Local Apparent Friday

@Alex @WanderlustAV Hey something else to check and make sure...did they reset the steering wheel position sensor after alignment? It's a quick step on a diagnostic computer, but I was doing some research ahead of our alignment, and my Dad had a similar experience to what you are describing because the shop didn't do it. A quick google search shows that missing this can cause all kinds of weird things. Hope that helps.

It's been a day, just getting back from the shop. I was able to get the headers tightened again, 36 lbs per JBA specs. It's a bit quieter now. I haven't been able to track down the Mode 6 Diagnostic Data Sheet from Nissan, but using the real time generic data, a buddy of mine that works for Tesla caught that it was just the passenger bank that was misfiring, which I had completely overlooked. That eliminated a vacuum leak, the EVAP system, and any issues with fuel, so I set about removing and testing the various components. Ultimately it was the VVT solenoid that was stuck. The P/N didn't match the ones that I pulled from the armada, so I used my test bench to actuate the solenoid while I cleaned it with brakleen and got it working again...likely just a piece of debris that got stuck in my various wrenchings. She's running tip top with no CEL now, so tomorrow I will finish the catch can install, put the cowl and hood back on, then put the cab back together in time for a 4 wheel alignment on Friday morning and we'll call this swap done and successful. Pic below is of the data from Mode 6...for anyone that's curious, I'm using an OBDLink LX that I snagged from ebay for $34 a while back, it's been a great tool for working on all these fancy fandangled modern contraptions. I highly recommend snagging one if you have the chance and throwing it in your tool box, it'll also output everything a scanguage will and a whole lot more. Thanks for all the support! One other thing that I was noticing I had wish that I had done today...when the engine was out and everything was apart, it would have been a prime time to use a blow tip on the air compressor to clean all the bugs out of the front of the radiator by spraying it from the back forward. C'est la vie. -laf

Oh we are just getting started. I've also added the link to the bio on our instagram...hoping to pull some of the 8 or so NVs that follow us here for info, but not a lot of people these days spinning their own wrenches. Current total all in for the van, the engine, and the parts to fix all the little issues is $12342.83. Not too bad for a '14 with 154k miles...the engine only has 115 but they don't count lower mileage unless you replace the whole drivetrain. I'm headed to the shop rn to do the cowl and the hood, I guess I could have done a step by step but a)it adds a bunch of time between taking photos and posting and b)we more or less followed the manual procedure anyway. I've got a call out to Sebastian @ Dahle to price a 4wd conversion if we decide to go that route, and I'll post more info on the mods we're making once I have everything done up correctly. Ty for the info on Mahu, I'll dig up the thread tonight and check it out. - laf

It's ALLLLIIIIIIVVVVVEEEEEE! Still have some things to get sorted, like re-torquing and then re-re-torquing the headers. Also I'm throwing a random misfire (0300) code that I think is related to an o2 sensor. I pulled the data from my scanner and I'm not showing any voltage reading on the front left. I'm going to swap them tomorrow and see if it switches sides before ordering replacements. Also unclear on why I have such a difference in the rear voltage readings. I have to peel off first thing to go help a buddy out with his van, but hoping to get the headers torqued, the o2 sensor confirmed, then I can put the cowl back together and put the hood on. We have a 4 wheel alignment scheduled for Friday, and I also need to see about getting it to Nissan for the airbag recall, and my front seat is currently a wal-mart foldable camping chair, but progress is being made! I put the blower motor back in, resolving my A/C issues, and pulled it back into the shop under her own power tonight! For your amusement, it takes [me] 34 minutes to take the truck apart, swap the starter, and put it all back together again, and then it takes [me] another 15 to find the loose cable between the battery and the relay box and realize that it wasn't the starter at all, and that I missed the main starter supply cable when hooking the wires back to the distro block. Thanks for following along. -laf

