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Nice, that's good to hear. I might just give it a try, a few years is pretty good for a non-permanent fix! That it not only protects the surface and actually looked good is encouraging as well. Thanks for sharing.

Cool tip with the heat gun. How hard would it be to DIY-wrap the NV's hood? I have peeling clear coat near the windshield, the previous owner must've used dish washing soap for the windshield washer. I was thinking vinyl wrapping could look good and be durable enough, but won't be permanent if I botch it. My van is black, but I'm open to the hood being slightly different if it's hard to match colors. Maybe a dark gray or silver, or even digital camo might work. It might just look better than my diy spray can paint and clearcoat.

I have peeling clear coat on my hood, the previous owner must've used dish washing soap as windshield washer fluid ? I don't think I could DIY paint it properly, I was wondering if plastidip could be an alternative? I've also been thinking about DIY vinyl wrapping, at least both options probably won't be permanent if I botch it, but hopefully durable enough to look decent and provide some protection. Do you think it could work?

I saw Scotty Kilmer talking about the end of Nissan Vans as well. Too bad the NV vans are solid. Gotta hang on to my NV, I hope it lasts for a few hundred thousand miles more!

I found some rust on the roof on the rack mounts on my 2012 NV: roof mount rust1, roof mount rust2. The NV used to live near the beach before I got it earlier this year so that probably didn't help. I used some WD40 on the rusted areas initially to hopefully slow down the spread until I can physically address it. Seems to have helped after a week: rust1, rust2. Rust bubbling under the paint looks terrible and I'm guessing metal damage is worse in those areas. I'll try a wire brush attachment on my drill or Dremel and remove the paint and rust and cover it up with primer, paint and clear coat. I hope that'll be enough stop and prevent more rust.

Is there an issue with attaching photos?

21.5mm socket arrived in the mail today. But it ended up fitting only half way on most of the swollen lug nuts so I ended up using the 22mm socket anyway. The 21.5 and 22mm sockets still weren't able to remove the lug nuts when I used them with my Ridgid impact wrench, rated for 620 ft.-lbs for Max Breakaway / Nut Busting Torque (those numbers could be inflated, but the impact wrench can easily remove lug nuts from my other vehicles). I bought a 25in. breaker bar, but that still wasn't enough. I had to use a cheater bar on it, and 5ft of leverage finally did the trick. I only removed a few nuts to test it out so far. Hopefully I can remove all of them this weekend. cheater and breaker bar pic. swollen nut.

I tried to post pics of the lug nuts but I kept getting a server error. So here's a link to the pics instead: 1, 2. I watched several youtube videos on how to remove swollen lug nuts. Most were on Fords, but the lug nuts looked similar (chrome cap lug nuts). There was a lot of hammering and chiseling on the videos, I'm not looking forward to that with our 8 lug nuts per wheel :| Does anyone have recommendation on what kind of lug nuts would be better to use instead of OEM that could swell again?

Weird, 4 lug nuts fit the stock wrench, all the rest were too tight. But they were loose on the 22mm. They all look stock to me.

Hi, so I was going to inspect my brakes since they started making a squealing noise on a recent trip. I thought the stock lug nuts were 21mm but my sockets wouldn

Oh wow my kids would freak out! Any recommendations on how to prevent something like this from happening, we only use the van during the weekends right now.

Any recommendations for brake pads? I was checking out Rock Auto and there were a lot of options! Also, is there an easy way to tell if the brake pads and/or rotors need to be replaced already or is there really no way around taking the wheels off to check?

I installed the head unit weeks ago but didn't have time to post an update until now. It wasn't as easy since the previous owner cut all the connectors off. I bought two wiring harnesses. First was an adapter for aftermarket head units that has the female connector. This was easy to splice directly to the Android head unit wires since the colors and pinouts are easy to tell. I also got the male wiring harness to add back an OEM-style connector to make it easy for future changes. This was trickier since the wire colors are different and there were duplicates. I used P41-42 of the AV chapter of the service manual to figure out what each wire was and what pin on the connector. Most could be deciphered, some were trickier and had to use a multimeter and trial and error as well. - 2x Blue (L on the manual) are for the front door speakers, had to do a sound test to determine left and right - 2x Whites were for front speakers, remaining one was for steering wheel switches. - Brown (Br) could be either illumination control or steering switch ground, so just needed to determine which one was a ground. - Yellow for 12v power and steering switch signal. I think 12v power was thicker... or at least easy enough to find 12v with the multimeter. Once the wires and connectors were sorted, it was easy enough to attach the head unit itself. I needed to get brackets, I made the mistake of trying an aftermarket Metra kit at first that felt like flimsy plastic and didn't seem to be worth the price. I found the correct OEM brackets that are a lot better! Android head unit is now installed and I have a radio, backup camera, OBD data, Navigation, streaming music, etc. :) AV service manual.pdf

Took your advice to heart and took lots of cold drinks and potable water (and an empty drum to fill at the ranger station). No running water on campgrounds but we had lots for drinking and camp use :) You guys were right about dirt roads, no issues with the NV for the most part. I turned around on a dirt road that was supposedly "maintained" though because the grader/dozer tracks left terrible bumps on the dirt that caused annoying shaking.

