WreckDiver1321's American D40 Frontier

Hey guys, new member here from all the way over in the United States. I really like the touring/overland type builds, and I've gotten a few ideas from what I've seen on this forum. I thought some people might be interested in seeing what an American D40 owner does with his 4x4.

A little background info on me first. I live in the state of Montana in the northwest US, only an hour drive away from the Rocky Mountains and about seven hours from the Canadian border. My D40 is a way to explore the awesome scenery out here. I started out back in school building large American trucks until I realized that a 5.7l petrol engine and 35 inch tires really wasn't practical for long distance travel. Then I bought a V8 Disco II, which turned out to be another bad idea. It was just a very unreliable money pit. I then wised up and bought my first Nissan, a D22. Owned that for a little over a year, modified it, and found that with my modifications the 3.3l supercharged engine had dreadful fuel economy. So I sold that and finally got myself a D40, known here in the states as a Frontier.

So here she is! This is Lola, on the day I brought her home.





A friend of mine and I drove a 2,340 km round trip over the course of a weekend to go get this truck. When I bought it, it had 180,250 km on the clock. This truck came in the Nismo trim, which includes a nicer interior, sunroof, uprated suspension, Rockford Fosgate stereo, factory subwoofer, and a factory rear e-locker. It has the 4.0l V6 petrol engine which produces 265 hp (197.6 kW) and 285 lb ft (386.4 nm) of torque. This is a silky smooth and punchy powerplant that I think suits the truck pretty well. My goal is to make this a go anywhere touring rig to explore North America.

Welcome to the forum mate! Damn that comes with some nice gear from the factory! Lucky!!!

Supercharged d22 would of been nuts!

Last summer, I simply drove the truck. I did quite a few different tracks and got to know the capabilities and shortcomings of the D40. I also kind of fell in love with the thing. It takes me to many out of the way and beautiful places without a single complaint.

Here's pics of our first trip together, doing the trail to Independence Mine. I installed my Cascadia roof top tent on an old rack I had sitting around from my D22 for this trip.

More pics from the Independence Mine trip.

I spent the next few weeks exploring the state and getting to really know the car. We did the Independence Mine trip the weekend after I bought it. A few days later, I took it out to the grasslands of the Pryor Mountains.

A few days after my little drive through the grasslands, I had a free day to kill and decided to drive out to the mountains. The pass over the nearby Beartooth Mountain range had just opened up for the season.

Even after seeing it several times, the view up there is still breathtaking.





The road winds it's way up the valley, finally cresting at 10,947 feet. Like I said, it's breathtaking.

Of course, right after the road opens up, there's still a bit of snow left up there...







This has to be one of my favorite places in the whole country.

At this point, I felt the truck was sufficiently "broken in," and I could get to modding it!

Beautiful scenic pictures

lovely countryside

Cobez said:

Welcome to the forum mate! Damn that comes with some nice gear from the factory! Lucky!!!

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Haha thanks! Yeah it came pretty well set up. Having the factory locker is really nice. That alone was the reason I drove all that way for this car.

Jased22 said:

Supercharged d22 would of been nuts!

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Yeah it was a great car! Had a decent amount of power and awesome off-road capability, but the economy was just horrendous. Here's my D22:



On a good day it would struggle to get 19 liters/100k. It really didn't like the roof rack and the tent.

POCOYO said:

Beautiful scenic pictures

lovely countryside

Click to expand...

Thanks mate. It really is a beautiful corner of the world.

First think I did was come up with a new bed rack for my RTT. I wanted to get the tent mounted lower to keep it out of the wind, but make it easy to remove if I needed to use the cargo space to carry something.

Yakima Racks makes a pretty slick system, and I thought I'd give it a try.

Funny thing about this mod. It actually increased my fuel economy. Stock, I was doing about 12.4L/100k. With the tent mounted like this, I started averaging 11.2L/100k. In the US, that's a pretty good number for petrol powered dual cab 4x4.

Then I tackled the rear diff breather. Here in the US, these things come with a diff breather that is just pointless. what it comes with is this little guy:



This damn thing works alright if all you're doing is driving on the tarmac. Problem is when you take it off the road, in the mud, or through some water, it has a tendency to suck water into the diff, which is bad in itself, but then the little breather packs up with junk and doesn't allow any air to escape when the internal temperature changes. This allows the diff to pressurize, which causes all the seals in the axle to begin leaking. If left unchecked, this can blow the diff up. So I needed to change it a bit.

First I took off the factory breather.



Remember what I said about it filling with junk?

Then I gathered up some parts...



This little gem is actually a Toyota part! It allows me to have a connection that I can use to move the breather to wherever I want to.

I connected a length of fuel line up and traced the brake up to the frame.



I fished it up behind the tail light and put an inline fuel filter to catch debris.



Then I finished it off with a piece of of metal screen to be doubly sure nothing big finds it's way in.



A cheap and easy modification that goes a long way. Now I can go through mud and water without fear of ruining my diff!

After running some trails out here, I was feeling like I needed to get the belly off the dirt somehow. I wasn't ready to lift yet, since the tires I was riding on were actually smaller than the stock size. Over the past few weeks, the General AT2s that the truck came with had really impressed me, and I figured the best way to get a little more breathing room without too much work was to go up a tire size. So I went to the local tire shop and got myself a set of 265/75R16 General Grabber AT2s.



This did bring the fuel economy back down a touch, but nothing major, so I was pretty happy.

After these little mods, my fiancee and I went back to the Beartooths on a little camping trip.

There's a track out there that climbs up to a plateau with awesome views. Makes for a really fun way to spend a day.

The next weekend, myself and a couple friends went and toured around the mountain hamlet of Cooke City. This town is nestled comfortably at 6500 feet, and the surrounding mountains dwarf it.



This used to be a booming mining area back around the turn of the century. Most of it went bust a long time ago, but much of the equipment and some of the structures are still there.



There is an amazing trail that runs up to a lake in the area, but we were turned back after only a couple kms thanks to snow. Here's my friend's D21.

Luckily, this area isn't short on scenery, so we were able to find another track to investigate.



Eventually, we found the perfect place to camp.