Well, I finally started the project of replacing my radiator support after all these years. I figured it was about time, given the level of decay down there. I've got everything that can't be cut off the car removed, and I'm waiting for a free day to start removing the rusted out support.

Speaking of rust, every other bolt seemed to be so rusted that it twisted off...regardless of how much penetrating oil I used. Most of them are easily replaceable, however the nuts securing the headlight housing (3 out of 4 anyway) decided to take the studs with 'em. Any way to replace the headlight mounting studs without replacing the entire assembly? Maybe new headlights are in my future.

From looking at the support, and how it mates up to the chassis, I can't figure out why welding is even needed. The support seems to bolts up pretty damn securely via 5 heavy duty bolts on each side (3 for the tow-hook, 2 for the bumper support). I guess the lower support should be fastened to the upper support, though the joint on mine is rusted entirely with no apparent issues.

Were the original spot welds put in just to make assembly easier at the factory? I plan on putting a few welds in here and there, but I can't help but think they serve no purpose.

A few pictures; hopefully I can get back to work on this project within the next week or two. I plan on removing as much rust as possible, and painting every piece of bare metal...any suggestions on paint?

 

good luck. just play it safe and reweld at all the spots.
where are you located btw...i'm looking for someone/place to do this at a reasonable price lol

 

Ho-lee-sheet! Thats cancer for you.

If you have a tap and die set, drill out the broken bolts and re-thread the holes. Easy peasy.

 

Nice project, keep us updated on your work.

 

I'm about 60 miles north of NYC, so I couldn't begin to recommend a shop for your area.

Hopefully I'll be able to drill/tap what broke, but given the ammount of rust I may be forced to use nuts/bolts/washers a lot of places.

My dad just returned the compressor he borrowed from me, so maybe I'll start work again this week.

Can anyone recommend a good rust converter? I'd like to hit all the rust with a wirewheel and just put a converter/paint over it and be done with it. Someone recommended POR15 to me as being the ultimate converter, but I'll have to do some research on it.

 

duplicolor make this stuff called rustfix. it seems to work pretty good. it goes on clear and turnes rust to black primer. round here a can goes for about 12 bucks. i used it and im happy. of course you do need some good metal to work with. give that a shot.

 

Well there is always a debate between POR15 and Rust Bullet, I have used both and I find Rust Bullet simpler to use. As far as long term durability, I would say they are equal...


Zack

 

damn that looks really bad.. seems like nothing is holding up...

keep us updated on the whole project. As Im sure some of us including myself is needing info on my upcoming project on the R.S

 

My uncle is like a pro at rotted rad supports. Hit me up if u want him to do them. He welds them and everything were like 4weeks deep in work tho, but we could fit ppl in

 

I swear to god, if salt,lime, And all that other crap put on the roads is not legal by the time I get a new car, I am suing the state if I still live here. lol

 

Good luck with the rad support replacement...make sure to buy oem and if you can, just replace the lower section!
As for the headlight housing repair I did a "how to" on one of my postings.
Here is the link...just scroll down to the last entry, I even inserted some links to pics in my album.

http://forums.maxima.org/4th-generat...ng-repair.html

I broke off all four of my mounting bolts and they are all holding up just fine after this repair! Any questions feel free to ask me.

 

Try Eastwood products, they are known for their rust removal and rust converter products. I have used them in the past and they do work!

http://www.eastwood.com/

 

Thanks for the recommendations on the rust converters. I ended up going old school: wire wheel/sand and primer.

Update:
It wasn't all that troublesome getting the old support off. A few hours with a cold chisel, hammer, cutoff wheel and drill did the trick nicely. I ended up drilling out just enough of the welds so the metal peeled away, allowing me to grind the welds off afterwards leaving no holes in the original metal. It worked out perfectly. I attacked everything with a wire-wheel and then primed it.

Right now everything is dry-fit, and it lines up perfectly. I don't plan on painting anything, since it's all covered by the bumper anyway. I'm also on the fence about welding the core support in place...even with the bolts only hand tight, it is rock solid. I can't imagine the welds will offer any additional support, so I'm contemplating leaving the paint intact and just bolting it together. I'm going to reattach the upper to the lower support (the very thin shrouds on each side of the radiator) with either welds or rivets, in any case.

Thanks a million for that, sgt! It's exactly what I was hoping to hear. I will definitely give it a shot and let you know how it works out.

