Pistons & Pivots - Cooper's Titan Swapped Nissan Frontier and Bike Fleet

2016 Nissan Frontier

You may have heard the name Cooper Quinn if you are a regular on nsmb.com. He has been around these pages long enough to see many bike standards come and go. He has raced DH in No Fear jerseys on bikes with wheelbases under 1000mm and has had his driver's licence long enough to have called a tow truck once or twice to rescue him. Like many of us on the crew here, he is a true petrolhead but is also sensible when it comes to putting daily kilometres on his rigs. Cooper hasn't driven his vehicle to the office for a few years now, opting for a cascade of cargo, gravel, touring, and of course mountain bikes instead.

When I first met Cooper, he was rolling around in a 2008 Audi S4 Avant with a rowdy V8. He would leave the shuttle scene with a strip of black tire marks and the sweet symphony of that amazing German engine. That car met its demise in Washington State when a drunk deer wandered into it's path. Cooper switched the road machine for bigger wheels for more remote adventures.

I asked Cooper to write a bit about himself for introduction's sake. It's valuable to know the writers on this site as we are humans and not AI bots. Well, at least most of us are.

Cooper take it away...

Deniz asked me to write an introduction to myself and my bike and car history. Which sounded a little bit to me like him trying to get me to do his job, if I’m being honest. But here we are, so let's give it a shot. I’m Cooper. I moved from Wyoming to Vancouver in 2004, ostensibly to go to Simon Fraser University, but realistically this was based on where I could ski and ride my bike; I’d visited a couple of years prior to ski in the Whistler Cup, and driven through SFU on the way home the summer of 2003 after a trip to the bike park. I'm an occasional contributor here at NSMB. What you may not know is that I'm a geologist by trade and training; I work in the carbon capture and storage and carbon dioxide removal industry; rocks, geology, bikes, camping… it's all just ways to see more of the Earth, really.

My car history is full of Nissan. I come by this honestly, having grown up in the back of a couple of different Pathfinders (I learned to drive in one!) and then in 1998 while I was in Middle School, the Frontier launched, and I distinctly remember going on the Nissan website and building a yellow, crew cab, short bed Nissan Frontier. Two years later, my dad would swap the family Pathfinder for an Xterra, and another half a dozen years later I would acquire a 2002 black crew cab, long-bed Frontier. I'm also happy to say that it was not the original yellow I had desired when I was younger. This truck got a modest torsion bar lift and some slightly bigger tires and never let me down.

Once I got a little older (and spent a little more time in the city) I fell into Audi. Audi wagons specifically. I'd always been a 'long roof' fan, having dreamed of owning a WRX through high school, and I acquired a red 2006 B7 S4 Avant. While it sounded fantastic and looked great with an RS4 replica bumper, sadly it was equipped with a Tiptragic automatic transmission and salvage/rebuild title. It was just never right. Fortunately, a couple of years later I was able to acquire the dark blue one that you see above; crucially equipped with all three pedals, the same 344 horsepower V8, from the final production year - 2008. Until recently it was the highest horsepower, manual, AWD wagon available in North America. This car, like my bicycles, was treated like a tool, not a jewel and we snarled our way around heaps of curvy roads in Western North America, as well as logging heaps of Interstate miles in places like “Montana,” with loose morals around speed limits.

During the reign of the blue Audi, my partner acquired a 2004 Nissan Xterra. This is the vehicle that led us to today's truck.

I've covered some of my bike history in previous articles but I grew up as a downhiller so pedaling was foreign to me. That's changed now; my cycling tastes are broad, and sadly I no longer own a downhill bike. However, 2024 was the year I strapped on a pair of 214 downhill race skis again; it may be the year I also pick up a downhill bike. In the meantime, I've got a menagerie of bikes to fill most niches. Clearly, the truck isn't very good for getting around the confines of the city, so as a one-car family, we live the car-lite lifestyle and rarely use the truck during the week. Commuting, daycare runs, visits to North Shore Bike Park, groceries, and haircuts all happen via bicycle.

Throwing a small child into the mix has complicated matters but once he was old enough to safely be in a trailer, we were back to bicycles. And while trying to steward our environment and manage our impact this is not an altogether altruistic endeavour. In a city often snarled with what the local Facebook groups will tell you is world-ending traffic, we cruise on through, knowing we’re saving money on top of it all.

I would imagine basically everyone reading this owns a bicycle. I would challenge you to start by trying to take one trip a week by bicycle that you would ordinarily drive. Make it an easy quick one, and then come back and tell me it wasn't better than driving.

The Truck Build

2016 Nissan Frontier SV 4x4, Crew Cab, long bed Titan Swap

Front Suspension

2.5" Radflo, 14" 700lb springsM205 front diff

Titan LCA

Dirt King UCA

Dirt King outer tie rods

Titan inner tie rods

Titan axles

Nisstec stainless brakelines

Rear Suspension

Custom Alcan Leaf pack, +800lbs, +4" over stock

Calmini adjustable shackles

Bilstein 5165 w/ remote reservoir

Nisstec stainless brakelines

Armor

Hefty Fabworks Aluminum front bumper

Hefty Fabworks Steel dual swingout rear

Hefty Fabworks Aluminum skids

Balmer Fab custom bolt-on sliders

A/T Overland Habitat Camper