Interesting problem with Nissan V6 (drive belt/wp)

[Gary Allan]

My pastor's wife totaled his Nissan pickup. He bought another one with the check. It looked real nice and ran well ...until..

The PO had swapped the engine at one point. Apparently he put in a FWD version (allegedly) of the engine, but didn't swap the serpentine pulley system (or couldn't = whatever) and kept the original V-belt accessory drives. The problem is that the shaft on the wp is too short and they're not on the same plane. The thing must have just held together long enough for the guy to cash the check.

The temporary solution that looked promising was a machined spacer that would bolt on to the pressed wp pulley flange (fan attached). This worked fine for a short time. Apparently, either from imbalance or too much outboard load, the cast (I think) flange blew apart.

My thought was to get another water pump as a template, and machine a one piece, proper length/depth) pulley flange with (perhaps) a set screw since the normal interference fit may be impractical/impossible to manage.


Any help?


Short story - the wp is too short to put the drive pully on the same plane as the rest of the accessory drives. He could attempt to convert it to the serpentine ..but that's not going to be too cheap since he's not going to the U-pull-it to manage the whole basket case ..and the costs make the machining route more sensible.

 

[Newtonville]

The 1990 Maxima VG30E I know has only v belts, and is a very strong, reliable system. That whole car was just well made. Maybe yours is a newer system. I believe it has three v belts, the water pump and ps on one belt, a/c on one, and alt. on one. Maybe a belt is mixed/messed up, or wp itself is wrong.

 

[Gary Allan]

Well, are you saying that no Nissan trucks used V-belts? The way it looked, the PO used the old engine's accessories. The wp was selected by being the only one (apparently) that fit it using the old one as a template.

If there was some part data base that spec'd the shaft length and whatnot, it would determine if just a wp swap would work.

 

[Newtonville]

I don't know what Nissan trucks use for belts. It sounded like you said it was a fwd engine and the PO "maybe" swapped the belts from the truck to the new engine. Since the fwd has no fan on the wp, maybe the wp for the truck is different, like you are suspecting.

 

[meep]

I'd buy the proper pump for that engine, to match the other drives, then convert to electric fan.

M

 

[The_Jeff]

What a waste. Up here and presumably down there there are tons of good running pathfinders with rusted out frames. Any would make a good engine donor and they can be had for $300.

 

[Gary Allan]

Originally Posted By: meep
I'd buy the proper pump for that engine, to match the other drives, then convert to electric fan.

M


That was my first suggestion. Until I saw the engine. It's not a fan issue. It's the plane that the wp puts the drive pulley on.

The wp for the normal north:south engine does not fit this block (allegedly) since it was an east:west design.

What I think the PO did was ..he found a like displacement Nissan V6 for a cheap price ..and didn't research the rest of the story. He probably didn't bother getting the accessory drives along with the deal since he wanted to keep everything where it was ..or couldn't swap it due to it putting stuff in the wrong place (ac compressor needing longer/different lines = alternator harness ..PS lines/pump ..etc...etc...etc.).

 

[meep]

OK - either the PO:
1. swapped N/S components and left the E/W WP or
2. kept the E/W components and swapped a N/S WP

Do the accessories mount to a subframe or do they mount to the block?

to me it read like maybe they did #2, to use a N/S WP with the fan flange. So if you got back to a WP that matched accessories the belting would be fixed but you'd be faced with having to do a fan job.

??

M

 

[Gary Allan]

I think he did #1. That is E/W engine E/W wp ..N/S accessories.

..but I'm reading what you're saying. The reason that they chose the wp that this did ..is that it has a fan flange.

Pondering more...