Turning A Nissan Pathfinder Into A Crew Truck Part I

We're an off road shop that's also a TV show today on extreme cast and crew come together to turn a stock Nissan into the ultimate high definition gear toting four by four plus what these monster truck owners lack in big dollar sponsorships they make up for with heart.

Welcome to Xtreme 4x4. And today we're going to start a brand new trail truck project, but this one is going to be a little bit different and to give us some inspiration,

little artist rendering going on over here.

Well, this truck isn't gonna be for us. It's going to be for our film crew.

Now, when we go out on the trail ride or go to an event, people are asking us questions about our projects left and right.

But just as many people are asking us questions about what it's like to shoot a television show.

Like how many days does it take to make a TV show? Do you guys have one cameraman or more? Do you work from a script or do you make it all up? We're gonna answer all those questions today and more and we're gonna start with

on average, how many bags of, uh, sunflower seeds. Do you eat during a shoot week? About three or four. It helps load the digestive system. Clean colon is a safe colon, but we're actually gonna start with, what's it like to shoot on a trail ride?

You see

when we

go to the

area and off road parks pay

off one of our vehicles. We bring a lot of stuff with us. Everything from recovery here to tools, to spare parts, to extra fluids, safety equipment. A

cool

for all of our snacks and beverages. And that's not even including any of our television equipment.

Like at least to high

that video cameras,

batteries, microphones, lights,

take

your

bags, cables, many cameras for those great point of view shots the guys get

and of course backup item for everything because our

seat some pretty tough conditions.

Now, unfortunately, all that gear does not operate itself and while we're riding around comfortable in our suspension seats and fully leng buggies. Well, our producer cameraman and grip, they normally have to hook it when they're out on the trail. So we thought it was about time they had a cool vehicle to call their own. So we went out and picked up this 95 Nissan pathfinder. As you can see, there's plenty of room inside making it a great crew truck gear hauler. You got enough room for all of their stuff, plus it's tiny enough to get through the trails.

Now, we got a pretty good deal on this truck because the engine itself is no good.

The actual timing belt, crankshaft pulley sheared the key way, therefore causing the timing belt to skip.

Now, we've bought lots of trucks on this show before with bad engines usually pulled them out and replaced them with a crate motor. But this one, we're going to do a little bit differently. V6 will be a great power plant for this truck, but we don't know how much damage that timing belt failure actually caused. So we're going to completely tear this motor down, inspect it for damage, repair it and then put it back in the truck.

If you're tearing down an unfamiliar engine, the best advice is to keep everything organized and neat.

You can put small parts in baggies and label them

or put the bolt back into the holes they came out of and remember where they go breathe crispy

and you can do like we did and have a film crew shoot the entire disassembly or grab a digital camera and take pictures along the way.

You have a bunch of choices. When it comes to rebuilding your engine,

you can simply fix the damage that you know about using the bare minimum parts.

Or the second choice would be to get a re

kit that comes with brand new piston rings,

rod and main bearings, all the gaskets and all the freeze plugs that you're going to need.

Now, the third option would be to do a complete overhaul, which includes everything that you need in the rear,

plus the pistons, the cam shaft and the crank shaft

and no matter which rebuild, you choose whether it be the rein

or the complete overhaul, there will be some machine work necessary for your engine. Now, the top of the line way to deal with a bad engine is going to be to replace the entire long block assembly with either a brand new or rebuilt unit like this one here. Now, there is a benefit to doing this and that is you're going to get a warranty and depending on the manufacturer that can be up to three years long. Now, the drawback obviously, this is the most expensive option, but sometimes it's not, you don't really know how much it's going to cost to fix a bad engine until you completely disassemble it and inspect every single piece, price that piece. And then you'll have a real world figure that you can work off and decide whether fixing it or replacing it is your best choice.

No track, no rules can mean only one thing. Monster Truck freestyle.

When Xtreme 4x4 continues,

we're back on extreme. And the beginning of our Nissan Pathfinder crew truck build a project idea that honestly came to us from our crew themselves who quite frankly are tired of having to carry their cameras and their tripods and the batteries and the tapes from the trail head over the rocks through the mud and since their awesome little minivan isn't trail worthy at all, this project is way past overdue and speaking of all that gear, one thing that we are really excited about this year is the fact that we've converted over to high definition. Now, I don't have to tell you guys sitting at home with your brand new wide screen HD TV. S that picture quality is amazing. Now, we took our brand new cameras to the 26th annual o'reilly Auto Parts four wheel Jamboree nationals for one of the coolest things to go watch is the monster truck freestyle

since 1981. The in the four wheel Jamboree has been blowing out the state fairgrounds.

This is an awesome, awesome, awesome event. The Jamboree is the, the funnest events we do all year long. This is where we come to race this three day off road love fest

features monster trucks, tough trucks

and mud dress.

