After taking a family road trip, my wife and I decided that we "needed" an SUV (initially hoped to have it ready for our/my engagement trip, but it wasn't ready in time!). I looked at 4Runners and Pathfinders, I've always liked the early 86-95 Pathfinders and the 90-95 4Runners. Decided to look for a Pathfinder, as most of the 4Runners were out of my price range (you get what you pay for???).
I always like to try and get the last year of a series, so I wanted a '95, but couldn't really find what I was looking for. I wanted it to be a 5-speed, 4-wheel drive, with sunroof. My wife wanted cloth seats. She found one on Craigslist in Raleigh, NC for $1500. I liked what I saw, communicated with the seller, (asked if she'd take $1400, she said yeah) and so we took a drive up!
Took it for a test drive, it was sluggish in 2nd-3rd (they told me it would be), but I liked it as soon as I saw it (gulp), so I got it!
We had a stopover in Greenville, SC, but they truck seemed to do ok at highway speeds, but the check engine light was on the whole time. We had to stop several times to clear whatever it was spewing on my wife's windshield, though! It looked like power steering or brake fluid. (Never really found out what it was, but I have my hunches...)
Anyhoo, when I finally got it home, I would test drive it around the surrounding neighborhoods. Same symptoms, sluggish in 3rd gear, especially. I pulled the codes from the ECU, and it showed a problem with the EGR circuit and the Knock Sensor.
So I began troubleshooting the EGR. I could never get the thing to register vacuum, and the electrical tests showed that it should be working properly. Again, could NEVER get it to register vacuum...
I think next I bought a new set of plugs (my brother "recommended" a tuneup)...Removing the plugs revealed something peculiar...The ceramic insulator on EVERY plug was chipped, broken, missing! That couldn't be good! Maybe they were just old...Put the new plugs in, the engine didn't run any better, check engine light still on, still sluggish (go figure!). And this time, I think I may've noticed some water on one of the plugs? Uh-oh...Could it be a blown head gasket was causing low compression, and therefore not enough "oomph" to register vacuum? Oh, also forgot to mention that everytime the truck ran, it would puff out white smoke, not heavy, but enough to be noticeable...and it would NEVER go away...so not the kinda morning condensation smoke, more like the "it's burning off antifreeze smoke"...
So I suspected head/gasket problems. Made the decision that I was gonna hafta pull and inspect the heads, if for nothing else to find out if those bits of ceramic were down in the cylinders!
Pulled the heads, and cleaned the combustion chamber...Yup, pitted as all get out! Not good...AND a source of "hot spots" and "detonation"...Which would account for the sluggishness...How long had this been going on? This is also related to the knock sensor problem...With a faulty knock sensor, was it retarding the timing to the max to get the thing to run, but also hindering performance? (no vacuum!)...Chicken and the egg, I don't know which caused which, but it all needed fixing..
Oh, of course, the pistons were banged up pretty bad, too...
So I was faced with a decision...Get new pistons and new heads (rebuild) or get a used engine? I thought about used (junkyard) heads and new pistons, but I think that was gonna be beyond my shadetree, carport setup....And somewhere around this time, I stumbled upon some VG33 swap information. You know this sounded good to me!
Decided that a swap was what I wanted: newer engine, bigger displacement, coolness factor, get to tinker with stuff, AND it relocates the oil filter to the front of the engine! Let's do this!
Searched a few places for VG33 engines, but these things are kinda hard to find and when you do find them, they are kinda pricey (to me).
Did my "research" and found a pretty reasonable one from a '99 QX4. (Shoulda got one from a Frontier/Xterra, more on that in the writeup)
So here we go!