Here’s Why Nissans Have Engine Problems

rev up your engines today we're gonna have some fun probably the most annoying problem that we all get at some point in time a vehicle that randomly dies now it might do it once a month so first we'll put on our thinking caps now it's great because he's the original owner he knows it hasn't been any wrecks or floods so we don't have to worry about some crazy thing where the computer got wet now a circuit's gone no it's all bone stock hasn't been wrecked or flooded it will just randomly die generally when he's coming to a stop or when he's idling this thing is kind of low mileage for its age when you think about it it's 11 years old and it's only got 113 000 miles on it so let's start it and listen to it sounds good from here these v6 engines are generally hurting especially with these four liters it's not shaking it doesn't smell it's not leaking oil and i ask him does it burn all he says no not between oil changes it's not losing any coolant out with the giant computer that's the only way we're going to figure this thing out you can't hide from the data so we'll plug it in that knows what it is right away all right we start looking through everything fire everything's pretty normal even has the fuel temperature on this thing [Music] ignition timing look at staying around 10 11 that's that's normal bank one and bank two injector pulses you can see they're pretty close 2.5 a 2.6 2.54 2.56 and they keep changing a little bit here and there so there's nothing wrong from one bank to the other they're never going to run perfectly with this kind of mileage in this age but when you're only off a hundredths of a millisecond and it doesn't really make all that much difference so we'll trudge on to more data and the mess airflow sensor that's working pretty good it's a four liter engine it's staying around four grams per second plus or minus 0.2 was perfectly acceptable and this one's almost spot on so that's working fine well really there's no bad data as it stands now so guess what it's time for a road test road trip time here we go record it's on it so i'll do a good road test while the machine records everything and we'll see if anything looks odd and will pray like mad that it conks up although it might not so what we're hoping for is when we stop it starts vibrating because he says his wife's car and she says it'll start vibrating and shaking and then conk out so let's hope it starts vibrating and shaking kind of the opposite of what you normally want to happen in a car and then again i'm in the car and machines are afraid of me so it might not do anything bad step on the gas hey this whole truck still got a lot of oomph to it and even though i don't like nissan transmissions this is a rear wheel drive transmission look step on it it downshifts take your foot off it up shifts it still works perfectly fine the stupid thing is just dying every once in a while got it shaking it's shaking it's shaking all right we're gonna turn the recording off and we'll save it now we're going to record again hey something else happened and the reason i'm doing this is my first recording i know at the very end it was rumbling so i know exactly when it rumbled so i can check all the data now i'm going to play back the end and we're going to watch stuff we'll watch the injector pulse see if anything odd happens to it when it gets to the end it starts rumbling they're both kind of following each other like they should as they idle change it no it's staying stable doing a combined graph of injector pulse ignition timing and when we get to the end we'll see if anything weird is happening especially when we get to the end and it's just idling we'll watch it when it started to shake now when it was shaking you'll see the injector pulses were close together here that's these here when it started shaking the ignition timing changed and the ignition timing changed just when it started shaking so that's kind of a clue that's the only odd thing it's not the fuel injectors but the ignition we were just idling the ignition timing should stay stable all of a sudden it took a drop as you can see here took a drop then it went up and then it came down it should be stable while it's idling and it's not so there's something going on there now we're going to compare ignition timing low speed cut and mass airflow sensor and we'll watch it at the end so with all our data let's check out the throttle position sensor 1 throttle position sensor 2 and the throttle stick control then we'll do a combination graph we'll go to the end where it acted up the throttle sensor is working correctly staying flat because it's idling it should give the same data well the timing's messing around if the throttle did a jump then you know it's given the wrong information computer and it's saying the throttle is open when it's supposed to be closed and that would stall it out because you'd have an open throttle at an idle and it would stall it up but that's not the case so let's look under the hood now this is a modern nissan it's got a variable valve timing and it has a timing chain but not just any timing chain now as you can see in this picture not only does it have a gigantic timing chain the cams have their own separate timing chains to connect to the original big timing chain so there's actually three of them we can see when it did act up the timing was jumped it should remain stable well now we're getting into astrophysics here this thing's got three separate timing chains none of the sensors show that they have a problem but for some reason when it's idling every once in a