Thanks for the tip with the screens, my wife had a pair of cheap sheer curtains that I was able to use by shutting the doors on them and using magnetic tool/knife holders to hold the panels in place. No mosquitoes where we camped but lots of moths that the curtains were able to keep out. My kids appreciated it! Grabbed some mattress toppers, sheets, and pillows from the house too lol.

Good eye for spotting that small thing :) It's the camera for my rear view screen/mirror. I couldn't see much through the NVP's rear view mirror so I got this Junsun rear view mirror screen and dash cam on Amazon for $69 ($79 but there was a coupon on the product page). I was really going to get a dash cam for the NV, so the extra cost to get this with the rear camera and mirror screen wasn't too bad. I mounted the camera using the brake light screw because I didn't want to drill a new mounting point.

Hello, I thought I’d share my NV Passenger quick, semi-temporary platform bed project. I’m going desert camping with the wife and kids this weekend and I wanted a backup just in case the tent gets too hot. I used some 2x3s, plywood, and screws I already had. Total cost is around $50-60 if I had to buy all the materials. I went with 2x3s (instead of 2x4s) since they’re cheaper, lighter, and take up less space. But downside is most of the 2x3s at Home Depot are terrible since they’re cut from smaller and usually inferior logs. I encountered some minor issues with the NVP’s floor being uneven and the plastic side panels having additional curves. I ended up just doing basic cuts and then marking lines directly on the wood based on how I want the frame to sit inside the van instead of making thorough plans or getting precise measurements. In hindsight I should’ve left a bit more gap from the side to the plywood which I cut at 68” wide and proved to be a really tight fit and scratched some plastic panels (my van is old and already scratched inside though). Pics show the work in progress from this morning. Basic but t should fit my needs :)

Thanks for sharing! I’m planning to go to Joshua Tree or Anza Borrego in SoCal with the family and deciding if I can take the NV or if I should take my small 4x4 Frontier. Frontier could maybe go to more places, but the NV would be more comfy and provides the option to rest/sleep inside with AC if necessary. I have the Michelin Defenders too so it’s good to know that’s all you’ve needed in your travels! Thanks.

Digging up your old post... did you have AT tires or did you need to air your tires out? Or did it do well enough with stock tires? It would be nice to take the van to the desert or to blm land!

Thanks for the PDF links, those should be helpful with the wire colors! I hope I could finally use it to install the head unit this weekend. Yeah no kidding about the mess he left. I did use the absence of a radio to negotiate the price lower, I should've pushed more had I known how bad the wires were hehe.

Hi, I'm trying to figure out the wires for my 2012 NVP 3500 SL. I just recently bought it without a head unit, which was OK with me because I had planned to install an Android head unit anyway (I've installed a couple using adapter harnesses). But I didn't realize that the previous owner cut the original connector off and crimped directly into the wires. Now I can't figure out what the wires are supposed to be exactly. There are also 2 other free connectors attached to the wire bundle that I thought could also be used to connect to the radio, but neither fits the Metra wiring harness adapter that I purchased for Nissans 2007+. One seemed similar enough but the location of the raised plastic on the connectors are offset from the metra adapter and so wouldn't fit. I tried to read through the service manual but it's confusing to me. I'm checking out the AV section, I'm guessing the previous owner had cut Connector No. M44, and the white connectors I see must be Connector No. M46 and M85. I was going to compare the diagram with the actual connectors, but I can't decipher some color codes. Is there a legend or can anyone shed light to the following color codes: - L (for front door speakers) - SB & LG (for steering switch signal a) - BR (illumination control signal) - GR & LG (steering switch signal B) I also noticed there are colors that seem to repeat... not sure how to tell which is which without the pinout position (like Ground shows up several times in different colors). I probably need to read through this again when I'm not sleepy. But if anyone has tips on how to sort this, I'd appreciate any help :)

I looked it up just now, that seems like a pretty fun project for them. A cheap, light, and compact electric truck for driving around town would be a really nice second car :)

Good news update! The NV is alive and kicking at no cost to fix. I found thid troubleshooting video for the Frontier, Titan, Armada, Xterra that worked for the Nv as well. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=HHDU2KDqSOA The key-sequence fix for the antitheft system worked like a charm.

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. I do have the service manual but I have not found the relevant section yet, I will search again. I'll try the free/cheap things later like the spare key, cleaning the terminals, swapping the relay, and making sure the transmission/sensor sees that the van is in park. Keeping my fingers crossed that it's not one of the more costly things.

I was using the NV today and it didn't want to start when I went to Home Depot. Battery was just purchased in 2018, reads 12.5V and AAA checked and said the battery was good. Dash lights up when the key is turned and there is a click sound. But the van doesn't even try to start. Any ideas on what it could be? Also, where is the starter on this van? I tried to google it so I could try hitting the starter to see if that would help me get home, but I couldn't find information on my phone and decided to just tow the NV. It was a sad night, with matching rain to reflect the mood.