pathguy
New member
Well, as a longtime lurker in this forum and having benefitted a great deal from the knowledge and reports of others, I figured I might as well put a thread together covering my experience with my R50. It’s not the highest spec, most capable, or most extensive build you’ll ever see, but there are a few things I’ve done differently than others, so hopefully there will be some new info here people can take advantage from when they consider how best to modify their own trucks.
Since I’m going to be fairly in-depth in my write-up, I’ll break it down into a few posts over the coming days (weeks?) whenever I find time to squeeze in sessions at the keyboard. Pretty much all of the (fairly minor) modifications I planned for the vehicle are now complete, so I likely won’t updating the thread much when I’m done, but I promise to keep you guys apprised of any new developments or further thoughts on the results as the mileage accumulates.
So, starting at the top…
As a longtime dirt biker, I had always enjoyed venturing off pavement and exploring, but had never owned a 4x4. My previous car (B6 Audi A4 1.8T) had been awesome for weekend road trips and driving up to the ski hills in the winter. However, having explored many of the more easily accessible local areas in that, I decided I needed something with a bit more capability to open up some more remote opportunities. That said, I didn’t want to compromise too much on the comforts and decent on-road handling I was used to, and still wanted a vehicle I could use every day in the city and tackle long mileages the highway. This was never going to be a rock-crawler. My research kept bringing me back to the R50 as the only platform that offered the particular blend of capabilities I was after: reliability, power, comfort, and capacity, without too much of a penalty in terms of fuel economy, handling, size, cost, and off-road ability.
After many months of searching, I (finally!) purchased a 2003 Pathfinder in April 2011 from a dealer in Victoria BC. Victoria’s climate is similar to say Portland, so the truck was extremely clean compared to some other Canadian vehicles – next to no salt exposure. It only had one previous owner, having covered 132k kms (~82k mi) since new. It was also a manual trans model with the SE trim package – a very rare combo for 2003/04 (in Canada at least…). In other words, it was my perfect R50. I overpaid for the truck (at least compared to book), but still think it was a good deal for my ideal starting point.
After verifying that all the basic maintenance items claimed to have been done by the dealer before they put it out on their lot had in fact been done (correctly), I took the truck on a few light off-roading trips over the summer – mostly camping and exploring old logging roads. My idea was to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the truck and slowly draw up a list of things to improve. The truck generally performed faultlessly, but I quickly ran into some of the limitations of the stock platform. Pathfinders were never a particularly heavy-duty vehicle from the outset, but load capacity on the stock 8 year-old suspension was seriously lacking. Any more than 100 lbs in the back of the vehicle had it riding around with the nose in the air. Off-road clearance was also an issue, mostly due to the same sagged suspension. Rear-end grip/axle control was also very poor, with the car stepping out everywhere when cornering, especially on rough roads at speeds. Not fun!
All in all, I was fairly happy with the truck, but given the limitations of the stock and somewhat aged platform, let's just say I was already eager to scratch the "mod itch". More to come...
Since I’m going to be fairly in-depth in my write-up, I’ll break it down into a few posts over the coming days (weeks?) whenever I find time to squeeze in sessions at the keyboard. Pretty much all of the (fairly minor) modifications I planned for the vehicle are now complete, so I likely won’t updating the thread much when I’m done, but I promise to keep you guys apprised of any new developments or further thoughts on the results as the mileage accumulates.
So, starting at the top…
As a longtime dirt biker, I had always enjoyed venturing off pavement and exploring, but had never owned a 4x4. My previous car (B6 Audi A4 1.8T) had been awesome for weekend road trips and driving up to the ski hills in the winter. However, having explored many of the more easily accessible local areas in that, I decided I needed something with a bit more capability to open up some more remote opportunities. That said, I didn’t want to compromise too much on the comforts and decent on-road handling I was used to, and still wanted a vehicle I could use every day in the city and tackle long mileages the highway. This was never going to be a rock-crawler. My research kept bringing me back to the R50 as the only platform that offered the particular blend of capabilities I was after: reliability, power, comfort, and capacity, without too much of a penalty in terms of fuel economy, handling, size, cost, and off-road ability.
After many months of searching, I (finally!) purchased a 2003 Pathfinder in April 2011 from a dealer in Victoria BC. Victoria’s climate is similar to say Portland, so the truck was extremely clean compared to some other Canadian vehicles – next to no salt exposure. It only had one previous owner, having covered 132k kms (~82k mi) since new. It was also a manual trans model with the SE trim package – a very rare combo for 2003/04 (in Canada at least…). In other words, it was my perfect R50. I overpaid for the truck (at least compared to book), but still think it was a good deal for my ideal starting point.
After verifying that all the basic maintenance items claimed to have been done by the dealer before they put it out on their lot had in fact been done (correctly), I took the truck on a few light off-roading trips over the summer – mostly camping and exploring old logging roads. My idea was to get a feel for the strengths and weaknesses of the truck and slowly draw up a list of things to improve. The truck generally performed faultlessly, but I quickly ran into some of the limitations of the stock platform. Pathfinders were never a particularly heavy-duty vehicle from the outset, but load capacity on the stock 8 year-old suspension was seriously lacking. Any more than 100 lbs in the back of the vehicle had it riding around with the nose in the air. Off-road clearance was also an issue, mostly due to the same sagged suspension. Rear-end grip/axle control was also very poor, with the car stepping out everywhere when cornering, especially on rough roads at speeds. Not fun!
All in all, I was fairly happy with the truck, but given the limitations of the stock and somewhat aged platform, let's just say I was already eager to scratch the "mod itch". More to come...
