DAMN Riders - No rules, Just ride!

Went and got tags today. Took it for a quick rip up the street. I had not ever driven this truck as I bought it blown up. I appear to have some non engine swap related things judging by all the dash lights. So far no CEL though.



This MBRP exhuast is obscenely loud. Not a fan.



https://photos.smugmug.com/Frontier/i-t ... 3-1280.mp4

is that 390K on the ODO?

Yes, she has a few miles on her. And they haven't been easy.

If this truck had not been a crew cab with a long bed I would probably have passed once I saw it in person. It is definitely rough around the edges. The good news is the donor truck for this swap only had 123k. I plan to steal all the suspension off of it as well.

Fan controller came in so set to getting that installed. When you do the VK swap, you have this nipple left over that is unused. All the build threads I've seen has just put a cap on this. Having had a cap fail in my Jeep while wheeling way back in the day I'm not a fan of them. So for today's Joe wants to do things the hardest way possible, that nipple looks like a great place to put the sender for my fan controller.





So step 1, drain my perfectly bled cooling system This would have been so much easier to do before I put the engine in the truck. Or put the front end back on the truck. Or filled it with coolant even. Hindsight and all that.

Steps whatever, remove the nipple, drill the hole to the proper size, cut threads. Had to grind a little bit off the housing for clearance. I was planning to go 1/4" NPT but the OD of the nipple is slightly larger than the tap so had to go up to 3/8".



Sender in place. I prefer a liquid sealant instead of tape on pipe threads, unfortunately it has a 24 hour cure time blah.



Hosed down all the shavings and made sure the t-stat housing was clear of metal and put the truck back together. Then pulled some wiring and mounted up my relays next to the drivers headlight.






The fan controller itself. Has to be mounted inside the truck annoyingly.



That's as far as I got. I thought I was just going to use fuse taps for power/ignition but I just noticed Nissan uses those stupid mini fuses inside. Instead of trying to half ass something in there, I'll go ahead and add a small fuse block for power and for future accessories as well.

Engine swap stuff seems to be just about done. Now to fix some other issues on this truck.

I SPECIFICALLY asked the seller if there was any rust to be concerned about. Oh no its good, here are some pics that don't show the drivers side that well.

Yea...




They don't make patch panels for these trucks The choices are make one, replace the entire bed side, replace the entire bed. I've been half ass looking for the correct color bed but not much luck. A new bed side is close to $1k. So make one. Fortunately the wheel arches are all but the same front to rear (fronts are bit taller, doesn't matter here)

Buy junkyard fender




Slice and dice



Weld grind weld grind weld grind



Smear on some filler. Sand sand sand.




Sand sand

Sand



Primer. I have some color match paint in route. Will sand it out better before paint.




Needs some lift and tires now. Maybe some bumpers.

Tossed in some front spacers and a different set of wheels/tires that I had from my previous Frontier.



Before









Now

That's some fantastic work on that rear fender! Mine's not nearly as bad. When should I come over?


~Patrick

You got some mad skilzs Joe. Verny nice work.

Sub box for my F150. Needed a box to fit only under the passenger rear seat. Pretty much everything pre-made is full width which I didn't want as when we travel with the dogs the drivers side of the bench gets flipped up so they have room. The area behind the seat is even tighter for room plus my amps already live back there.


3D printed this router template then knocked out 20 of these curved pieces



A bunch of steps later



Stereo Integrity 12" sub. They discontinued this sub last year but I found a used one nearby and scooped it up.



I sought out this sub as all the SI gear I've heard is fantastic and this thing is very shallow with a small sealed volume requirement.




In the truck. Waiting on supplies to finish the exterior so just raw finish currently.

HDF board, in more or less a 1cubic ft sealed box.. yeah he knows what he’s doing. That should sound tight and accurate


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