Has anyone ever thought of dropping a v8 into an xterra? I realize that there would be a ton of mods that would have to happen, but I just was wondering if anyone has done this or even thought about trying. I saw a mazda miata yesterday that had a v8 supercharged, 389hp to the wheels and it just got me thinking. Any comments would be great. Thanks. You can never have too much power!!

If you want power, you bought the wrong vehicle. You could spend the money dropping a Merlin crate engine into an Xterra, or you could half pay for something with at least twice the power, bigger and with the same gas mileage (can you say Hemi?). The Xterra is not designed for power and will always be lousy in that regard. Thanks for reminding me once again just how big an anemic peice of shit the Xterra is

Oh damn, we reminded him again. I'm sure it's in the XOC by-laws somewhere that we've got to placate his purchasing decisions.

I know that the Calmini project X has the 240hp 3.5 liter in it. Basically, you can drop in whatever motor you can fit in, mate to the tranny, and cobble up the electronics enought to run it. There's a morphodite parked out front right now that has a Chev 454, in a Dodge 1500 body with a Ford tranny. I'm waiting for the X's to get a few years older to see the heavy duty "project" mods start to roll across these boards. Exciting times ahead.

I'd love to see the diesel models roll into North America. All that low end torque would be fantastic for off roading.

New 2004 Pathfinder is available with V8...Trade your X in on one of those? Will be good for towing but I am not expecting it to burn any rubber and turn in good 1/4 mile times, but I don't really require SUVs to do that.