Aaaaaannnnnddddd I'm back again. Short version, it doesn't run, but it's all mostly all back together. Got almost everything buttoned up and went to start it to fill up the oil filter and the battery is dead from me pushing the van around in neutral, so now it's on the charger. Also, I loaned my welder out so tomorrow I have to find someone to cut the flange off the right hand B pipe and weld it back together again. The B pipes were supposed to be direct bolt in according to the email exchange before I purchased, but apparently the one flange is rotated differently on the back of the bpipe as compared to the trucks. SO - If you are ordering the JBA catted shorties from Cajun with any of their B Pipes, I would request that they not weld the one flange (passenger side - rear) onto the B pipe and then you can either do it yourself or take it to a shop. Alternatively, the catted shorties match up to the factory b pipes just fine, so you could just order the headers and then keep the rear cats/factory B pipes. I'll come back in a few and upload a photo once I grab my phone so you can see what I'm talking about. Also, if you're like me and after having to swap a bunch of parts because the engines aren't the same, and then you bolt the engine in there, and then the very last thing you do is bolt up the plate/torque converter at which point you have an "Oh S%^t!" moment because you never once compared the two, have no fear, it bolts up just fine. My airaid came early, so that's cool. Short list for tomorrow; Cut/weld b pipe flange Acquire 6" fernco for airaid intake Acquire 3/8" tee/steel dish cleaner for catch can hose reroute Acquire distilled water for cooling system Acquire 5/8" hose for blowby reroute Connect battery, clean TB, profit. Only things left at this point are to put the cowl all back together, the pass inner fender liner, and put the hood back on. Some thoughts while it's fresh in my mind; Be realllllly sure about your tq specs...remember the last of the numbers in the diagrams is INCH pounds. It's baffling how little some of these bolts are torqued. Don't leave the tq converter to the last thing...you'll have to loosen the tranny. Better plan is to start all tranny bolts, then start tq converter bolts while you still have separation. Alternatively, you can use a flat bar to provide enough friction against the tq converter in order to spin the plate separately to line up the holes, after you've loosed the tranny enough to reduce the friction. If you follow the nissan engine manual, you can skip pulling the radiator, the trans and the lower crossbar. In the case of the trans, you'll need to remove 3 bolts holding the oil lines to the trans/engine on the pass side, as well as the trans harness, which drops down the back of the engine. There are 9 bolts to remove the trans, 8 of them can be gotten from below. The last is on the top on the pass side of the starter, all are 19mm. Once the shroud and mechanical fan are out, there is a mountain of room up front. Just be sure to protect the radiator...in my case I took a 5/8" sheet of plywood roughly the size of the radiator, drilled two holes in the top, then used a loop of string to hang it from the hood latch in case the engine came swinging forward, but I never got close. If you pull the engine mount bolts that run from the bottom up, you have to jimmy it forward and you risk bending the mounts. Instead, pull the 4 that run top down, and it'll lift right off the beds, you'll still have (2) alignment dowels from trans to contend with. Ziplock baggies labeled with a sharpie for each individual set of fasterners, ie coils, inner fender, intake, etc, etc and it helps to use painters tape to label the wiring harness, but it's also not hard to figure out. Just take a bunch of pics beforehand. On the pass side, there is a grounding wire from the harness that bolts to the side of the head, and then there is a much smaller gauge wire with an eye on the end that comes off of that. It goes on the underside of the inner fender. Just because the engine is out doesn't mean the truck will roll wherever you want it. You still have to reconnect the battery, turn the key and put it in neutral in order to push/pull it around. Lastly, don't forget to charge the battery after you're done pushing/pulling it around, or you're going to be disappointed when it just clicks.? If I think of anything else once I'm done done, I'll add it. If anybody has any specific questions that come to mind, please ask for perpetuity, it may help someone in the future. - laf

Okay so tomorrow is the big day. Gym first thing and a couple errands, then van. Thought I'd share some info about mods while we're making them...when I popped out the existing engine I found out that we had a cracked exhaust manifold...this is a common issue with the factory manifolds and is well documented on the titans. You can buy new manifolds for the low, low price of $980 each, but Nissan never resigned them, so they'll just crack again later. I hit up Cajun B Pipes for a set of shorties with resonated b pipes...$1600 delivered for the pair. They say that they won't throw a code, I'll report back with my findings. I'm also doing an airaid CAI while I'm in here. Interestingly, all three engines had black goo in the intake runners and manifold. It's thick and tarry...very gummy. Pic below. I thought it might be reversion but, after more inspection and seeing it all in the intake manifold, i'm thinking this is coming from the PCV/Blowby hoses. We were able to do a pretty solid cleaning with brakleen, rags and brushes. I've ordered the cheapest reasonable looking catch can that I could find on Amazon...I'm going to tee the PCV lines from the manifold and from the rocker covers and then run it through the catch can as a closed loop with wire dish wool as a separator and see if I can clean up the air a bit. I'll likely just loop the blowby hoses on each end, essentially eliminating them. I don't think it will throw a code, but I'll report on that as well. Lastly, in order to take advantage of the mods as well as to sort out some of the shortcomings from Nissan, we'll look at tuning the van. I've ordered a cable so that I can pull the rom from the truck...Uprev wants an upcharge for non-standard core, so I'm looking at pulling it myself via romraider and tuning it, although I may still end up going the uprev route. Quote from cajun on tune is $825...none of these options include actual dyno time and are all just done remotely from datalogs. It'll hopefully be running tomorrow and we can get to the build...I need to be in NC next week and then we've got a big trip covering almost the entire eastern seaboard planned for july into August. I don't expect to have the full buildout done by then, but we'll go with what we have, take notes, and then modify/continue when we get back after the trip.

