maxud

I am excited to share my experience in repairing the tilt motor on my 2009 Maxima. From a brief forum search, nobody actually repaired the motors, but just replaced them.

I have 2009 Maxima SV with both electric tilt and telescoping functions. I am at 92k miles and recently my tilt motor stopped adjusting the steering wheel, I know, first world problems here. I know the motor still worked, because you can hear it moving whats left of the gear.

I did some research and yes, you can buy a new motor from Nissan for $200. However in my research I ran into this product - Dorman 905-522. At this point in time, its a poorly made product and badly advertised as well. Nowhere, does it say that its compatible with 09 Maxima, though later Maxima's are on the compatibility list. I saw a single review of this product on amazon and decided to take a plunge.
Yesterday, I had a "pleasure" of repairing my motor. So the product comes with new shafts and molded on Nylon gears as well as C-clips and some grease. It also comes with pretty good instructions on actual repair.

To start with, you want to follow Nissan's TSB on replacing one of these motors. Here is a link for you:
http://ww2.justanswer.com/uploads/fi...n_bulletin.pdf

Once you have the motor out, you follow couple of steps from Dorman's manual, specifically:
Take off the c-clip or locking o-washer from the end of the shaft.
Remove a set screw/spring from the adjustment block (located on the side of the block, inner hex)
Unscrew adjustment block
Use permanent market to draw a line across outer nut, inner locking nut and body of the motor. This is necessary to apply the same preload to the inner bearings
Remove the large hex nut with crescent wrench, it was not super tight. I used adjustable pliers to get it off.
Then slide the black spacer block included in the dorman kit over the shaft, it should engage inner nut. The block is square, but the the nut has 12 points, so it will engage without any issues.
Spin the inner nut off
Remove old shaft, be carefull, there is a bearing on the bottom and the top of the nylon gear.

At this point you should confirm that your old nylon gear is busted, mine had a whole chunk of gear missing. Assembly is reverse of disassembly.

But here is some bad news and good news.
Bad news first: When I tried to spin the adjustment block on the new shaft, the block was getting bound up in many spots, so there are problems with threads on these replacement parts. Since I have gone so far with the repair, I did not want to put old broken part back in. What I did is used small files to file down the metal threads on the new shaft. I basically put some taper on the shaft threads and after about 2.5 hours of manual labor, the adjustment block would thread on smoothly without any issues.

Of course its completely asinine to expect a person to file down metal threads to get the part to work.
So here come some mixed news that hopefully will turn into good news soon. This morning I contacted Dorman about my experience and they told me that they know of this issue and the product is suppose to have been put on hold with no further sales taking place, until they retool and fix the issue. They were not able to tell me when the new product will be available, but hopefully soon. I left a 3 star review for this product on Amazon, and hopefully when Dorman gets a new design done I will be able to update it to 5 star review.

The good news is that there is no need to purchase $200+ new motors and throw out perfectly good motor with a broken plastic gear. The Dorman kit cost me $35 shipped from RockAuto, the kit includes both tilt and telescoping motor shafts. The R&R of the motor, given a proper shaft is no more than 30 mins and that is taking things apart slowly. I can do it in 5mins now. For crafty guys, the threads on these shafts are M10 x 2.0
I don't have a die or thread chaser this size, as a matter of fact, its a very oddball size thats not easily gotten.

I do have some pics, but frankly between the TSB and Dorman manual, you should have no issues taking things out and putting it all together.
Good luck
Max





Old nylon gear broke, chunk of it is missing





New Dorman gear side by side with old one





Old gear, notice that the shaft threads have a small taper to them. The gear also still has the bearing (shiny silver disk) still on it.





Tilt motor completely disassembled in the wise.





Tilt motor reassembled with new shaft.

Nopike

iTrader: (2)

Thanks for that info. Maybe I will turn this function back on in my 2014 since the repair is relatively easy.

LtLeary

That is great news. Mine is beginning to "squeal" a bit and last time that meant I had only a few months left before they quit working. Even cleaning up the poor milling would be better than the $$$$ for the entire motor assy (he says not knowing how bad it really was!)

catalinvint

This needs to be a stickie �

maxud

Once Dorman releases updated parts, the repair is super simple. Frankly the most difficult part was removing the side covers off the steering wheel column.