while the diamond jumps who could tell which one now if some guy was going to rebuild the engine they'd just say the heck with it they just replaced everything they'd replaced the main chain they'd replace the side chains but it's 300 odd dollars for the parts but it's like 1300 labor to replace those chains but the thing runs good enough we're gonna see if we can do something about that now luckily while we were road testing this thing it's got some codes for the bcm oh useless it's telling us there's low tire pressure low tire pressure low tire pressure those are all tire pressure codes with a car clogging out they just wear out the batteries go out and the tire pressure sensors who cares about that so we're going to go into the computer ecm system and let's see what we can do we'll start with special functions well you never know tries closed throttle position learned ignition on an engine stopped yes it started it's completed not only happens when you come into a stop right this now knows where the throttle is when it's closed it's reset sometimes though that will get off if it doesn't stall again he's going to be a lucky man and while we're at it we'll do a idle air volume line and we'll check the target ignition timing adjustment all right we can see of course it's not acting up now we're idling and it's 15 and it's not bouncing all over the place right you can feel a little bit of shaking as you can see by the less shaking people always tell you modern cars are all run by computers you can't set the idle with a screwdriver anymore no but you can set it with one of these realize that today with these machines there's a lot of stuff that can be done i know the guy says the deal is always oh there's nothing wrong or we can't adjust that blah blah blah well actually they can they just don't want to or they wait till you're gone and like the guy that came here with the dodge a few weeks ago and they wanted 3 800 to 6 grand to rebuild to replace his engine and all i did with this machine was reset stuff and then he went on his merry way guess what he says it's still running fine after i reset it he said thanks for saving me a few thousand dollars because his was kind of like this guy they told him oh you need an engine blah blah blah blah blah his thing went 110 miles an hour in the highway no problems this thing runs fine on the highway no problems too at least this guy's smart he didn't go to the dealer and say what's wrong with my car now time is going to tell but there's a tsp for these things timing to chain tensioner it's made out of plastic of course the plastic erodes though there's a smart one have a metal chain right on a plastic tensioner right like oh the plastic's not going to wear out right if that's the case since it runs so good at high speeds me resetting the stuff that little bit of resetting can compensate because if your timing is off a tad when you're idling especially when you come to a stop because then it goes from a higher timing to a lower timing you need perfection at idle it can stall where at highway speeds it isn't going to affect anything the engine's running fine going down the road you take your foot off the gas in the highway the engine is still going 3000 rpm so it's not going to stall out then it's only when it dips down maybe this will fix it we'll find out over time could compensate for the worn timing chain but even if it was a timing chain that was worn i can tell this one isn't really bad because it's not clacking when a chain is really bad it's so loose it makes noise this thing does not make timing chain noise yet and here's some bonus questions and answers juan says i got an old weight 5.3 liter silver out of 140 000 miles i feel a grinding noise on my feet at 20 to 40 when accelerated decelerated i have a feeling my transmission is starting to wear out probably i do have to say you got 140 000 miles that's about the limit of the transmission of one of those things if it still got the original transmission i could just about guarantee it that it's wearing out from those noises but cross your fingers go under there check the drive shaft you can jack it up in the air vehicle in neutral then grab the drive shaft and pray when you try to twist it it goes clunk or clunk and you'll see the u-joints are wine maybe it's just the u-joints pray it's just the u-joints they don't cost that much you know 20-30 bucks a piece you can learn how to do it or pay a mechanic to put new u-joints on pray at that but from my experience it's usually the transmission that's as long as those things generally last anymore two thousand eight hundred and forty thousand miles all my customers with those they're either on their second or third transmission if they keep them and they wanna keep driving and they'll put a remanufactured transmission usually it comes with a year or two warranty a lot cheaper than buying a new truck so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell [Music] you

Channel: Scotty Kilmer

Views: 215,604

Rating: 4.9415231 out of 5

Keywords: auto, auto repair, car, car diy, car repair, cars, diy, how to, mechanic, repair, scotty kilmer, car review, are nissans reliable, nissan, nissan pathfinder, new nissan, new nissan pathfinder, buying a new nissan, buying a used nissan, pathfinder, are nissans good cars, is nissan pathfinder worth it, should I buy a nissan, car buying, new pathfinder, pathfinder review, nissan pathfinder review, buying a nissan, used nissan, nissan problems, car problem, problems, problem

Id: b-q4gwRxUq0

Length: 10min 8sec (608 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 01 2021