Baystate Jeepers

My wife drives a 2005 Nissan Xterra with about 81000 miles on it. We bought it new and have followed the maintenance schedule very closely. The vehicle has been great with only a couple of minor issues that were covered under the 7 year / 70K mile warranty.

Since she lives out of state during the week I don't drive it often but yesterday while driving it I noticed a significant shudder/rumble when the auto trans shifts into OD and the RPM's drop to around 1700 - 1500.

A little research on the innerwebs popped up with what seems like a VERY common issue with 2005 - 2010 Gen 2 Xterras. It seems that the Nissan Matic-J ATF is corrosive and causes failures in the welds between the engine cooling portion (upper 2/3) and the auto trans cooling portion (lower 1/3) of the radiator causing ATF to pump into the coolant when running and coolant to seep into the trans when not running.

It seems that, while a tranny flush will mask the symptoms for 4-5 days, by the time you notice the shudder/rumble it's too late, your clutches are blistered and your tranny is toast. From what I read it's about a $3000 repair. A quick way to see if this is happening is to look for a white sludge or residue under the radiator cap. I can't do this until Friday when my wife comes home.

I would like to think that Nissan would do something about this to help out their customers but I haven't read anything encouraging with regards to that.

If it were 3 months from now and my wife were working, I'd flush the tranny and trade it in but she is currently still in school and unemployed. We have way too much debt in relation to income for me to get a car loan right now and we have less than $500 in our emergency fund but do have a credit card that we could put the repairs on.

The problem is that we hadn't planned on keeping the truck past the Spring and I feel like this is going to be like throwing $3000 or more in the trash. What would you do? I guess the answer is obvious, such it up, have the work done, and ship the truck in the Spring before anything else goes wrong. I'm just having trouble with having to pay $3000+ to put a new transmission in a well maintained, never abused vehicle with only 81000 miles on it and a KBB Trade value of $11,500.

Over the last couple years of leading a certain local trail, I have become good friends with the guys at NexTerra.
http://nexterra.org/forum/index.php
I imagine they have a huge experience advantage over us Jeep guys.

Crap, just found this thread: http://nexterra.org/forum/viewtopic.php ... highlight=
Looks like NissanHelp might be a better source.

If it were me, I would replace the radiator (which is assumed to be bad) or install a large, separate tranny cooler from Summit Racing or Jegs, and add one of those OTC tranny medic additive bottles with a fresh change of glycol (the cheapie Walmart green coolant) in the cooling system.
I don't know what fluid the tranny calls for, but Mercon V or ATF+4 are syn blends and hold viscosity much better than Dexron III or other previous fluids.

Also, this might be able to help salvage what's there for a while until you guys can trade it in:
http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Shudder-F ... B0007ZDRVC

I know your wife is in school, but I can't remember where?

She's wrapping up a residency at Memorial Hospital in Pawtucket RI but is doing a week at an offsite facility in New Bedford. She's becoming a Nurse Anesthetist.

From what I've read Nissan AT's are real picky and you can't use any additives in them. They also need Nissan Matic S fluid, the Matic J fluid that they used to use is what causes or accelerates the corrosion issue in the first place.

That does suck...

I think Joe's idea about talking to the Nissan guys is a good one... At this point the best plan may be to do as little as possible and get it to limp by until the spring, or until you can trade it?

JW

so i tryed to do some independent research for you and hope this aids you

i like what joe said alot and i would print this out http://www.nissanextendedwarranty.com/r ... mit=Submit and tell them about the long list of recalls the Xterra has had over the years and ask them if their is any other customers complaining about this issue... and if their is any way to make it a recall some how..

i also would show him this http://www.aboutautomobile.com/Complain ... ansmission show them how many other customers are complaining about this same exact issue and tell him you want to stay loyal with nissan but with an issues this big of a design flaw and some what of a safety hazard, you don't know if this loyalty will last.. (put on the whole you might loose my money forever kinda show) they hate loosing customers..

also i read this it caught my eye hope it helps. (it also go's along the lines of what joe said)

