Nissan 4×4 & Off Road Parts Blog

Summer is here and although I’ve been working quietly on some big changes over the last few months, I did manage to get out and meet up with a few fellow Nissan off road enthusisats over the weekend.  It was  really nice to put some real life faces with names after so long. It’s kind of crazy how the long lasting effects of covid has really shook up the social aspect of this niche part of the offroad world. I used to hit the trail mcuch more often and with much larger groups many years ago… where is everyone? It’s been obvious that there has been a lot of turnover in the owners of these trucks and a new wave of builds are in process. A new beginning.
It’s been interesting to see the changes over the last handfull of years as people move on to other things while others pick up good deals on used trucks and start to enjoy the outdoors in ways they otherwise may have never done.
I’m 18 years into helping support these nissan 4×4’s in the aftermarket, but supporting those that need the help has actually become more challenging from an educational perspective. I absolutely love teaching people stuff. But it’s been harder to get across to people as the social platforms have shifted from forums to social media… primarily facebook and instagram.
These platforms keep many people in touch on the very surface, unlike the information collaborations of the forums from yesteryear. the current social media platforms seem to really promote overglorified simplicity.. Although we see genuine trail photo mashups and videos that look cool and have awesome recaps (Check out @Terra_Xpedition on IG), It’s not easy do to help others learn the do’s and dont’s of a build.
When I see these types of questions pop up on Facebook for instance.. I do what I can to help, but as you can probably imagine, I end up having the same conversations with different people over and over… which can be frustrating and not very progressive.
Beyond teaching,,, I love building, thinking outside the box and figuring out the next cool thing.. which is hard to do when your time gets soaked up talking in circles.. There must be another way. I do have some solutions in mind, both on-line and off-line. Off-line I think running some trails and talking about things over lunch is one of the best ways, but we aren’t always able to get together to weather it be due to distance or scheduling. So I thought doing an online open Q&A Zoom meeting could actually be kind of cool. We could do it in the evening and just see where things go. I realize that these methods don’t build a reference to look back on in the future, but it’s seems like a fun start while more sustainable options brew. More on that another time. Just know that Lots is happening behind the scenes, and if these e-mail updates aren’t coming very frequently, I’m not kick’n back twiddling my thumbs… i’m working.. always working on something. Sometimes with Nissans in mind, Sometimes looking at the offroad industry with a wider lens (http://ruggedroutes.com). but never idle.
Feel free to reach out with your thoughts.

A final note: Independance day is here, and many brands are offering discounts that I can also offer. As you can imagine, updating every price on the website that has an applicable discount for a 4 day sale meanwhile I’m building a whole new more modern website as quickly as possible, doesn’t seem like a wise use of time. However, Radflo shocks are 10% over the next few days. If there are other brands of parts that you’re interested in purchasing this week, please send me an e-mail using the form here: https://ruggedrocksoffroad.com/index.php?route=information/contact and I’ll see what I can do for you. 

Thank you for your continued support as I’m looking forward to getting out a bit more this summer and overall just keeping hyped out about how cool the stuff on my plate is behind the scenes here.
Lots to build, so little time,
-Steven Lutz

You’ll likely be surprised. This is just a quick update as it’s late (as usual) and I want to keep everyone informed of whats going on behind the scenes… at least with Nissan related projects. I recently wrote about the old titan swap kit concept that we prototyped many years ago that maximizes the down travel of the Xterras and Frontiers. It was met with lots of speculation and questions regarding the extended length of the shock. As stated, I followed up with Radflo on those measurements. 19.1″ Extended on a 2.5″ IFP coilover. If you’re familiar with Titan swap shock lengths, you’re probably sctatching your head over this. If you’re not familiar with titan swap shock lengths, then your’re really probably scratching your head over this. Regardless, this more or less lines up with the additional travel we originally figured by this system many years ago. But how could this be? A few skeptics online met my posts with “CV bind is CV bind” implying that regarless of what is done with the shocks, or UCA’s.. you can’t get around the max angle of the CV’s. Which I agree with but …. actually… no. No, I don’t.

Let me fill you all in on a little known fact from nearly 20 years ago. Yes…. TWENTY. Which many people would still know about if we spent more time on the forums rather than Facebook and IG (Rant for another time). The cheap $75 CV replacements have less of a max operating angle that the OEM ones. so to that I say. Stop It! I personally refuse to run them on my Xterra and would much rather refresh a set of junkyard OEM CV’s than get knock off new ones because of a price tag knowing that they aren’t as good as the OEM ones, max angle aside. I’ve heard it over and over again. “I can break a whole lot of $75 for the cost of X”. But do you really want to? They have proven to be less reliable and have less operating angle… maybe thats one reason they are less reliable? I digress.

Use quality parts, have less problems, get more travel.
If you’re looking for used but good OEM CV’s and other Nissan parts, maybe Duncan the Nissan Parts Puller can help you out.
Since posting old info that seems to be new to many of you, my phone is ringing more regarding 2nd gen stuff, which is a good sign. If this continues, then the momentum on my end will continue too. Looking forward, I’m getting many smaller parts in order to add to the catalog. But the big question is, would the juice be worth the squeeze to fully revive this old design?

Reply below and let me know your thoughts.

Thanks for reading, Until next time,
-Steven

 

Who is it? Well, the Titan swap saga started nearly 2 decades ago. The majority of the well known companies in the Nissan off road space simply didn’t exist, and the 2nd Generation Xterras and Frontiers were only a couple years old. As I had mentioned in a previous e-mail/post/blog a few weeks ago, I largely stayed in my lane staying away from doing titan swap kits for a few reasons. However, that doesn’t mean I didn’t know about them.. I definitely did. I was just focused on other products in the Nissan space. Through this time, there was one guy that knew every titan swap parts combo with massive amounts of detail, and to this day I believe that he knows more about every combination of titan swap parts than anyone else I could possibly think of. We chat once in a while, and just recently we had discussed my extended travel  / wide mount titan swap upper control arm prototype from years ago. (For more details, look back at my post from April 3rd.) Like most people responding on social media, there were a lot of questions.  As it turns out, the Heim / uniball upper control arm that I had referenced there, was an old design that  was retired and redesigned with a new uniball angle therefore solving the same issue that our wide mount arms addressed. This is where the perspective of additional droop came from. I’m not sure when that revision happened but it seems that we were either ahead of the times but never released the solution or there were a few minds at work trying to maximize the performance of the titan swap… at the same time.
At this point, it seems that we have multiple solutions to the same problem, but with different parts and various pros and cons. Thats where my chat with the Godfather of Titan Swaps ended.
I haven’t verified max droop and overall travel differences yet, but I’ll be digging into the numbers soon just to make sure that we’re all on the same page with quantified facts. As this subject resides in a prominent place in my brain, the more it seems that i’m inching towards putting a complete titan swap kit together. One of the driving factors is that my own Xterra needs a lot of way overdue TLC, and I’m debating if i’m simply going to fix and refresh various things or if it’s going to get some sort of overhaul. I really don’t want to reinvent the wheel, but would rather focus on areas of untapped potential for specific use cases, or atleast an easily accessible performance kit that isn’t currently offered.
If you’re wondering who the Godfather of Titan Swaps is, you’ll have to wait like many of us did episode-after-episode of ‘How I met your Mother’.  The exception here is that I won’t string you along for 208 episodes. But lets be honest, many of you already know who he is, the the guy is a Nissan suspension legend.
Stay Tuned.
-Steven