The Nissan Path

Here's my 92 2-door 5 spd. I bought it back in 1991 and kept it until 2006. For a few years it had a 4" trailmaster lift, but I took it off in 2001. A few years later, the rust was starting to eat through the bodywork, to the point where it could not pass the annual safety inspection we had in New Brunswick. So, my buddy and decided there was nothing to loose and we set about doing some body work.

At the time, I had no idea what I was doing. I had never used fibreglass, bondo, a spray, or anything. About the only tool I had experience with was sandpaper!

I ended up replacing the roof lights, installing a hardbody grill, some relays, some e-code headlights, and wired it for some fog lights.

Anyways, here's some pics of the project I though you might want to see.

Here's how it looked before

Lots of filler, and ever more sanding.




Mission creep sets in:

Filled in the back panel thingy:



Yep, that's my own sanding block. Made it myself. Jealous? It's OK.

Figured the back bumper was beyond fixing:

...and most of the front end. WTF? I was just supposed to patch a fill a few rust holes?



Stripped out the window tint and removed the factory light bar. Got the cream putty on. Sanded most of that off too.

Ready to prime!

I decided to paint the inside of the door frames and tail gate. What a joy that was to mask.



Primer On! Surgical masks do not work as paint masks. I probably gave myself cancer spraying this thing in my garage.

Here's the first coat of paint. I used a single stage, 2 coat process. The second coat I added some extra reducer that made it go on shiny. I had to do a second coat because the metallic bits looked like tiger stripes on the hood. I got a few small runs, but overall pretty happy how it turned out.




Sanded after 1st coat


2nd coat

e-code headlight conversion and hardbody chrome grill & signals:

Here's some pics of the roof light swap. Not sure what the originals were, but they did not stand up to the Canadian climate too well. Replaced them with Hella's.



55w Hellas are bright, but I found after the e-code swap, I really did not need my roof lights.



I learned how to solder on this project too.


Fog light and rooflight switches.


New roof lights on repainted light bar:

Some new rims, tires, tint and it passed the safety inspection! Found some chrome mirrors in the junkyard, a little bit of polish and they looked OK.






I drove it out to Alberta and ended up selling it. I must have been sad to see it go, cause a couple years later, we bought a used 2006 SE.

NICE work! why the heck did you sell it after all that work?? for a shadetree job it really turned out good!

that looks great, a real shame you sold it.

Yeah, it was a shame to sell it indeed.

I got posted to a new province, so it had to undergo a pretty strict inspection. The mechanic failed it for 'surface rust on the brake lines'...was going to cost me thousands to fix up to pass, money that I had set aside for a new SUV. The guy I sold it to happened to be a mechanic, so he may have been able to pass the inspection with less work than a joe like me would have had to do.

Thanks for the compliments. It was a lot of work, but hugely fun too. When you have a truck that's only worth a couple thou', there's a lot less fear in taking an angle grinder to it!!

Super nice, what color paint was that?

not to revive a dead thread but i have been looking for the light bar for some time since i made the trade for my truck , can you tell me what type of light bar that is ? thanks