Complaint Number: 10325913 Incident Date: April 4, 2010 Date Added to File: April 15, 2010

Description of the Complaint:

1. Vibrations coming from rear of car at 35 mph. Vibration get worst when accelerating to 40 mph, shifts hard,rpm's increase then decrease(jumps all over the place). Occurs all the time. Faulty lines between coolant system and transmission. Coolant mixed with tranny fluid. Replaced, radiator,flushed engine, flushed tranny 2 times. Installed external transmission cooler and bypassed radiator, so this wont happen again, my have to replace transmission in future because of the damage done to it by the coolant mixing with tranny fluid. Out of pocket expense $1463.12 parts and labor at a local nissan dealer. I was told that this is a common problem with nissan 4x4 vehicles. This should be a recall. And if my transmission goes I feel that nissan should replace it free of charge.

hoped this helped some

Thanks Wes, it turns out that you ARE good for something.

I stopped by the Kelly Nissan in Beverly, MA this afternoon and spoke to Ron, the service manager. They hadn't looked at the truck today but said they would tomorrow and then they'd call Nissan to see what they would do but it didn't sound too promising from the tone of his voice. I kept the conversation friendly and positive while letting him know that I had done my homework on the subject. After telling him about how my wife is is school in Rhode Island and how I borrowed a truck and rented a trailer after work yesterday and bombed down to haul the thing back up, dropping it off in his lot at 11:30pm, we agreed to talk tomorrow. I shook his hand and left with a smile on my face but I was brimming with anxiety on the inside, expecting the worst.

I just got a call from Ron 10 minutes ago, his old factory rep that he dealt with for 20 years had retired, he was dealing with his new rep for the first time on this and, after a few minutes, the new rep agreed to pay for all of the parts and labor 100%!

Can you fawking believe that? All of the threads that I read on all of the forums that I have found and all of the blogs that I have read over the past couple of days and I have not read about any situations where Nissan has stepped up and covered the repairs, but then again, those people probably aren't pissed off and bitching about their cars on inner web forums.

fortyfour wrote:I stopped by the Kelly Nissan in Beverly, MA this afternoon and spoke to Ron, the service manager. They hadn't looked at the truck today but said they would tomorrow and then they'd call Nissan to see what they would do but it didn't sound too promising from the tone of his voice. I kept the conversation friendly and positive while letting him know that I had done my homework on the subject. After telling him about how my wife is is school in Rhode Island and how I borrowed a truck and rented a trailer after work yesterday and bombed down to haul the thing back up, dropping it off in his lot at 11:30pm, we agreed to talk tomorrow. I shook his hand and left with a smile on my face but I was brimming with anxiety on the inside, expecting the worst.

I just got a call from Ron 10 minutes ago, his old factory rep that he dealt with for 20 years had retired, he was dealing with his new rep for the first time on this and, after a few minutes, the new rep agreed to pay for all of the parts and labor 100%!

Can you fawking believe that? All of the threads that I read on all of the forums that I have found and all of the blogs that I have read over the past couple of days and I have not read about any situations where Nissan has stepped up and covered the repairs, but then again, those people probably aren't pissed off and bitching about their cars on inner web forums.

omg, that was good to hear go nissan im happy it worked out for you guys... so did they discuss with you their plan of action or is it a "i don't really care right now as long as they get it fixed permanently" kind of situation

When I was at the Service Counter yesterday we had discussed the fact that just replacing the radiator and flushing the tranny didn't work permanently and that the tranny would still fail within a short period of time. They had gone this route with the first vehicle that they received with this issue.

Hey Tim - good to hear this is working out for you. It's nice to hear a story about old-fashioned customer service actually working for the customer for once.

Holy crap! I am so happy for you guys.

One less freakn thing to worry about. Kudo's to Nissan too. That type of service is almost unheard of these days.

Just make sure they don't use the Matic J......

Nice to hear it is going to work Tim!

I'm nearing the end (I hope) of a mess of problems with my Sear's Kenmore Elite fridge... The new one should be delivered tomorrow, but what a PITA it was to get this far!

JW