ASD Dad

That looks like it is way past shimming spacing possibilities. The people that have shimmed were just barely rubbing on the door. I am not sure if you shimmed it that far out if the door would close properly.

ExtremeVision is supposed to be their brightest halogen. I have run them in the NV and they are a little better than new stock bulbs. H13 bulbs are not the greatest in the first place and we have terrible housings. The lights on the NV are one sore spot since day one of ownership since I live on a pretty dark, fast, two lane country road with lots of animals (deer, fox, coyote, etc). If you want a direct drop in legal bulb I dont believe there is anything better than the ExtremeVision now. Philips used to make another but it is discontinued. LED just do not work in reflector housings. You are only emitting light from one side of the "bulb" vs. 360 degrees with a filament style. You really need the correct housings to get LED to work right. I have been running HID for a long while now and I am pretty happy with them but they required some tweaking to get the beam right. First off I went with 4300k color which is the brightest by lumen you can get and the most natural. Anything lower goes yellow and higher turns bluer. Most HID bulbs are two pieces so they can easily sell them. There is a base that fits into your housing and then a generic bulb that fits the base. I wanted to tweak the exact location of the HID arc since I was getting too much scatter. I took the bulb base off, ground off the tabs that held it in only one position and then was able to rotate or slide in and out of the housing to get the best pattern possible. Messed with each bulb for about 30 minutes and used a dab of hot glue to see how I liked it driving. Once I was happy with position I used a CA hobby glue (basically superglue) to permanently mount the base to the bulb. I also labeled them Left and Right since they were tweaked for the housing. Low beam results are great. Excellent coverage, no glare and no shadows or cool spots in the pattern. The high beams are a different story and I have little control over the pattern. The bulbs use a magnet to draw the bulb back to mimic a high beam filament. Works just OK at best. Low beams are good enough that I have been running them. Eventually I plan on adding aux high beams either to my roof rack or bumper. I will disable the relay to trigger the magnet in the HID and use that trigger wire to control a relay for the aux high beams.

Rad - I remembered chiming in about no noise after you asked. Well I now have over 25K+ miles and they just recently started getting noisier. Definitely not mud tire noisy but it was loud enough that I noticed it on certain pavement where before it was nice and quiet regardless. Still have a LOT of tread left and I am still happy with the tires.

Andy - my plan is identical! My door is 16' x 9', wife has 10 x 9 and we also have a breezeway going to our house! Final inspection is this Wednesday and we hope to move in next week. Been a long wait but we're super excited to get in there and settle down. We sold our old house in one day so have been living in a camper at my in-laws for weeks!

I built a new garage! First time in over a decade I can park one of my vehicles inside. Cant wait. I have enough clearance for my van, roof rack and kayak racks mounted to the rack. I wasnt remotely close to fitting in our old garage.

Awesome outcome. Congrats on getting it taken care of.

They are delaying school here in SC so that the kids can see the eclipse. My kids all have their viewing glasses already and they were learning about it the last week of school.

Personally I would drive the Duratracs until they are dead. If you want to do two sets of wheels and tires then you can get a dedicated set of true snow tires for winter. Even with a good AT tire like the Duratrac a pure snow will have exponentially better snow and ice traction. With so few miles driven you're looking at 6 years of driving on the Duratacs! That is guessing only 50,000 miles of usual tread where you could get much more (or less). Keep in mind if you get a second set of wheels/tires you're looking at storing almost 400 pounds somewhere and lugging those around when it is time to change. Do you want to deal with that twice a year? Have plenty of room to store them?

We've done Clingmans a few times! That is one steep hike up even if it is paved but the views are well worth it. The way back down was really fun in my NV, I never touched the gas pedal once after we left the parking lot! We coasted the entire way back down to the base never using the accelerator once. I think I did have it in manual mode a couple times just so I was not riding the brakes. I did it more as an experiment to see if I could make it the whole distance!

Welcome! We travel to the TN mountains and love to hike there. We're also originally from OH but have lived in SC for almost 15 years now. We're from the Akron area up in OH and still have family in the area. Nice color choice, we love our silver.

Nice job! Welcome to the site and thanks for the photos.

18 mpg is huge! Most average around 12-14 mpg.

Big companies almost never make hub centric wheels, just too many hub sizes. Most will offer a plastic or aluminum hub ring though. If you use the aluminum ones coat with a thin smear of anti seize grease so it doesnt weld itself to the iron brake rotor. I raced for years on hub centric rings that were both plastic and aluminum and never had one fail even after many track days. You'll be just fine if you can get the correct ring size.

Welcome to the site! Congrats on your NV. Whats your mpg been like so far? I've been curious to get more feedback on the new 2017 motor and trans combo.

Where did you get yours? All the models I've seen require some sort of drilling which I'd like to avoid if possible. Where did you get another bracket?

There are not a lot of choices out there which is weird since this van sees a lot of shuttle duty commercially. I know a lot like the Luverne steps and we're looking at those to make it easier for my parents and in-laws to get in and out. My kids just scramble in and jump out! There are a few others but all are/were around the same price. One downside is the NV's require drilling. All my past trucks had brackets that bolted right on no matter what brand you picked. There were factory studs or threaded weld nuts that were installed to make it super easy. The NV instructions for the Luverne's at least require drilling through the pinch weld and also into the rockers.

Costco doesnt sell refills, they sell complete blades by Goodyear that are utter garbage now. They used to be a single piece beam blade that were halfway decent, especially for price. Now they are a segmented blade with the same price. They streak and chatter within weeks. Rad is right, go to any parts store - O Reilly. Advance, AutoZone, Pep Boys, etc and they almost always have a set on sale. Amazon does as well if you prefer online. You can go higher end like Bosch Micro Edge or just get something cheap and replace more often. I am just using cheap Trico Exact Fit blades and they're working well even with the really wet year we've been having.

Welcome to the site. We love the leather, so much easier to clean vs cloth. Even after a camping trip with wet kids and dogs the seats clean right up. There are plenty of things that have been done from performance to appearance to big sound and entertainment systems.

Ouch! That is one ugly plug. That is all ash deposits from really bad fuel or oil burning. You are correct it could be from a bad valve guide seal. I can absolutely see why that would be misfiring!

You would have better luck posting that question on the new Titan and Armada forums. Way more of those are out there vs. 2017 NV's.

Congrats on the new NVP! Be sure to let us know how you like it after driving a while.

Most likely just a cold weld failure if it is a clean break at the welded flange. I am surprised the repair was $600. Any decent shop can weld a new flange on in under an hour and that is lifting it, removing the old one and welding a new one on! Are they trying to replace the cat too? That would be more in line with $600 but should be unnecessary as well.

I would love to drive a new '17 to compare with my '15. I still dont like that Nissan gimped the engine vs. the Titan but I am sure the extra gears and power would be noticeable. Anybody know the rpm when cruising at 60-65-70 with the 7 spd? Those upper gears have to be overdrives to help with MPG I am guessing.

Is that price from a NV dealer? If they refused warranty you can call NV Customer Relations although they have been less then stellar for help in the past. If it is a broken weld it could be looked at as either a faulty weld at the exhaust manufacturer or wear and tear if you have a ton of road salt and rust under there.

Looks very functional which is all that is needed! Nice job.