My lift kit has been installed and man what a monster the Pathfinder is now











Currently it is not drivable at the moment. I ran into tie rod length issues when installing the kit so for now, it is sitting at the shops parking lot.

I will explain in Part 2 why I am having troubles with the tie rods.

Alright, so one quick note:

DO NOT USE THE FABTECH KNUCKLES FROM THE NISSAN FRONTIER 6 INCH LIFT KIT. THEY ARE A NIGHTMARE



This is a titan swap specific outer tie rod threaded into the pathfinder/frontier/xterra inner tie rod. As you can see, its too long :evil:

Due to the following design changes on the fabtech knuckle, I ran into the following problems:

1. The tapered hole on the knuckle for the tie rod mount is bigger than the factory taper hole on the factory knuckle. Because of this, you are forced to use the fabtech specific outer tie rods. YOU CANNOT RUN HEIM KITS FROM PRG, DIRT KING, CJD RACING, ETC.



2. The fabtech knuckle tie rod mount curves away from the wheel rather than staying in the factory position. They designed the knuckle that way so you could clear a smaller wheel with their bracket lift knuckles. This is fine if you plan on running the STOCK WIDTH on the pathfinder.

When you TITAN SWAP the front end with the drop bracket lift, The distance between the inner and outer tie rods increase again.



This picture shows that the outer tie rod cannot reach the inner tie rod when the knuckle is straight and the steering wheel is centered. We attempted to use the Titan inner tie rods because they are 10 inches long. The stock inner tie rods are 8 inches long. They still could not reach the inner tie rod. If the outer tie rod had a longer shaft by maybe 1-2 inches, then we would have been fine.

So we tried using a tie rod extension on the titan inner tie rods I had laying around at the shop



The threads on the outer tie rod shaft stop at the 2 inch mark. The thread on the extension that go into the inner tie rod were bottomed out as well.

The extension was too long.

I have since decided that we have to go back to the stock inner tie rods if we plan on using an extension to reach the outer tie rod. I ordered 3.75 inch long tie rod extensions from dirt king fabrication.



Hopefully these resolve the issue im having. Otherwise Its undrivable for now

The other options I have to fix the tie rod issue:

1. Remove the fabtech knuckle and install the rough country spindle that came with my kit. These however require 18x9 wheels with 5 inches of backspacing and 0mm of offset or more. I would need to buy new wheels and tires to make that happen.

2. Order the CJD Racing Steering knuckles. These correct the steering angle and allow for a 16 inch wheel to be ran. These cost $1350.

3. remove the titan swap parts and go with just the drop bracket lift kit. Not ideal since id be paying the shop to take the stuff off and reinstall the old parts.