Group,

After 267,868 miles of nearly trouble-free service, my trusty '87 Pathfinder has died. My JATCO 3N71 B automatic transmission has been acting funky of late, having a severe case of "morning sickness" and not wanting to shift into second gear. Today, second gear became my second "neutral" -a real bummer, as the parts needed to fix the problem are scarce and expensive. So far, we're talking 2K to 3K to get a car worth 2.5K when fully funtional fully funtional again. Time to start shopping for a replacement, perhaps?

I hate shopping for cars. I hate car payments, too. That's why I drive -or drove- such an old car and smiled all the while.

I'm not smiling now, though. That's where you all come in. I'm seeking opinions on what you think the ideal fishing car from the 1997 to 2000 model year is, and why.

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Jp

I'll be in your position soon, I'm lookin at the Subaru Forester or Outback, small but four wheel drive. I think there about 10-15k for the years yer thinkin of, maybe less. I've heard good things about them.

Brian

why not get another pathfinder?

i have a 93 4x4 pathfinder, bought it in 99. i LOVE it. except.. well, now that you mention it, i bought one of those pull-out imported engines last year. so that's good for awhile, but the transmission itself is acting up lately. not wanting to shift into 2nd gear too. ugh. it's an AT. i've held onto it for so long because i love the body style, and we need to have a few more fun experiences together... but it's up to 240,000+ right now, so you can imagine another/newer nissan would hold out as long. get a four door version though. adds some respectability and convenience too.

good luck.

eric
fresno, ca.

I would argue that what you really need is a beater -- something you wouldn't mind driving down brush-lined trails and heavily rutted roads. 4WD is useful, of course, as is high axel clearance, along with enough room in the cab or bed to stretch out a sleeping bag. I once drove a 20-year-old Chevy pickup 9,000 miles through the American and Canadian West, checking out storied and less-so trout waters, and the only difficulties I encountered were when I tried to ascend a steep embankment in 2WD (all I had) on Wyoming's New Fork, and when I descended a very long unpaved grade, on which my brakes began to smoke (even in low gear), in Washington. The truck earned plenty of nicks and scratches along the way, but because of its prior life in the construction trade, no one noticed any change in its generally decrepit state. And if I really had to, I could've walked away from the thing with no qualms and little loss in investment.

Group,

Epzamora's suggestion to get another Pathfinder struck a chord with me. Yeah, the Pathy might not be the all-out off-highway vehicle that a Jeep Wrangler is, but it's still a pretty darn capable ride. Mine has the factory optional 31X10.5 tire package and a limited slip rear diff, so it takes me where I want to go, and takes me home again--even with the failing transmission, it didn't leave me stranded. Four doors would be nice, but we're doing okay with the two-door configuration.

The only gripes that I have about the Pathfinder are: 1) the turning radius, at 38 feet, makes negotiating tight trails a pain; 2) it's asking alot of 155 hp to move all of that road-hugging lard down the road, and 3) it is broken at the moment.

Over the past 12 months, the car received new tires, new shocks, new radiator, water pump, cam timing belt, accessory drive belts, fan clutch, battery, and coolant hoses. Twelve months prior to that, the "top end" of the motor was rebuilt, with new valves and new cams. It also had a host of emmissions-related parts replaced, including the catalytic converter.

The motor runs strong, and there isn't much left that can go wrong with it now. Except for the shifting problem, it runs very well, passes the emissions test with flying colors, and presents well. It still gets the same 15.6 to 17 mpg highway that it did when new, with compression where it should be and less than 5 psi difference between the highest and the lowest of the six cylinders. It still gets 48lbs of oil pressure, too, so the motor still has some life left in it.

Why not another Pathfinder? Probably because I know what's been done to this one that I already have and what needs doing, and I'd have to find that out about another "pre-owned" vehicle.

The total bill to get the Pathfinder on the road again will be $3,570.00, or about the minimum one would want for a down payment to finance another used SUV in the 8 to 10K range. But then you're talking nearly $200.00 a month for the privilage of driving an old car that is only getting older. My old car is paid for.

The big bummer of this situation, really, is that the Pathfinder was the only car my wife and I had at the time that it went kaput. I can votingmachines the cash together to fix my Pathy, but the dealer needs to have it an estimated 1 to 2 weeks or more to do a complete transmission overhaul on it.

I've concluded that it's cheaper to keep her, so that's what I'm going to do.

We needed a second car, however, so I bought an '87 Porsche 924S today from a guy who had all of the maintenece records on the car; a paper trail that suggested to me that the fellow was as customer_request_form about vehicle maintenance as I am. If only he'd have changed the throttle cable.... It broke on the way from the seller's location in West LA to home, doing so right in front of our church where my son goes to school. So, it's sitting in the parking lot now, waiting until I get down there tomorrow to put a new cable on it.

