fake patrol QX56 build

[Sooper Camper]

Here's my build thread. We've been using a GX470 for a family adventure car for the last 5 years, but felt the urge to step up into something a little larger, more powerful, and ultimately, weirder. The GX was pretty well setup...Stage 8 Icon system, some mild armor, and other typical overlanderp stuff like dual batteries and what not. You can see some of the articles I did on that car here: https://www.polyperformancegarage.com/category/install/lexus-gx470/
This 'new' car is a 2011 QX56, lived a life as a family soccer/grocery/mountain/beach machine. It's spent the last 6 months parked on a used car lot baking in the Sacramento heat. Rolled over 150k on the drive home.

Came with HBMC and 22" wheels (Deluxe Touring Package). This thing is feature packed...seat coolers, second row seat heaters, power folding everythings, 360 camera...it's great when it all works right??

How it started:

How it's going a couple days later:


Tires are 35 x 11.50 R 17 Toyo Open Country ATs
Wheels are Icon Rebound 17" x 8.5". I ran them on my last build, then bought a trailer and made the wheels match, so I'm kinda committed to them on this build I guess!

The HBMC is not properly functioning, so that will be coming out ASAP. It's a hot mess to drive on the highway! Long term plans include something like King 2.5's, and something to get 2" of lift in the rear. I'll be running the Moog 81085, and a 1" spacer depending on the attitude after install. For now, I ordered some Rancho 9000 Quick Lift Titan struts to get the front squared away, and some Falcon shocks for a Sprinter in the rear (I work for Van Compass). This will at least get me driving for the next few months while I can do some research and come up with a good front coil over option.

For now, I'm also cruising through the usuals...basic maintenance, most of it has been deferred from the looks of things.
Engine oil with '2k on it'. Had to use a pipe wrench to get the oil filter off, and the wrong size (smaller) one was on there. Lovely.

Rear Diff

Front Diff

Other filters that were kinda gross

Wonderful back seat surprise! Most of the cupholders were pretty gross under their trim pieces...some. peoples. children.


We got a great 'deal' on the car, as the hydraulic body motion control system was essentially inoperative...more on that in the next post. It was a fun ~300mi drive home with essentially no suspension damping!

 

[Sooper Camper]

Chipping away at making progress, in typical 10 year old depreciated 2nd owner luxury car fashion....lots of little deferred maintenance things going on with this car....bad door lock actuator, lift struts, CEL for bank 2 below efficiency etc. In doing some reading across the other VK56VD platforms, there was a lot of guys with sedans mentioning the engine going lean due to worn lifter buckets for the high pressure fuel pump.
Great write up here, and even easier on the Armada/QX as there's basically nothing in the way:
https://forums.nicoclub.com/howto-m56-q ... 25231.html

Lifter bucket and O-ring part numbers, should run ~$35. Took 30 minutes before breakfast.

Noticed some soot around the primary and secondary catalyst junction, so I replaced the donuts. Again, 30-45 minute job, and $10 in parts.

On my last build, this actually made a huge difference in observed transmission temperatures, the catalysts apparently put a lot of heat into the lines even after they're cooled by the trans coolers. I used DEI Heat Shroud, gold, because my kid liked how shiny it was.

Flushed the coolant, draining the radiator only gets about half the capacity, so I pulled one of the coolant lines between the trans and engine oil heat exchangers. What a wonderful color that came out:

Flushed the transfer case, filled with what is apparently liquid gold @ $85/qt. (turns out you only need 1). More wonderfully colored fluids leaving. This stuff is a mystery to me...it feels about like 40-50wt engine oil, is clear, smells like ATF and says 75 on the bottle.


Noticed the rear diff support bushings were looking pretty tired, so I tried something quite ghetto. I read in some random thread somewhere that a guy tried this. Let it set for about 48 hours...it's holding great LOL



The 360* camera in this thing is SO SWEET. The car fits on my side yard with literal inches between the house and fence, and this makes it a breeze.

 

[Sooper Camper]

And here, in all it's glory is the HBMC system...or as I call it, the hell of a thousand fasteners. As suspected, it was malfunctioning (0 psi in the system). Based on the (lack therof) fluid that came out, probably air pockets everywhere too. Impressive engineering, but a little over the top and not really end-user serviceable.

Since the HBMC had to go, I went for a pretty quick and basic solution to get the car drivable. We're leaving for Ouray/Silverton tomorrow, so beggars can't be choosers. It's been a long couple weeks, as I basically got this all done in about 3 weekends:

Decided on a simple suspension combo to see what happens and get miles on the car:
Front:
Rancho 9000 QuickLift 'loaded coil overs' since I needed everything. They're spec'd as '04-15 Titan, 1.75" of lift'.
SPC upper control arms


Rear:
Moog springs 81085 coils
Daystar 1" coil spring spacer
Falcon monotube shocks (for the rear of a Sprinter)
Synergy MFG 8070 JK rear upper bar pin eliminator, clearanced to fit.




