The Nissan Path

You can check your bushings by parking your truck on level concrete or pavement and laying down beside the rear wheel. Position yourself where you can see the opposite lower trailing arm. Rotate the rear wheel with your hands and you can see if your bushings are collapsing. You will be able to easily see and understand why this causes the "death sway". When I did this, my 03 with 180K miles looked like the link had about 3/8" of movement. When I saw this, I KNEW this is what was causing the problem.

I'm assuming this is done by jacking up the rear but is it only 1 side?

oekundar wrote:I'm assuming this is done by jacking up the rear but is it only 1 side?

No jacking required. All you are really doing here is rocking the vehicle back and forth while its in gear and watching for movement in the bushings. This is pretty easily done if the vehicle is on flat ground. The amount of movement in my old bushing was at least 3/8".

I hope this helps.

Interesting, I will give it a shot on the new to me path...same as yours with 143k and I'm pretty sure that hasn't been done.

oekundar wrote:Interesting, I will give it a shot on the new to me path...same as yours with 143k and I'm pretty sure that hasn't been done.

Is it showing signs of wear? IOW, does it have "death sway"?

It is showing signs of suspension wear and when it was still my sister's truck she mentioned the sway, but I can already see the shocks are shot so I'm pretty much ready to give the car an overhaul all around just for peace of mind.