With the Porsche up and running, we'll have a car to tool around in while the Pathfinder is getting fixed. While it is true that I now have two cars that don't function correctly, it is also true that they can be fixed. When they are, I still won't have a car payment. It's amazing how much vehicle repair and maintence you can get done with 10 months worth of what most folks spend on a car payment sitting in your bank account! For what I'd spend purchasing one new car, I can have a really nice, reliable sports car and and SUV, with money to spare.

Thank for your message epzamora! You made me fall in love with my Pathfinder all over again!

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Well, if you don't mind foriegn, Think of an older landcruiser maybe. I've owned two. The first was a '70 wagon. Straight 6, Carborator, points and condensor. Everything was as simple as it could be. replaced the 3 speed tranny with a four and the vacuum 4wheel lock with a stick. Pistons as big a round as coffee cans and a stoke as long as your forearm. Low end torgue was the name of the game and you could crawl over boulders all day long and never overheat. Add a four row radiator and you could do that through the desert.
The next one was an '86. It had the 2F engine and 4 speed tranny. Not as good as the older one. but after 300,000 miles the power steering gave up and I dumped it.
Damn good trucks though. The later models seemed to be nothing more than highway cruisers meant to get you into Mammoth if it was snowing. They regeared the tranny for highway speeds which was nice but lost touch with what they were built to do. They really weren't trucks anymore, they were SUV's.
That old pathfinder you had was a good truck.
Best to you,
Mike

Group,

Well, my wife and I got the Porsche running again yesterday morning, swapping the busted throttle cable for a new one right there in the church parking lot where the car had been sitting for nearly a week. It was a simple job; the hardest part being unsnapping the old cable from it's mount on the accellerator pedal assembly and then snapping the new one on. From there, adjusting the cable to get rid of the slack without raising the idle speed took about 10 minutes for me to get it right.

This Porsche was cheaper to buy than a number of early 90s econo-sedans with similar milage and overall condition. On the used car market, a 924S or 944 is one of the cheapest cars you can buy. In spite of this, there is a fairly extensive aftermarket for them. I wanted a 924S when they were new, but couldn't afford one on my police officer salary back then. It was the aftermarket support for the car that made me decide to shop for one now. You can virtually re-build one of these, mechanically and cosmetically. Even though they are dirt cheap to buy now, Porsche 924S and 944 models are still enthusiast or "hobby" cars -sort of like 60s Mustangs, Cameros, Corvettes, air-cooled Beetles, and so forth.

My Pastor drives a 66 Mustang, and instead of buying new cars over the years, he has kept his old car looking and running like new, thanks to aftermarket support which makes that possible.

Ain't so with a Pathfinder. When the seats are looking tatty in a Mustang or other "enthusiast car", you can buy all the stuff you need from the foam padding to the vinyl covering to make them as good as new again. Dittos for dash pads, headliners, carpets, and so on.

With a Jeep Wrangler, if your interior is looking ratty you can buy a variety of brand spankin' new seats from a number of suppliers -same with carpet kits and other trim items, too. And you can have brand new seats that are cheaper than having factory seats recovered and more comfortable, too.

I don't mind driving an old car, but there is a difference between driving around in an old properly maintained and well sorted car and an old piece of junk. Without aftermarket support, no matter what you do, your old car will eventually turn into an old pice of junk becuase you can't fix what you can't replace.

The Porsche was attractive as a second car for many reasons. The first was price, as you can get a really nice and well maintained 924S or 944 for 4K or less. The second was aftermarket support which helps you keep one running and looking like new. The third was that it's nimble, quick, and consumes about half the fuel that the Pathy does. The fourth was, well, that water-cooled it may be, and the engine might be at the wrong end, but it's still a Porsche, and nobody cares how old your Porsche is. They don't go out of style.

So it is with Jeeps, too.

Eric's post had me thinking about why I love my Pathfinder, but I doubt I'll love it so much when the interior starts to show it's age and there isn't much that I can do about it. Dan's post got me to thinking about why the purchase of a 17 year old Porsche made perfect sense to me. It was all about having a "commuter car" that was more intrinsically cool than others, and one that I could keep maintained the way I want, both mechanically and cosmetically, for many years to come.

Looks like I might be shopping for a replacement for the Pathfinder, after all....

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

Glad you are up and running JP. As an aside-the coolest fishing car that I ever rode in weekly to fish was a new at-the- time Lincoln Mark IV. A pristine white one. White leather-the works. It was sort of cool to pull up to the river in that car and then unload a bunch of fishin' gear and ratty looking anglers. My friend would borow it from his Boss once a week; the boss, of course, not knowing that his precious ride was going to be pressed into duty in quite that manner.