I'll just come out and say it...holy cow is this car easy to work on.

Finished product, for now. Daystar spacers netted exactly 1" of lift:


So far, I'm pleased. Ride height is good front to back, and there's a giant fridge and battery in back in most of the pictures. There is bit more wheel travel hiding in bushing bind, and the Ranchos aren't longer than stock, so the next setup will open up a lot more travel in front. I dry cycled the rear, and got 10" travel at the wheel, but again, bushing bind is the real constraint. Right now, the shock bottoms with some bump travel to-go. I'm thinking a 1" sub-frame drop will allow just a smidge more compression from the shock, without over-extending at droop, and keep the alignment in better check. Since one half of the shock mount is on the real frame and the other is on the subframe, a 1" spacer makes the shock able to be effectively 1" longer compressed. Alignment came out great with this formula (in my opinion):

This is the thing I don't fully understand:
With just these basic upgrades, non-tuned shocks for a van, and NO SWAY BARS, this car corners flatter than my GX with a $10k suspension kit ever could without sway bars. It's an absolute monster, super compliant, slaloms very predictably. It almost feels like Nissan tuned some passive rear steer into the rear multi-link, and you can see a little toe change when you dry cycle it. This platform has a lot of hidden potential, going to be a fun discovery process.

 

[Sooper Camper]

Everyone's favorite thing to find while prepping for a big summer road trip...apparently the pinion seal did not agree with the new oil I put in.

Everything you need to change the seal, aside from an impact gun and a few other minor hand tools:

Pinion nut = 30mm socket
2-1/2" PVC cap matches the seal perfectly
C-channel with a couple holes drilled

Here's the factory service manual for an R230V diff, great info in here:
LINK Here

R230V is a crush sleeve design, gotta be VERY careful doing this procedure...I did the pinion nut the extra shade tree way: re-use the nut, liberal amounts of red Loctite, sneak up on the nut with an impact, then final torque to spec....manual calls for minimum 135 ft/lbs, I called it good at 150 ft/lbs. Go too far, your pinion preload is toast. If you see my on the side of the road....I went too far.

After the rear lift, I was sitting a little high off the rear bump stops, and getting some tire rub on compression, especially in corners with bumps. Found some nice foam bump stops on Amazon, they are spec'd for the rear of a mid-2000's Silverado 1500. You'll need to pound out the stud they come with, drill out the mounting holes to 12mm. The hardware store only had hex head 12mm x 1.25 bolts, so I slotted the heads with a cut-off wheel and it worked great. The car now feels a lot more progressive in the rear and the bump engages much sooner.

 

[paulforeman]

This is going to be cool. Looking forward to seeing what you end up doing. I love the color too.

 

[toastyjosh]

Nice build so far keep it up!!!

 

[James04]

Very neat build! Following!

 

[Sooper Camper]

First official trip is in the books! Went to Ouray, CO and just did some good old fashioned family exploring in the mountains. Car didn't skip a beat, although the cracked exhaust manifolds are a little annoying, and the rear seal in the diff started weeping again. The car tows great, although the spring rates are too low for my liking and will get addressed in time. More gears and power than the old setup, so it flies up hills and passes slower vehicles easily.



While we were there, Imogene was closed for a few days due to a land slide, so I decided to do part of the Alpine loop, starting from the Ouray side up Mineral Creek. I was a fun family character building experience. Apparently, they rate it 4.5 out of 5. It was slow and technical in places, but careful tire placement seemed to do just fine. We also got a little lost higher up on the mountain trying to make the cut over to Animas Forks, and I spent an hour or so following a dude in a Samurai.



Few days later, went up to Yankee Boy Basin. There was a lot of traffic everywhere, so we tried to avoid the highest, most exposed parts of the roads. LOTS of yahoo's on the trails these days apparently.



So, yes. You can buy a depreciated, beat down, high mileage luxe-barge, change the shocks and tires, drive it through the hottest deserts to the highest mountains and have a blast the whole time.

 

[Sooper Camper]

Post trip maintenance, since I didn't get everything done that I wanted to before the trip. The brakes were warped (badly) so I replaced all rotors and pads. Power Stop Z36 stuff is comically cheap on Rock Auto.


Did the plugs, since there wasn't any record. Fairly consistent burn pattern, and runs better under load at the top end.

