Been working on the '04 Frontier the past three days. First project was replacing the fuel tank. It had rusted around the perimeter seam and would seep fuel if it was more than half-full. Got a new tank from RockAuto. Replacement was tiring as every bolt was rusted. The joys of living in the salt belt. Lots of PB Blaster consumed. One bolt was so bad that the original 17mm head had shrunk to about 13mm. Of course it was the least accesible bolt also. Fortunately the tank was the most rusted at that spot also, and just pulled free of the bolt. I later removed it with one of my Harbor Freight bolt extractors. All bolts replaced with new 10mm x 1.25 x 30mm from Lowes ($2.08 each!).
Also had some struggles with the plastic "quick connect" high pressure fuel lines. Don't know why those are used instead of regular threaded compression fittings. I guess it must save a few seconds on the assembly line. One of them came off OK but the other one came apart in pieces. Managed to get it back together, though had to replace a torn o-ring with one from my Harbor Freight Viton o-ring kit. No leaks, thankfully, as I suspect a new line would have a good chance of being NLA from Nissan. Next project was replacing valve cover gaskets. The truck was leaking quite a bit of oil and that looked like the likely suspect. The right-hand cover is pretty easy to get to, just needed to unplug a few wiring harneses. The left hand cover is buried under the intake manifold but the oil leak was on the right-hand side so I just did that one for now. The gasket was hard as a rock and there was about a 1/8" gap/crack on the lower side. After an oil change and a test drive, the oil leak seems to be resolved. Need to do the left hand cover at some point but going to let that dog lie for now. Finally, an AC recharge. It has not held a charge and I suspected a bad schrader valve on the low pressure service port, as I saw some bubbling there last time I charged it. The system still had some pressure but not enough to cool. I got one of those devices that can change the valve core without losing pressure -- very slick and worked great. Didn't see any bubbles at that port this time. Fingers crossed that it holds the charge. I used R134A with "stop leak" in case there are other slow leaks in the system. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
