Al Savage's 1982 Maxima Wagon

#31

Pics Al, we need pics. I think bigfoot has been photographed more than your 82 wagon.

#32

It's bad. I washed it last year, I don't know why

It, again, has green moss drooling from the trim. I had hooked up the util trailer to it and dragged it 200 miles to get the used Aero trans last week. When I brought it back into town, naturally I headed for the car wash. To wash the transmission. I had a bit of time left from that, so I washed off some of the more aggregious moss on the rear side windows before the time ran out.

I just drove over to Everett (one hour to the Kingston ferry, 30 min across, and what would normally have been about 30 minutes north to Everett was 1:20 ! I could not believe these people, driving in slush at crawl speeds, argh. For the first time in a long time, I passed lots and lots of people.) I was reminded again of how well this Wagon is in the snow. Not a lot of traction, but so predictable that when it slides it's child's play to bring it back in line. And I get a lot of use from Snow Mode ("2"). I had to follow an old 280ZX for a mile, and it was really having a hard time not sliding the rear out, he had to really work to keep it in line -- at 20 MPH. Meanwhile, 50 yrds behind, I had absolutely no problem -- in Snow Mode.

So I put another 100 miles on it in the snow tonight. It may not look like much, but the rear window defrost worked fine, the wipers worked fine, jazz on the radio, heater blowing hot air on my right foot, everything just works.

There's a little bit of the roof in the foreground of that "Beaver Valley, 17:30" shot.

That large black area not revealed by the flash is Admiralty Inlet! (water)

I know that's not "snow" to a lot of you, but it just about brings folks to a halt around here -- sheesh!

Anyway, I can't bear to take pics of the '82 Wagon I've owned for a decade, because it's always got stuff in it (it's a Wagon, I use it), and it's always dirty.

#33

asavage wrote:And I get a lot of use from Snow Mode ("2"). I had to follow an old 280ZX for a mile, and it was really having a hard time not sliding the rear out, he had to really work to keep it in line -- at 20 MPH. Meanwhile, 50 yrds behind, I had absolutely no problem -- in Snow Mode.

Same here. We got about 4 inches yesterday - during the day - and I had no problem. Aside from the fact that the rear passenger door froze open and I had to hold it shut for half of the ride home.

asavage wrote:It may not look like much, but the rear window defrost worked fine, the wipers worked fine, jazz on the radio, heater blowing hot air on my right foot, everything just works.

Exactly. Isn't it great? And thanks to mynew swtch, all of my windows work. YEAH!

asavage wrote:I know that's not "snow" to a lot of you, but it just about brings folks to a halt around here -- sheesh!

It does here too Al. Can you believe it? And they MUST remain on the phone at all times - regardless of the conditions. Must be part of the idiot code...

asavage wrote:Anyway, I can't bear to take pics of the '82 Wagon I've owned for a decade, because it's always got stuff in it (it's a Wagon, I use it), and it's always dirty.

c'mon Al.

#34

83_maxima wrote:Same here. We got about 4 inches yesterday - during the day - and I had no problem. Aside from the fact that the rear passenger door froze open and I had to hold it shut for half of the ride home.

One good reason to keep some of those light-duty bungee cords in the glovebox!

steve a

#35

Or a can of Tri-Flow.

#36

Yes, I like the tri-flow too, but it just can't replace the elegance of a door held shut with bungee cords

steve a

#37

asavage wrote:

I know that's not "snow" to a lot of you, but it just about brings folks to a halt around here -- sheesh!

I think if snow that deep fell on long island, they'd close the highway

#38

Is lack of proper/adequate odometer/tripmeter illumination a trait of Gen1 Maximas? My '82's tripmeter cannot be read at night. Click on image for a better close-up, and in reality it's not even this good to see by my eyes:

(click on image for much larger)

I checked my spare cluster, and it looks like it's illuminated by two lamps, left & right. The pic above makes it seem dimmer on the right than it actually is to my eyes; I'm looking for others' experience with theirs.

I guess I should go fire up the '83 and look at its.

#39

Unloading from the JY run on Saturday. I didn't get a shot of hauling two Aerostar Trac-Lok ("posi") rear axle assys in this Wagon -- one at a time, on cardboard like you see here. Works well. This is a Class III receiver hitch I pulled off an Aero, paid $10 for it and couldn't pass it up. And the 720 battery box, and a pair of Aero tailgate lift struts ($10/pr.) and a bunch of other stuff.

In this shot, you do get a sense of the spilled white paint all over the back from when Dan had it for three years. Carpet, bumper, tailgate, etc.

#40

asavage wrote:Is lack of proper/adequate odometer/tripmeter illumination a trait of Gen1 Maximas? My '82's tripmeter cannot be read at night. Click on image for a better close-up, and in reality it's not even this good to see by my eyes:

I have a "low spot" of illumination around the 55 mph mark of my speedo, but I always remembered having the trip-odometer being illuminated, ill look again once it gets dark out.

#41

I seem to have the same dark spot, around the 55 mph mark it is dark and the trip-odometer can be read at night, but you have to get your face into the dash and look closely to read it.

#42

The '83's trip-meter is similarly dim, I drove it tonight, so I think it's just a Gen1 Maxima thing.

Good news! I have had a driveshaft vibration (low speed only) for over 50k miles. It was more severe when more torque was applied: the further you pushed the smoke pedal, the worse the vibration, and the frequency matched the driveshaft RPM.

When I bought the Wagon from the original owner in 1997, it was barely noticeable: when you floored it from a stop, there were five or ten shakes and then you were moving above 5 MPH and it was gone. It got worse, so that by the time I sold it in 1999, it was shaking all the way up to 10 MPH or so.