So instead of another Pathfinder someday, please consider a 99' Mark VIII next time. Fishing in the lap of luxury ain't all that bad.

and just for grins, here is a shot of the new Mark X. Now THAT is a fishing car



RL

_________________
Loyd-Just look at what you have started!

Rich,

Thanks for the suggestion of the Lincoln. I actually took a look at one about a month ago at a used car lot here in San Juan. It was a kind of pearlescent white color, with a tan leather interior. I even took it out and drove it. It was surprisingly quick, and very quiet. All in all, a comfortable ride.

A nice car? It certainly was. But a Porsche it ain't.

When I was a kid, Porsche used to have an ad campaign that went soemthing along the lines of "there is no substitute." Being too young to drive, the message was lost on me. It isn't now, however.

My 924S isn't a quiet car. When it's at idle in neutral, you can hear the exhaust note burbling in the background in a deep, throaty, masculine voice. There isn't another four-cylinder engine on the planet that sounds quite like it. You hear the "driveshaft" between the engine in the front and the transaxle in the back, too. When you run it through the gears on a freeway on-ramp, you know that internal combustion is making the thing move as the note from the exhaust that was burble becomes an authoritative growl--powerful sounding, but not obnoxiously "ricey," like those lowered Honda Civics with the six-inch-diameter exhaust pipes are that you see so many of our youth driving around in today.

And move it most assuredly does. Even with 150,000 miles on the motor, it pulls hard to 4,000 RPM and then it gets "on the cam" in gearhead-speak and pulls VERY hard, all the way to to the 6,500 RPM redline.

Once you get it up to 120 to 140 Kph--or around 75 mph--you can still hear the exhaust, but it's subtle and unobrusive music to my ears. Roll-on acceleration from there feels like there's a 5.0 litre V8 under the hood, rather than an I-4 half that size. Porsche used balance shafts in these engines to cancel out the shakes that most in-line 4 cylinder engines have, and the smooth power delivery combined with the amount delivered makes you feel like you're driving a car with V8 or in-line 6 power.

When you get on the brakes, you know you're not driving a Ford. The braking power is awesome. Pitch it into a corner at speed, and if you're like me and your only hands-on experience with driving a Porsche was with their rear-engine cars, the balanced, secure hadling is also a surprise. A 911 isn't the easiest car in the world to drive at or near the limit of adhesion, but these front-engined Porsche models might very well be. My 17-year-old 924S handles better than any car I've ever owned--period. That list includes a Triumph TR-4 A, a '71 LT 1 Corvette, a Pontiac Trans Am GTA, and a '92 5.0 Mustang, among other things.

Yeah, my Porsche might be old. It might not be the cleanest or most pristine-looking 924S that you'll see on the roads, either, but it won't take much to make it that way. My Porsche might not look like much right now, but it's my Porsche and I'm not sharing ownership of it with a bank.

Most of the time I don't need off-highway capability to get to my fishing holes, as I do most of my fly fishing in salt water here along the Southern California coast--so why not press the 924S into service as a fishing car?

Nice try, Rich, and I thank you for the suggestion, but I'm afraid it's wasted on me..

Life......Powered by Porsche.

--JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

JP-I am confused. I thought the Pathfinder is YOUR fishing vehicle and the new Porsche is the Wife's new wheels?? I guess you have shuffled the priorities

...and just enough room in the Porsche's turtle deck for a 3-PC rod case? Hope so... Good thing you don't chuck bait these days. The surf rods would never fit.

You win the cool fishing car contest if your fishin' car is that cool Porsche.

I just have a dumb ole PU

Rich

_________________
Loyd-Just look at what you have started!

Rich,

When we decided to buy a front-engine Porsche, the idea was that it would be a commuter car that my wife could use to get the 24 miles from our home here in San Juan to her office in Irvine. We've had only one car for about a year now, and we really needed another one. Now, with the Pathfinder kaput, we're back down to one car until we either fix the Pathfinder or replace. I haven't decided which way to go yet. Right now, I'm leaning toward replacing it with a Jeep Wrangler...or fixing it. It's a tough decision.

Actually, there's a surprising amount of room under the glass hatch of the Porsche for fishing gear, if you're just fishing for the day and not camping out anywhere.

Yeah, I don't chuck bait these days. I've never used bait in the surf, but at first that was becuase I couldn't afford to buy it as a 12 year old. I found that I could catch fish without it, so it never seemed worth the hassle to me. I'm not one of these fly fishers who is seeking to convert the world. If a person likes to fish bait and it's legal to do, I say fish away. I don't get much satisfaction out of fishing that way, but that's my own hang-up -no one else's. So I don't need to lug around one of those long surfcasting sticks. If I did, I wouldn't get much fishing done with just the Porsche for wheels!