 

should have been a recall on this for all 4th gens for cripes sake. what a pita!!!

 

Sryth, I had the exact same thoughts as you, in regards to the welds. In the end I couldn't bring myself to not weld. The best excuse I could think of was the potential for squeaks/rattles.

 

hmm if you end up not welding...and it holds up well, i just might take a crack at this. the welding is the only thing that stops me from attempting this...

 

If I decide to leave it unwelded, I'll be sure to let everyone know how it holds up. I'll probably not weld it just to see how well it holds up. There are those that argue that welding is absolutely required, and I'd like to put it to the test. I'm 100% confident that any "failure" due to not welding won't be catastrophic...maybe a squeek or two like jdooley suggests. Without a wrench, I would stand no hope in even moving the thing the way it sits.

I suspect that the welds were done to ease assembly. The bolts that hold the support on are really for other things (tow hooks and bumper brackets), so when the car was on the line it only made sense to have a few welds holding the support in until those other parts were bolted on. If humans were putting the cars together, I bet the welds would've been left out.

 

You're right. The bolts that are holding those supports should be enough for the radiator support. It will only be holding half of the engine's weight. Its not often that you find a 4th gen being pulled from the front by a chain (a matter of fact, never seen it done, only flatbed)

 

Other than knowing I wanted a Maxima, I didn't know of this support issue at all untill the seller happened to mention it that the one on this car had been replaced. Later on (I bought it), I crawled underneath to see what was what. Looked like a straightforward repair. Mine too, was welded.

 

Sounds like you have another piece of steel welded to the support for reinforcement? If it was repaired properly, it'd be hard to tell it was replaced.

 

i've done over 100 of these.....the 2000-2003 maxima are actually worse.....i've seen some really nice ones with only 50k miles rusted to nothing. Good old Maine winters and Nissan cutting corners. Guys...if you are gonna replace it......do weld it.....doesn't need much but it should be done. Ever brought something to a welder to have work done? THose guys charge rediculously cheap money. Do it right, do it once.

 

Recall................. That word is not in Nissan's lexicon!! All Nissan does is pretend that issues don't exist, and screw their hardworking customers! The list is endless...........................

WD21 Pathfinder's that have rotten frames.........and floors...and bodies..
4th Gen Maxima's Rad core support
2005 > Xterra's, timing chain issues, gas guage issues(but not a full scale recall)

I am so fed-up with Nissan. In the past they were a good company, now IMHO they sell terrible vehicles.
I know that Toyota has had some issues as of late, however when they realized that the frames of their Tacoma pick-up's were rotting, they purchased every rotted truck at 150% of book value.


Zack

 

Toyota has super ****ing nasty customer support, if any other car companies did what they do for their customers they'd prolly go outta business. lol. But thats the beauty of money management. chevy is like, "eh we got enough if we don't **** it, its America" but anyway, to the point. When i did my Maxima core support it was before i realized it was a widespread issue, i use a piece of angle iron with two inch sidewalls, ground out the worst of the core support rust, and welded it over the existing and got grade 8 nuts and bolt, I'm also going to build bars that go from the steering rack mounts, to it and bolt those in and put a strut bar in because the under hood of these cars are way under built.

 

Sounds like a lot more work than putting a factory support on! Was that scope creep, or did you feel replacing the support wasn't good enough?

 

Just wrecked my 97 SE & have decided to attempt a rebuild on my own. The worst of the damage (head on collision - Maxima vs Crown Vic - Max lost ) was the fact that engine mount that once was bolted to the lower radiator support has now completely broken free.

My question is - is anyone aware of a good place (or person) that knows how to weld this in Chicago(land)?

 

Anyone seem an engine fell because of the radiator support issue?

 

I sincerely doubt the engine could fall out, since it is being supported by the left and right mounts.

If your support rotted away completely, the C bar would be low enough to catch on things like speedbumps, curbs, and small woodland creatures. If that happened at a good speed, you might have a chance at tearing the engine/tranny out, but I think you'd need to be trying to get it done. Even in the drive-into-a-curb-at-90mph scenario, the force would be upward, so I think your engine would be pushed through the hood.

What could fall out is the radiator. I wouldn't feel comfortable driving around with a rotted core support.

 

My 99 GXE failed in the state inspection because of the "rusty radiator support". Please check the picture. Do I need to replace it or I can still drive it for a couple of more years? It already has 150K on it.