Great info, thanks for this.

Don't be shy, we need more people posting! Thanks for the kind words...spent most of yesterday in the blistering heat putting the last touches on the engine and cleaning up the shop and the mess of the three teardowns so that my shop is clean again. We have family in town and I took a hiatus today to pick up a sailboat, so it's looking like Monday for the final push (quite literally to push it back into my shop) to get the engine in. Thankfully, we have family in town, because it's a heavy van! ? I'll post more pics later and go back through and resize and post the other photos directly here, since imgbb seems to be not playing nicely these days. We have to be in Georgia on the 16th, so hoping to have at least some type of spartan build out by then. Updates coming next week. Have a great weekend everyone. - laf

After two weeks of vacay and sinus infection, we're back to this project. Engine is back together minus the main electrical harness. Hoping to have it in by this weekend, wx dependent. In regards to the engine manual, I couldn't find the torque specs explained, but they are on all the diagrams. Below is the breakdown, first value is newton meters, then kg meters, then inch pounds as denoted. Wild how little torque is used on these aluminum engines. Get yourself a very good 1/4" drive inch pound tq wrench.

Sure no problem. They are selling a ton of NV2500s for about 10k off of retail if you end up going that route.

@hanvan Here ya go. He sells like 3 levels of intake kits, you have to source your own TB and you'll need uprev in order to reprogram the computer to control the LS DBW.

How is the wheel bearing? I'm assuming they checked that with everything else, but you didn't list it, so I am. Also does rotating tires have any effect, and if you drive over to the other side of the road, does it pull the other way?

What ^he said. Just turn the key on, wait about 10 secs, then turn it off and repeat that about 5 times. It'll pump it up...there's a return on modern vehicles, it's a loop. Best of luck.

So. There is an S/C kit that exists. Some other options for horsepower, as I have been briefly looking down that path, are cajun b pipe headers and b pipes, which solve the cracking manifold problem, a cold air intake (I believe Airaid is still the top dog,) and a tune like Uprev. There is also a guy on FB called preformance that has amazing gains (+100hp) from custom dual runner intake manifolds married to LS throttle bodies as well as R8 coil swaps, which seems insane to me but he swears that there is nothing else being done to the engines and he's posting dyno charts to that effect. It seems that the VK is starving for air.

If you want to try before you buy, try Hertz. They have NVs you can rent, which is what drew us (wife and I) to the NV platform. The litt'luns are pretty small for full time travel as a couple, but there are people doing it. I've seen a lot of the transit connects running around lately with van builds. Best of luck and welcome!

It's funny but also depressing. After reading the "largest tires that will fit" thread that was referenced above, I went with the BFGs. I ended up also doing a 2" leveling kit up front so she looks beast rn, but yah. They are a solid tire, have run them plenty in the past on other vehicles.

Yah so...Crusty was trying to say post a price. GLWS.

I picked up one of the hot dip galvanized from here for cheap via facebook marketplace.

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Y'all aren't going to believe this, but I FINALLY started putting things BACK on the engine today, instead of just removing them. I'm going to grab a water pump gasket that I didn't think I'd need, and then the only other thing that's backordered is the headlight harness, but we are GOLDEN to start putting the engine back together to get it in. Two weeks late, but better than never. - laf

Neat thread! Thanks for bumping this. Be safe out there.

Homebrew could work. I would think you'd have to extend the sliders enough to get the seat away from the steering wheel, and then it could work. Best of luck.

@Shuey Your best bet is going to be to find them locally. Try Craigslist, facebook marketplace, or Row52.com, which lists junkyard inventory within a set range of a zip code. There is also an NV group on Facebook...you might try posting up there to see if someone local to you has any for sale. Worst case but guaranteed would be to use car-part.com to buy a set from a part puller. I would do the search and post up links for you, but I don't know where you are. Hope that helps, best of luck.

The steering wheel gets in the way. Pax only, as far as I'm aware. - laf

I don't see individual cable pn's listed for this on the US sites, perhaps someone else has access to something that I do not. If you follow this link to Euro EPC, there are individual pns listed but it's for a 2010. The line drawing looks similar to me, but I don't know enough about the generational changes of the smaller NVs to know if this is of use to you. Also, here's a thread from a different forum with some complaints about NV200 hvac systems, perhaps it will be of use. Lastly, if you simply HAVE to buy the entire control module, here's a link to car-part where you can scoop a pull for $30 + shipping. If you've never purchased from them before. you're literally buying from a parts puller, so pick one that has Grade A listed in the description...don't go by the pics, most of them just use stock photos. They'll be guaranteed against DOA, but you can look for a warranty if you want to as well. Then just call them on the phone listed and tell them what you want and they'll hook it up. Hope you find something useful in that, best of luck. - laf