2005 P-Finder LE 57k miles maintenance (just thinking out loud)

[racerken]

This is my wife's car that is driven everday in Michigan (10f to 105f) from home to school and some errands so over 5 years we only pegged 57k miles. About 1/year trip for 2,000 but most daily driving is +/- 10 miles.

I change the oil once in the fall when leaves turn with Mobil 10-40 and again when the snow melts, like right now.I changed the transmission fluid last year with Mobil.I changed the front final drive unit, the trans-axle, the rear final drive unit at 25k so it's due.I just changed the spark plugs and it was a SoB to change, especially while drinking an entire bottle of wine. Note to everyone: you have to remove all the vacuum hoses (well, anything that is impeding movement of the air filter house back to the intake manifold collector), all brackets of the wire harness so it is flexible, and the intake manifold collector but not all the way off, just so you can get to plugs 1 and 3 (front - passenger side).It took me 3 hours. Now the 'engine service' light is on but I'm sure it's because the ecu noticed that all sorts of things just changed, like the cleaning of the throttle body...I was also going to do the VAIC thing where you epoxy the valve and actually took everything out, then I remembered that I have the some home depot epoxy with no details on how impervious it is to gas. So I put it all back together. I think you can take it apart in about 20 minutes.

The brakes were strange looking so they are on the list of things to hit. Look at the pictures I tool last october. I swear that the front rotors have a casting defect but Nissan told me that it's probably 5 years of detroit salt.

One side:The other side:

What do you think is wrong?I think the rotor OEM supplier did a bad job in casting...I've never seen wear like this nor have I seen corrosion. Have you?

So I'm going to replace the rotors and pads with these:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors...AX:IT

Have any of you purchased this brand? Brakemotive on Ebay?I think it's a deal.

While I have all this suspension open to me, I'm thinking about replacing the front struts and rear shocks with bilsteins 5100.

Anyone try these and do you know any sources?

Thanks,

Ken
Modified by racerken at 8:45 PM 3/23/2010

[wizeguy]

Pads are not making full contact with the rotors...Forget those slotted ebay rotos...If they are warped, how are you going to send them back? with your pathfinder on jack stands, waiting 2 weeks?Pretty much all the rotors are imported made junks, so just buy them at a local parts store... Buy decent pads...Bendix, Raybestos, make sure they have the pad shims and caliper hardware kit with them....Lube the caliper hardware kit were the pads slide on, it will prevent the pads from doing what they are doing now to your rotors.