They even had a rock crawl. They have everything and that's what's cool about the Jam Breed. It's kind of like being a kid in a candy store. You know, this is, uh, if you have anything to do with trucks, this is like the place to be out on the midway.

Manufacturers were showing off their newest product. Big plus for us to get our name out and,

and, uh, you know, spend the time with customers and, you know, answer good questions. And that type of stuff, whether it's taking a wild ride on Sergeant Smash or getting up close to Bigfoot. The kids know what they want to see at a Jamboree. We love lunch checks. Monster trucks.

The bracket races show off a driver's prowess on the straight line.

You're racing, you're limited to. Here's the track follows path.

That's what you got.

Who wants to follow path, man. We're four by four guys. This is Xtreme 4x4.

They wait until freestyle to show off their driving chop.

You get to go out there and show off and just stretch your stuff. Have fun. You can just go out here and,

and kind of let your hair down and have a blast.

Freestyle is different. That's the school about freestyle brings out your personality. There's no points or nothing involved. Just go out there and have a good time with it. Give the, give the fans a good

show,

Ramin

and big

dominate monster truck racing.

But when it comes to freestyle, no team can match the intensity of Chris for

on

in spike,

tear it up

and Jim

Ker in the Avenger, we could just get nuts, man. Totally.

In just a few short years, this duo has become a must see

main attraction when it comes to freestyle. Them guys know how to freestyle. They run hard into racing but the freestyle, they just get out there and lay it down on you. When I go off to freestyle I give it everything I got because that's why I do it. I do it to have a good time and have fun. If I gotta hold back. I might as well just stay at home while some teams are backed by billion dollar corporation.

These guys do it on their own. We have a regular job. My partner, Chris is a plumber. I run a marina.

That's what pays the bills, but they're semi lax and shiny new parts. The team makes do with something more important. It's all about having the hardest sport and wanting to win. It's not about the big corporate thing and the money and all that stuff. Those big corporate teams don't have nothing on us. They may have the money but they don't have the heart that we have, man. And we're here to kick, I

can't say,

but that's, we're here to kick. Their freestyles have become the stuff of legend.

Now, my

structure is about having fun, man. If you're not having fun, don't do it. That's our motto. We want to be the team that the fans enjoy to see and that's what we're gonna do is give them the best possible show, the most extreme

show that we can give them and that's what we do and their generosity in the pitch is just as impressive as their car crushing antics. We know where we started. We were

standing in those lines 10 years ago getting autographs from other guys, we get the goose bumps when they want to stand in line and get our autographs. The same that we got when we wanted someone else's autograph. We appreciate the fans big time. No doubt about it all day. You get to sit here and talk to the fans and you go out there and just tear it up at Indy Spike. Didn't disappoint his fans.

A broken sha

would knock out most mortals but not Jim and the Avenger. It was awesome. We just had a blast. These people here in India are awesome.

We love it. Yeah,

I love chris' Truck

Spike

that appropriate. There's two things I love about this guy. Number one, it takes some huge coon

to pull off jumps like that. And number two, he does it all without big money sponsorship all on his own dime.

We're back in the extreme shop, inspecting the broke down engine that we pulled out of our 95 Nissan pathfinder that we're building for our production crew to use. When we go out on our trail right

now, we want to make an educated decision as to why this engine stopped working. And that means inspecting every part.

The engine block for our truck is a typical cast iron

V6 engine

with all the internals removed, the cylinder walls are checked for scoring or cracks.

The main bearing bridges should also be checked for cracks.

Finally, with no rings on a piston will slide. A long feeler gauge between the piston cylinder wall to check for piston clearance.

Now, every engine has a list of acceptable tolerances and could be found in most manuals like this Chilton manual we picked up at a local o'reilly auto parts store.

Now, considering we have an 18,000 feeler gauge in between the piston

and the cylinder wall means we have excessive piston clearance,

meaning this whole engine needs to be bored out and have new pistons installed. Now, for it to just replace the rings, they wouldn't seal properly and this engine would burn oil.

Now, we know that the block is going to need to be machined and all the pistons replaced. So we're not going to spend a lot of time cleaning these stock ones and having a look at them. But one thing that was pretty obvious when we took this engine apart is that a valve has contacted the top of this piston and caused it to be damaged. Now, the reason that happened is because our Nissan is what's called an interference engine and unless the valve timing is perfect, that kind of damage can occur. Now, we expect that this might happen in this motor

when we took it apart, we found that the front crank timing gear had actually spun off of this keyway. You can see how it's opened up this opening right here. That is what caused this engine to suffer this catastrophic failure.