It looks like impossible for me to weld the support.



Thanks,

slao8880

 

I have never heard of a car failing inspection because of rusted radiator support...so if you have rust on your undercarriage and it has a hole, does that fail inspection too?? To answer your question though, I would take it to a welder and let them place a quarter inch piece of iron at the bottom of that to prevent further rusting.

 

They said it is a safety issue. I guess I need to try anther workshop. I didn't believe the engine would drop off when they said so.

Again, thanks for the advice.

-slao8880

 

They wanted you to pay them to fix it.

It's a tactic shops use to make $.

 

Take it to another shop. That shouldn't fail because of that

 

Having just bought my first Maxima, I'm definitely no expert, but thanks for sharing a pic of a nicely weathered support. Obviously this support does double duty, not only the radiator (piece of cake in comparison) but also the eng/trans somewhat. I don't see where replacing the entire support with fresh metal should be that hard. Seems like a machine shop could make something easy or some kind of fabrication shop.

 

I just did this repair last week, and mine was in really bad shape. I should have taken some pictures. The bolts for the cradle/tie support broke that whole section of cancer up when trying to remove them. I bought two new replacement fasteners from the local dealer for less than two dollars a piece. Drilling holes through all of the pinch welds is the biggest pita, but not difficult, just a little time consuming. I got the lower tie support from OrderInfinitiParts.com. They had the cheapest price ($143 shipped)o f the countless vendors I checked and I received it in 4 days. It was so much easier buying the whole lower piece than trying to fab something up. The piece fits in so easily with no guesswork and you have the piece of mind that everything is lining up perfectly straight, plus it looks great and clean. It bolts in solidly, and if you don't have a welder, I imagine some self tapping sheetmetal screws in a few places would be adequate to secure it. I went ahead and welded a good deal of it even though it seemed unecessary. At any rate, this is not that difficult a repair and I would totally recommend just ordering the factory part versus fabbing up some repair.

I like to do all my major repairs/maintenance in the summer so that when school is in session I have no worries. At the same time I also replaced :

-motor and trans mounts (original ones looked fine but showed some slight cracking in the rubber, I was really torn on whether this was necessary/worthwhile or not - $140)
I ended up getting some off eBay, Chinese replacements but this was probably the best/most noticeable repair I made at this time.

- clutch (original, was fine, just figured it was time so it didn't go out on me in the winter sometime $100)

- axle shafts (60 a piece with no core charge, boots were torn on the old ones, pass side made a little noise) at the same time.

After reinstall I had a little trouble with hard starting, but thanks to the forum, I added a couple 4 and 6 gauge grounds to points on the transmission and the problem was solved.
Car has 219k and runs like a champ! Take care of these cars and they do run forever. Only thing that has went wrong in the eight years I've owned this car was the alternator puked and that was totally covered by a factory recall.

 

take some pictures of your freshly repaired one than.

also.. space out your rant, its hard to read a giant block of words.

 

Well, hello there. I'm not sorry you weren't pleased with a post containing one paragraph with mostly proper grammar, capitalization, spelling, and punctuation. There's even an itemized list spaced so that the post isn't one wall of text. If you had taken the time to actually read the content of the post, you would see it doesn't even qualify as a rant. I'm not positive, but I would guess you just have below average reading and comprehension skills. As you said, my post was apparently "hard" to read. I feel sorry for you for that.

Anyway, I went out to take some pics of it. It's not visible from below with the splash shields installed. A couple shots from above weren't very good, but you can see the fresh black-painted sheet metal.

 

Yes you do , if you undid your side mounts the core would break. keep a eye on that oil pan too, and i bet you should check out yer truck, and down behind the rear wheels.

 

took me 20 minutes, ill post pictures someday when i get a new cord for my camera

 

Whoa man, slow your roll wasn't trying to start a fire. Its not that I personally find it hard to read ( also coming into the forum and insulting ones intelligence on your second post is a bad way to start on the .org ) I just know that some people find it annoying and/or hard to read a reply thats all a big block. Thats really it, and in terms of moving on with this you have my apologies for offending you.

 

So would it be acceptable to cut out the rusted area and replace it with say 1/8th in steel plate weld it to the existing rad support and drill two holes and weld nuts to the top side? This would be much easier for me than to replace the whole radiator support and i would assume much cheaper.