| Project Pathfinder Part 9, Headwork by mari |
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by Mari Umekubo
As we have reached the limit in bolt on potential for Project Pathfinder we now delve into building the ultimate tow motor. The ultimate tow motor is probably the ultimate off road motor and perhaps the ultimate motor for a heavy clumsy SUV. Our motor will be built to emphasis low-end torque, better for pulling, good fuel economy and the ability to run on lower grades of gas. Since we're dirt cheap and as this is just our tow/daily transportation vehicle, we placed additional emphasis on staying away from exotic and expensive parts, instead rummaging in our spare bins of factory Nissan parts.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 8, Cams ECU Headers by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
The stock VG cam shafts are very mild. At the advice of the guys at Nissan Motorsports we added a set of their #2 off road cams to Project Pathfinder. The cams have 264 degrees of duration and .430” lift with a 106 degree intake and 116 lobe center as opposed to the tiny stock 248 degrees duration and .374” lift with 114 lobe centers. This is quite a difference and the cams really woke Project Pathfinder up.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 7, External Shock Adjusters by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
In our previous installments of Project Pathfinder we corrected the sloppy handling and loose steering of our machine. Our project is handling superbly, more like a sports sedan than an SUV. Our next mod is one more for convenience than adding any additional performance.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 6, For Safety Sake by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
Driving to races often means driving late at night to dark remote areas. Our stock lights threw a weak yellow beam so dim we could hardly see the road at times. Our lights were barely adequate for city driving and were hazardous on the open road. To fix this we obtained Nissan Motorsports Euro headlight conversion kit.
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| Project Pathfinder, Basic Engine Part 5 by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
To say that our Pathfinder sucked on power was an understatement. Our Pathfinder could not beat anything in any contest of speed, except for perhaps another SUV. Joggers and bicyclists gave it trouble. It guzzled fuel like a turbo car on boost as well turning in a miserable 15 MPG around town and 19 mpg on the highway. When attempting to tow, entering the freeway was a scary proposition and you had to depend on the mercy of other motorists and you all know that LA drivers basically have no mercy.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 4, Suspension 2 by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
Now that we have the sagging springs, excess lean in the corners, bottoming out, bouncy ride and high speed oversteer of Project Pathfinder taken care of, we now turned our attention to the front suspension in our quest to tighten things up and fix the weak points of the Nissan steering system.
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| Project Nissan Pathfinder Part 3 Getting Into the Suspension by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
This month we tackle an area of serious deficient for most SUV’s, the suspension. We were faced with some tough decisions here. Since we use our Pathfinder for everything from daily commuting, to drives to the mountains hauling mountain bikes and gear to off road exploring, we had to come up with a reasonable compromise. Our main goal was not to build a car crushing monster truck or a Rubicon Trail bolder crawler but to greatly improve on-road handling, to eliminate the SUV characteristic of flipping over when pressed and to provide a safer ride when towing. We wanted all of this with improved off-road capability as well.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 2, Brakes by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
Even with our prior upgrades to Project Pathfinder, our brakes still had much room for improvement. Although we could now lock our wheels on clean dry pavement (amazingly the stock brakes could not lock our big sticky Yokohama tires!) it took pushing with all of our might and several revolutions of the wheels to get the pads hot enough so they could get enough bite to lock the wheels. This sort of braking added precious feet to our stopping distance and made pedal modulation difficult, critical for limit braking performance. |
| Project Pathfinder Part 1 by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
Project Pathfinder started out as a necessity, not because we are into SUV’s or off road but because of a need. For the last two years we have been racing in NASA’s SE-R cup series and using our old 1993 Pathfinder SE as a two vehicle. This taught us a couple of things, 1 a stock old Pathfinder is not a good tow vehicle due to a lack of power and brakes and 2 a SUV is probably not the safest vehicle on the road for carrying your loved ones due to its tipsy handling.
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| Project Pathfinder Part 10, The Engine's Bottom End by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
We are get quite excited as Project Pathfinders motor is now up and running. We are out to show that a solid and reliable naturally aspirated VG can be just as strong or stronger in the power department as the VG33R supercharged motor in the new Frontiers with vastly superior fuel economy. We also want to show that we can get the pulling power of a small V8 out of the VG. Last month we covered some tricks that Dan Paramore of DPR used to make our heads fl ow. This month we will dive into the shortblock of our super Pathfinder.
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| Project Pathfinder, Part 11. Making it Stop by mari |
By Mari Umekubo
When we last left off on Project Pathfinders brakes over a year ago in our first installment of the project, our simple upgrades to our brake pads and fluid brought our brakes performance up from the pathetic - the inability to lock the wheels level to something a bit safer.
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| Project Pathfinder, Fixing the Wobbly Steering For Good by mari |
Project Pathfinder Part 12, Fixing the Wobbly Steering for Good
By Mari Umekubo
We had just gone through the front suspension of Project Pathfinder a year ago in the hope that our mods at the time would tighten up its pathetically loose and wandering steering. Although our mods made a huge difference, after about 12,000 miles, a couple of off road excursions and a bunch of towing it became apparent that our front suspension would again need attention.
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