When I got it back in 2004 (154k miles), it was quite bad, shaking even at moderate torque, and all the way up to 25 MPH. But no vibration at all at higher speeds, even speedo pegged speeds.

I fought it for a while, replaced the centre support brg & rubber assy even though it didn't need it: no change. Replaced the trans mount: no change. All three u-joints are very smooth. Had two shops diagnose it: shop 'A' said it was the transmission internals; shop 'B' (which was a driveline shop) took $50 from me and told me that the bad engine torque damper was the problem (which Nissan said at the time was an NLA part). So I kind of gave up on it, since I wasn't really driving it. In the back of my mind, I was thinking that someday I'd find another Wagon driveshaft and swap it out for a test.

Last year, Carimbo & I took all the good parts off a similar '82 diesel Wagon at a JY, and I got the driveshaft, even though the front u-joint wasn't so hot (notchy). Since the u-joint was bad, I thought it was no good except as a core to rebuild.

The '83 Wagon runs smooth, and tonight I was going to swap the driveshafts between them, but the '83's centre brg rubber is shot, and its front u-joint is similarly notchy (199k miles). So I just took it out and put it back in.

I decided to swap in the JY driveline. I really wanted to pin it down some, so I swapped the rear half first: no change. Then I swapped the front half: bingo, no more vibration.

The front half includes the support brg assy, the bracket around it, and the front u-joint & yoke. The shaft itself is two-piece, with bonded rubber between. My guess is that the bond is bad or something like that. [later edit: looking closely at the part, it doesn't seem to be like that; I don't know what I was thinking when I said that.]

Anyway, I have to crow: it is so nice to be able to accelerate away from a stop without the whole car shuddering.

Hmmm. Looking at these pics, that one (the "good" JY one with a notchy u-joint) doesn't look like the bonded-rubber design. I'll have to look at the bad one tomorrow.

[later: I don't see the bonded design I was thinking about. Maybe I saw something when I had one apart to replace the centre support brg.]

#43

The heater fan started getting quite noisy about a week after I began driving it regularly again. I was pretty sure what it was: material in the fan throwing it off-balance, but I had no time to investigate until yesterday, so I just lived with it for several weeks.

Here's what I found:

I used my usual to clean this out: duct-taped a 14" piece of cheap garden hose into the nozzle of our shop vac, and stuck it through the grating to suck the debris out. Worked very well!

Now, for the upstream. First, the passenger side cowl drain (behind the fender. Here's a pic looking below the lower pass door hinge:

Same method: garden hose in the shop vac nozzle. You really need 14-16" of hose for this one. I recommend cleaning this area well even if you don't have rodents putting garbage in there. Debris behind the fender will encourage rust.

Next, I found it up under the cowl.

I had to use the vac plus some baling wire to fish it up through the WW nozzle aperture, to avoid removing the cown grille. I had had the cowl grille out several years ago to replace all the plastic wiper arm joints (new ones from Nissan, got rid of a squeak that was driving me crazy) and I had bought all new plastic grille retainers at that time, but I doubt I'd get them in and out in one piece after all these years, so I was careful to fish out all the stuffing without having to remove the grille. That took about 15 minutes. Followed by compressed air all around, then vacuum inside again.

Fan is quiet again. I had removed about two quarts of stuffing all told.

#44

Another 250 round trip in the Wagon in the rain yesterday, today both rear floors are sopping.

Jacked up left side . . .

. . . and what do we see? Carpeting and wire harness:

Well, now I know where the rodents had been getting in. That's a 3/4" hole right into the inside:

Another big hole in a Maxima wheelwell. this is beginning to look familiar.

I take off the tire and get to the wire brush wheel . . .

Then get more aggressive at the rusty edges: cutoff wheel, hearing & eye protection, shop-vac . . .

An hour later (and a sheet of .025 aluminum, 40 alum. 1/8" x 1/8" pop rivets, 1.3 tubes of 40-year caulking, one black fingernail and completely undamaged ball-pein hammer, one tee-shirt scrapped due to white silicone caulking embedded, etc.) and this is the result:

After touch-up of the seams and a dab over every rivet head:

The lower center of the rusted-through area no longer has a flange to which to rivet. A better repair would have been to take up the carpet inside and do some reinforcement there. I left enough material to fold up to double underneath. It's about 6-8" worth that is not sealed, but I doubt much in the way of mud or water will get splashed up there, though I'm sure Kassim would have to do a lot more work to keep his dry for the places he drives!

Naturally, ten seconds after I applied the caulking, the sky opened up. Had to sit in the rain drilling holes and fighting the rivet gun which jammed about every third rivet. The air was blue!

This is not my best work. However, my intent with this Wagon is not to make it last forever, but merely long enough until I can take it apart for the engine. It was a Pennsylvania car most of its life, and was pretty dirty when I got it, has suffered more over the years. This repair should keep the mold down inside and the mice out. Though I didn't have any mice inside this winter. I'll have to repeat this performance on the other side, which isn't as bad as this side was. This was not as bad a job as I had feared, but mainly because I didn't do a 100% job and remove the interiour bits.

Maybe I'll do the '83 Wagon as well. Time, time.

#45

Did the RR fenderwell today.

As you can see, it doesn't look all that bad before I touch it with the wire brush wheel and a hammer. But it was very holy. The rust was higher than my 12x18" alum. sheet could cover, hence the upper patch. It came out a bit nicer than the left side, overall.

NissanDiesel Forums

Al Savage's 1982 Maxima Wagon

Who is online