As for "winning the coolest fishing car contest"... It ain't me, but I know who would win it, if there was such a thing. A fellow LBCC member has a '92 Range Rover that has every modification you can think of and even some that I never would have thought of... Air locking differentials... Lift... Big tires.... Winch.... A trick in-cab rack that lets you transport fly rods in fishing-ready condition.... and so forth and so on.. Now that's cool!

-JP

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

The best "fishing car" I ever drove was a 1969 Datsun 510 4-door. It was actually my mom's car when I was a encyclopedia, but it had a McPherson strut independent rear suspension and an overhead cam 1.5 liter engine that tacked out at about 6,500 rpm. As such, I WHIPPED that car and it just wouldn't die. I drove all the washboard dirt roads to my favorite fishing holes "Dukes of Hazzard style," i.e., I went sideways and backsteered through every corner. I also took it on roads that were otherwise reserved only for high clearance 4WD vehicles, and I never broke anything. My mom finally sold it when it had about 165,000 very hard miles on it.

I brought a lot of crappie, bluegill, and few largemouth bass home in the trunk of that car.

Group,

I gave up on the idea of driving my trusty Pathfinder in perpetuity. I decided to take Dan's advice, and have been shopping for a Jeep Wrangler for nearly a month now.

I decided on a 97 or 98 TJ version. I figure the coil spring suspension ought to work great on the trail, where you can't have too much axle articulation and where "droop compliance" allows the tires to maintain contact with the ground and thus maintain traction. Plus, the rear seat is a little wider on the TJ than it is on the earlier leaf-spring YJ version. This is a bonus for schlepping my kids around town or into the boonies with me, as both still need to be in child safety seats for a while.

These things aren't cheap and they don't go unsold very long. I've resigned myself to the idea that I'll have a car payment for a while, as I don't have the scratch to cash one out and will need to finance the purchase. I've also figured out that when you find a good one, you need to buy it when you see it, because if you don't, somebody else will.

Most on the used market of late in my corner of the world are equipped with cloth tops and half doors with side curtains and clear vinyl windows. I can live with the ragtop--for a while--but I really want full doors with honest to goodness glass windows that I can actually see out of. I'd rather have a hardtop, too, but I can compromise to a point and add that later.

In shopping, I've discovered some odd things about these cars that don't make much sense to me. Most of the I-6 powered cars have really high final drive gearing on the order of 3.08:1--that's just plain stupid on a car that is supposed to be "trail rated." What you get is a lot of torque, which is good for off-highway driving, but gearing like that doesn't allow you to put it to much use. I also don't understand what the point is of positioning the fuel tank so low to the ground on a car like this. Even with a 2" suspension lift and 31" tall tires, the gas tank on a TJ Wrangler is still several inches closer to the ground than the gas tank on my Pathfinder is.

I'm already going to spend a fortune to buy the car, and I don't see why I should have to spend another just to get it to do what a Jeep should be able to do right off the showroom floor.

Yeah, it might just be a "Jeep Thing" and yeah, I'm having a hard time undertanding it. . . .

I think I finally found one that will work. It's an I-4 powered model with a five-speed transmission and 3.73 to 1 gears with a limited-slip differential in the rear. It has a 2" suspension lift and 31" tall tires on some really crummy aftermarket steel wheels with way too much offset, so the tires stick out from the body and look really dorky. But it also has real doors, air conditioning, and a CD player. Not that the last bit matters much, because it also has a ragtop that flaps nosily at highway speeds. The downside is that it doesn't have a back seat or seat belts, but the seller is supposed to install them as a condition of sale.

I put this one into low range and it feels low. With the I-6s, low doesn't seem low enough. I was also surprised at the power it has. It fels pretty peppy for an I-4. I'm going back to put a deposit down on the thing tomorrow and hope to get the loan shopped and done on Monday, so I expect to be a Jeep owner by Tuesday. This one isn't perfect, but I'm tired of shopping, so close will have to be close enough.

Thank goodness I do most of my fishing with four-piece rods these days, because I still can't get over how little room there is in one of these things!

--JP

If anybody reading this actually owns one of these TJ Wranglers, I'd appreciate a heads up on what to look for (or look out for) before I sign my life away on this 77K-mile black beauty.

_________________
"I fish, therefore I am."

I can't help but chime in.

I use a Pathfinder. I lucked out and got a "bro rate" from a buddy who took good care of it and was well-off enough to sell it to me for far below market. Mine is a very early model 2WD. The saving grace is that it has good clearance. Some roads aren't always too gnarly and requiring of a 4WD yet still require some space. Also, the payload is great. Between bikes, fishing gear, guitar amps and wood nymphs it has been great.

I think the Jeep approach is smart too. Think of where you will take the vehicle and all should go well. Speaking in general terms: It's kind of nice to be the owner of a light truck/suv/jeep and actually USE it for what it's "designed for" eh!?

May all your LDRs be trophies
Bernard