The Nissan Path

Good mornin all.. thanks for the add.. I have just aquired 2 Pathfinders at a killer deal, and have a few issues I'm trying to figure out with both.. the first one is a 2004 that has been rolled over but is still fully functional.. the original owner has been driving it for a while like this with no mechanical issues.. the roof was just caved in a bit and they bought a second 2001 Pathfinder with clean body but blown motor with intentions of swapping their good motor into the clean body.. they realized after the fact that the 2004 had a different throttle body (fly by wire) than the 2001 which has a traditional cable throttle body.. now I think the roll over damage can be fixed so I have no intention on removing the engine.. I'm just going to replace the engine in the 2001.. it still runs but has a rod knock that gets worse as it warms up, to the point where it eventually shuts down and wont start again til it cools down.. I got a lead on a low mileage JDM imported engine for a low price but it to has the fly by wire throttle body.. my question is... can I just use the original cable throttle body on the new engine? Or is the there some kind of electronic dependency that comes along with the fly by wire set up that would prevent me from using the cable throttle system? Thanks in advance for any help..

You should be able to just remove the throttle by wire throttle body and replace it with the cable-activated throttle body, assuming the bolt-up pattern is the same. Worst case scenario, you may have to swap the upper plenum, which you may or may not have to do anyway depending on any differences as far as sensors, vacuum or water fittings, etc. Another thing to check is the camshaft position sensors and crank position sensors between the two engines. IIRC, someone once tried to install a JDM VQ engine in a Pathfinder and found it had only one crank position sensor and there was no hole on the other head for the other sensor nor any reluctance gear on the back of the cam.

smj999smj wrote:You should be able to just remove the throttle by wire throttle body and replace it with the cable-activated throttle body, assuming the bolt-up pattern is the same. Worst case scenario, you may have to swap the upper plenum, which you may or may not have to do anyway depending on any differences as far as sensors, vacuum or water fittings, etc. Another thing to check is the camshaft position sensors and crank position sensors between the two engines. IIRC, someone once tried to install a JDM VQ engine in a Pathfinder and found it had only one crank position sensor and there was no hole on the other head for the other sensor nor any reluctance gear on the back of the cam.

That's what I assumed would be the case.. just a simple swapping of the throttle bodies and the upper intake too worse case scenario.. I guess I will check the JDM engine to make sure all the relevant sensors are present before I proceed with the swap.. thanks for the response.. I will let you know what I find when I get home to inspect the replacement motor...

smj999smj wrote:You should be able to just remove the throttle by wire throttle body and replace it with the cable-activated throttle body, assuming the bolt-up pattern is the same. Worst case scenario, you may have to swap the upper plenum, which you may or may not have to do anyway depending on any differences as far as sensors, vacuum or water fittings, etc. Another thing to check is the camshaft position sensors and crank position sensors between the two engines. IIRC, someone once tried to install a JDM VQ engine in a Pathfinder and found it had only one crank position sensor and there was no hole on the other head for the other sensor nor any reluctance gear on the back of the cam.

Well, it seems I too am missing the cam gear sensor on my JDM engine.. do you know what the fix was for this issue? I have the original ECU that came with the JDM motor.. not sure if that is going to help or not.. the only solution I can see at this point is to swap out the heads.. which I really would rather not do... smh

So the guy I got the JDM motor from says he has another motor that does have the provision for the extra cam sensor. He even took a picture of it and sent it to me.. it has the hole so you can see the cam gear and it is covered up by a plastic block off plate.. i wondering if the pick up for the cam sensor is actually on the cam? How could i tell if it was or wasnt?

You would have to talk to the guy selling you the motor to see if the gear is there or not. If it's not, you would be looking at swapping the cams and having to adjust the valves, which I'm not sure if they used bucket tappets with shims or just different sized bucket tappets on your particular engine? They've used both on VQ engines. The shim type are a little easier to adjust as long as you have the proper tool.

smj999smj wrote:You would have to talk to the guy selling you the motor to see if the gear is there or not. If it's not, you would be looking at swapping the cams and having to adjust the valves, which I'm not sure if they used bucket tappets with shims or just different sized bucket tappets on your particular engine? They've used both on VQ engines. The shim type are a little easier to adjust as long as you have the proper tool.

the guy at the warehouse where i got it front is just an employee there.. he has no specific knowledge on any of the engines they sell.. i had to walk him thru just taking pics of the cam sensors on the engine he had in stock. he kept telling me it had a cam sensor when in all actuality it was just a plastic block off plate.. i knew right then and there he was just a parts pusher.. lol

here's a pic of my original motor.. you can see the cam sensor underneath the cam gear cover..

here is what the JDM engine looks like..

and this is the other motor he has.. it has the provision for the cam sensor but its not actually there,, there is a plastic block off plate.. when he removed the cover you can see the gear behind it..

So what year R50 changed to the fly-by-wire system?

Pathfindork wrote:So what year R50 changed to the fly-by-wire system?

Its seems 01-02 are cable and 03-04 are fly by wire from what I can tell as of now.. I've seen 2 fly by wire motors now and one had the missing cam sensor and one didnt.. so there must be a different variant between the fly by wire engines too... I'm crossing my fingers and hoping this one WITH the cam sensor provision will work in my 01 with my cable throttle body.. I will just install my old cam sensor into the new engine.. funny thing is when I unplugged the cam sensor on my original engine while it was running nothing happend.. didnt even kick on the check engine light.. so obviously it will run without it.. not sure what happens when it gets up to running temp tho... might start looking for a signal and if it's not there it might throw a code then, but unfortunately my original engine wont stay running that long to find out..