the X. It spent like 10 minutes walking around it, probably looking for food but I'm going with 'admiring the X' instead. Found out it's called a Grackle which is good by me:

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