So right now, we need to add to our price list. Obviously a new crank shaft to replace this one because damaged all new pistons. Now the connecting rods themselves checked out. Ok. So we can at least save that one part.

Now, with the short block looked over, we can move on to the top end of the engine, meaning the cylinder heads.

Now, the one thing about this head that we want to watch out is that it's made out of aluminum like a lot of typical newer V sixes. Now, that means that the aluminum is different than the cast iron and expands and contracts at a different rate during the engine's heating and cooling cycle. So we want to check it to see if

it's warped.

If I can fit a 5007 inch feeler gauge between a straight edge and the cylinder head mating surface. It will mean that that cylinder head has become warped. We'll have to machine it before we put it back on.

Now, this one is ok, but we need to check the valves before we call this head good

with the valve spring removed and the valve pushed about halfway open.

We use a dial indicator with a magnetic base

and measure the side to side movement

of the valve itself.

Now, what we're checking right here is the valve guide clearance inside the cylinder head is a guide that the valve rides on as it opens and closes. Now, this guide can wear as the engine gets miles on it. Now, what happens when that guide wears is oil will drip down the valve stem and sit on the back of the valve itself when the engine's not running,

that's what causes that big cloud of blue smoke when you first start up an old car after it's been sitting overnight. Now, our manual says we can have two point 9/1000 of an inch worth of valve guide clearance. And on this valve, we have over five. So we know that the guides in this head are honestly no good. They need to be replaced while we're at it best to take all the valves out and replace ones that are obviously damaged, that hit the pistons as well as give it a complete valve job and replace all the seals. Now, with all that work needing to be done to this head, it's honestly gonna be cheaper just to replace it,

which is exactly what we're going to do with a brand new long block at about 2500 bucks. It was the best deal we could get for our money.

If we were to rebuild what we had a master overhaul kit with pistons would be about 550 bucks a crank shaft at two and a quarter machine work to the block at about $200 and remanufacture heads at a total of $1000 giving us a grand total of $1975.

The long walk was more money but not much when we added up everything that we're going to need for the truck, plus it, save us time and it comes with a three year warranty well worth the extra 500.

Now, obviously, you have to transfer everything over from your original long block on to the new one. Now,

this is a great time to install a bunch of tune up items

like spark plugs, spark plug wires, cap and rotor, but it's also a good time to replace stuff that wears out like the alternator

and the starter.

Welcome back to the extreme shop with the new engine installed in our crew rig. Our build team can focus on items that will make it more trail worthy.

Now, honestly, one of the reasons that you don't see a lot of Nissans out on the trail is that they don't share the same level of aftermarket support that other popular brands have like Jeeps or Toyotas.

But one company that's been filling that void for years has been cow many. So it seemed only logical that that is who we would call for a 3.92 to 1 low range gear set for our transfer case and they simply install in places the factory gears inside the case.

Now we told you earlier that we are going to answer some questions about the TV portion of our show.

Well, it takes us about 6 to 7 days to shoot one full episode with about a week in between that's to order parts and do some things that you probably won't believe. Like we will pre build an entire roll cage, cut it out and then put it back in when the cameras are around.

Right, Chris.

Yeah, because I love doing double the work for TV.

Another question is, do you guys read from a script? And the answer is yes. Before we start taping, I lay out all the technical aspects of the show on paper first and then just like a movie, we change things all the way through making a show like Xtreme 4x4 without a script. Well, it would be like rebuilding a transfer case

without a set of instructions

and we can't show you every thing like how this truck just magically appeared up in the air.

Then we wouldn't have time to show you all the cool stuff like this Kevlar clutch from Zoom products.

The stock clutch has worn down almost to the rivets. So it just makes sense to go ahead and replace it.

Now we chose Kevlar because it gives us a similar grip of ceramic without the harsh engagement.

Ok.

Well, there you have it guys a great beginning to our crew's new ride. And since they're gonna be the ones behind the wheel, we're gonna let them design the inside. So tell us what you're thinking.

Well, I drew up this uh, little sketch of the rear end. As you can see here, we'll have a drawer where we can put tapes and batteries on top. I'll have some cubby holes for storing gear bags.

And then on top of that, a little rack to store the tripod.

Now, when we're on the trail, we carry this camera on our shoulder. About 50% of the time.

The rest of the time is being banged on, on our knees up against the dashboard. This thing gets heavy after a while. So we've come up with a system to secure this camera the back of that truck. So did you come up with, let me show you.

All right. First things, first, we're gonna rip out all the carpet in the back and then we're gonna spray on some kind of bed liner. This tripod plate will connect to a roll out drawer that will mount the plate to secure the camera to the tripod mount and that way it'll slide in and lock when we're on the trail. So if you guys come up with a name for it, Nissan viewfinder

and check out the lights that Chris just built for it.

So

TV,

see you next week.