I read plenty of reports of failing motors, but mine survived 92k miles. Add to that CT crazy weather, so constant heat cold cycles etc.. I had my easy entry feature enabled since I bought the car back in 08. So every time I drove it, the tilt wheel motor was exercised.
The failure was sudden, one day, the steering wheel attempted to come down and started borked robot jerk thing.

If any of you guys want to give it a go, here is the style of
small needle file I used, its called "crossing"
http://www.tiranti.co.uk/images/subd...eedlefiles.jpg
I suppose you could also use "sitting" or "knife" style as well.
If you can get a M10 by 2.0 nut before hand, you can get the shafts perfect before opening up the car and extracting the motors.

I will post pics later this weekend.

Max2013

Great post! Thanks for sharing Maxud. This is a keeper!

maxud

added pics to my original post

Max2013

Better yet. Thanks! I agree with earlier post that this should be a sticky.

partsace

I can't wait for these to become available! I'm already on my 3rd one and my Maxima is no longer under warranty.

C. Scott Williams

hieppo

maxud,

Is it possible to remove the nylon gear only and interchanging them? Throw out the old nylon gear and replaced them with the new one from Dorman. If that is possible, then everything should be a breeze.

Don't think the metal part will wear down anytime soon, so replacing just the nylon part would be the best solution.

maxud

Not possible at all. Gears are permanently molded on the shaft.
As I said, once the new parts are available, it will be super simple to replace. Until then, either wait for parts or buy as is and do the same work I did.

1996blackmax

iTrader: (2)

Excellent thread! Thanks for posting this information. I have turned this function off on my car. With an easy fix like this, I may just turn it back on.


This should be a sticky.

partsace

UPDATE: As per Jim Squiccimara at Dorman, the updated gears will be ready by the end of February or beginning of March.

Scott

maxud

Really? I chatted online with Dorman this past Monday on my monthly checkup and they still had no update. Hopefully they told you the facts and not just some date to get rid of you on the phone.

partsace

Scott

maxud

Checked with Dorman this morning, still nothing.
Their standard reply is could be another month.

On the plus side, my fix has been working flawlessly!
As a side note, the wheel is also not drifting down over time.
I noticed this early on when I bought the car that over multiple (easy exits), where
the steering wheel goes up for ease of exit and then comes down when you enter the car.
It used to come down a tiny bit more every time and over time start blocking the gauges.
It appears its not doing it anymore :-)

maxud

Checked with Dorman this morning. Apparently the new parts are finally available.
They would not send me replacement and I have to do exchange through Original place of purchase, so I can't state yet if the new parts are good or not.
One would hope though.

partsace

FYI, there are still incorrectly manufactured tilt/telescope gear kits on the shelf!

If you order this part from your local auto parts store or someone like rockauto.com (cheapest so far $32.99 + S&H), you need to make sure the date code by the bar code is a number greater than 15353. This is the last production date for the larger gears. The new ones should have a bar code higher than 16000!

Scott

maxud

yeah, it was a bit of a douche bag move on Dorman's part to keep the same part number. I finally got Dorman to send me replacement parts. I just checked the box and it has 15335-53907 vs original that had 13249-53097.
Comparing the old part (I had one remaining unused gear) and the new part,
I can definitely see that they changed the machining on it.

that said, partsace, check your numbers, because it sure looks like 15335 is a new part.

I am not going to take apart my gear motor to test out the install, but based on my previous experience, I would definitely recommend this product now.

When I was talking to RockAuto about exchange, they also brought up the fact that they can't tell the old stock from new stock, so even if I placed a new order, there is nothing that would guarantee that you receive the new stock.

partsace

Form my correspondence with Jim, The date code on the box should be 15352-xxxxxx or greater.

Scott

NCSUpilot

Another satisfied customer. I purchased the kit from Amazon (Dorman 905-522) and it worked great. Thanks for all the info!

whit

I had my tilt steering fixed by the dealer under warranty few years ago. Now my telescope steering is not working. Looks like I'll be doing this fix soon. Thanks for the info.

whit

Installed the doorman telescope new gear. Took me about 2 hrs taking my time. Telescope steering works perfect now..
Very easy to do following the bulletin and paperwork provided w kit..

dannyrk

Maxud, thanks so much for sharing this DIY with the rest of us! I've been periodically checking threads to come up with possible solutions for my 2009 Maxima. The "comfort adjustment" feature has been broken for several years now.