PSA: Check your shock bolts! Thought I felt a clunk, sure enough. Bolt still seemed torqued, I'll chalk it up to the ghetto washers and crazy high leverage ratio Nissan uses. Luckily not the first one to make this mistake, nor the first time it's happened to me.

Ruff Stuff makes stepped fix-it washers, that can be welded on. Drill out to 3/4", insert washer, drilled out shock bushing from 14mm to 9/16", made a custom long-shouldered bolt so that it's fully shanked between the load bearing surfaces on the tabs.


R&D Helper. Can't wait to drop this Rancho garbage.

 

[Sooper Camper]

Few more updates rolling in...I was not happy with the spring rate or ride height on the Moog coils, it'd come close to bottoming out on the highway with a moderate load like our trailer, fridge and the rest of the camping gear. Luckily enough, I got into a convo on Facebook with a nice guy from Luso Overland, who's working to bring over more Lovell's spring options to the US. He specializes in Monteros, but is growing his market now and bringing over Y62 parts, I think his name on here is SONICMASD. After some back and forth with Lovells, collecting measurements etc, I settled on a 'stock height' Y62 heavy rate option, DRS-99. It's mint! Netted approx 2.25" of lift, and holds up under a load significantly better. Alignment appears to be all good too.




If you've ever owned a direct injection vehicle, well, you know they aren't without their drawbacks: carbon build up. I found a company called JLT that makes a kit for the late model Titan, and it works great on the QX as well. The radiator tank is in a different spot between the two, but all I had to do was rotate the can and bracket, then trim a small lip off the engine cover. This is a real deal, made in USA catch can with a proper mesh, not one of those cheap eBay pieces of flair.




Been chasing an intermittent no-start. Randomly, would get an all systems go, but tapping the start button would just lead to the relay clicking. No guarantees yet, but the Aussie guys recommended checking the brake light switch, it's part of what triggers the 'all clear' for the car to start. If you cross the part number, there's a recall for it but only on the Altima. It's a pretty simple slider switch, disassembly of the original unit showed some wear on the contacts, and a new OEM switch was $50. If it don't work, now I've got a spare of a known weak link in the starting system (and know that I for sure need a new starter or something). Switch part number 25230-JN00A (brown one in the pic, other is the cruise cancel switch).

 

[Sooper Camper]

"CaTcH cAnS doNt WoRk" ~ the internet

Exhibit A:
(2500mi road trip, empty at the start)

 

[Sooper Camper]

I've been slowing working on adapting some Falcon monotubes to the front, and finally hit on a winning combo I think. Here's some teaser shots of forward progress (still waiting on a couple small tid bits to finish the other side):




Net result is a solid increase in wheel travel (approx 2"), much better damper assembly, and ability to run standard 16" x 3" ID coil over springs. It looks like a 700lb spring will work great and netted about 2.5" of lift.

 

[newgsr]

Hey! I’ve been following the build and checking for updates regularly! Diggin’ everything you’ve done thus far!

I just picked up a 11 QX56 and would like to follow your leading footsteps at least suspension wise..

Would you mind shearing if you’re still happy with your rear suspension setup?

I contacted Luso Overland about some rear springs, sounds like I need some measurements to give those a shot, would you mind shearing what you went with?

Thank you!

 

[Sooper Camper]

Hey! I’ve been following the build and checking for updates regularly! Diggin’ everything you’ve done thus far!

I just picked up a 11 QX56 and would like to follow your leading footsteps at least suspension wise..

Would you mind shearing if you’re still happy with your rear suspension setup?

Thanks for the kind words. Yup, very happy so far. I'm really hoping to get the front wrapped up soon, get it on an RTI ramp to check overall suspension travel improvement and then get out on some trails.
Does your car have HBMC?

I'd plan on new rear shocks if you want the most out of those rear springs, the factory shocks are super short travel overall.

 

[newgsr]

Yes definitely running the HBMC with one blown bag in the back at the moment hence why I’d like to just convert the rear end in the near future.

Obviously your Shock combo is the very next thing on the list to talk about as well as the Synergy MFG 8070 JK rear upper bar pin eliminator.
Are the boys arts below what I should be picking up?

1. https://www.4wheelparts.com/p/syner...per-bar-pin-eliminator-kit-8070/_/R-FSVG-8070
2. https://vanpartswarehouse.com/produ...9DNVYzbB19y3vMjiToujNjp_UwN3NXbRoCMgYQAvD_BwE

Do you have any direct links to those parts along with the bolts you used to make the combo work, or are these just some standard Grade 8 bolts and locking nuts to attach the new brackets to the top rear shock towers?

Do you have any direct links to those parts along with the bolts you used to make the combo work?

Thanks again!