I am a total newbie here and really don't know much about this kind of thing. I'm hoping you all can help answer a few questions about this process:

1) I'm not sure if both my telescopic and tilt motors are both malfunctioning, or if it's just one. Do you have any suggestions as to how to determine this? I disabled the automatic adjustments long ago, but if I try to adjust the column on my own, I just hear a grinding sound and nothing happens.

2) I would assume if both motors are out, I would need two (2) of these Dorman replacement parts?

3) Other online posts I've reviewed suggest greasing the gears. What kind of grease do you recommend?

4) Are there any specialty tools required?

Thanks in advance. And thanks again, Maxud, for the instructions!

maxud

1. The electric adjustment joystick has up and down and front to back adjustability. If you press forward or back and the steering column does not move, your horizontal adjustment gear is stripped. Same applies to up/down and vertical gear.
2. No, the kit comes with replacement for both gears, there are two different shafts used. You only need one kit to fix both motors
3. Its been a while, I don't recall if there was any type of grease included in the package. I would recommend either Sylicone type grease or Wheel bearing grease, whichever one you can get your hands on. Just checked, grease is included.
4. Not that I recall. Just a basic tool set should be fine. I outlined the procedure pretty well, while it was fresh in my mind. Just follow it and you will be fine.

Here is the Dorman link
http://www.dormanproducts.com/itemde...SEName=905-522

Their application chart does not mention 09 Maxima, but trust me, it works.

dannyrk

Thanks very much!

dannyrk

Hi all,

Trust me to have problems replacing the gear. I attempted this last night and had no problems until it came time to remove the tilt motor (I never even got as far as attempting the telescoping motor). I could not get those hex bolts to move for anything. I tried an allen wrench and a socket wrench with a hex attachment. I ended up stripping the head of the bolt. So at 11:00 I finally just put everything back together, defeated.

Does anyone have any suggestions for removing those bolts? If you're looking at the steering wheel, it's the right bolt that I've stripped. The left one I haven't tried much because it's so far back I can't really get anything in there. What did you all use? Also, it seems the wiring near the left bolt needs to be unplugged to completely remove the motor. Am I going to break that thing by just yanking hard on it? Or is there some trick to unplugging it? Again, complete newbie here, so the more detailed you can be, the better.

Regardless, I feel like it was worth the attempt. I'm out hardly any money at this point, just time and pride. And I'm sure more experienced handypersons would have no trouble. Thanks again, Max, for the posts and advice. And thanks in advance to anyone with suggestions.

maxud

I assume you clicked on the link I have in my first post that shows motor removal in color pictures? Are you talking about bolts in picture 11?
The allen bolts? The torque on them is tiny 14 ft/lbs, not sure why you are having such hard time. Are you using metric tools? Get a wrench and Allen socket of the right size and they should come out. If you stripped the inside of the allen hex on the bolt, you may have to get wise grips to spin it out.
Electrical harnesses typically dont just yank out. There are secure tabs that need to be depressed, before connector will come out. It should be fairly obvious, look for indent and tab that can be pressed or pulled.
Its been a long time for me since I did this, so I can't provide more exact details.

partsace

Did this job last night during game 7 of World Series (Astros!). -- OMG!!! 14 ft/lbs my ***! The 6mm allen bolts were extremely hard to remove!!! I finally got a 6mm allen socket and a breaker bar to get it off. A gorilla must have put these on! Once you broke them free, it was a breeze and everything went smoothly after that. I know have tilt and I'm loving my Maxima again.

While under the dash, I tighten the bolts that the holds the steering column to the dash. I recently had the recall for the steering lock done and they finger tightened the nuts. *****! PS. if you get the recall done, all they do is put a new steering lock in, but it has NO steering lock!

Scott

Bigtrav6442

The kit does come with the grease

MaximaSE96

iTrader: (8)

i just got mine in form amazon and its a 15335....can you confirm if these ones will work?

10aCMike

Yea, it tells you it has no steering lock on the mailout. I went ahead and had it done last month anyway. I haven't heard of too many people out steeling Nissan Maximas in 2018.

jofra11

took Me 2 days...but finally got 'er done...but hey...i am an idiot...not just lazy

jofra11

I would never have attempted this except for finding yer considerate Post...you are My best friend...thanks

maxud

A follow up on my repair. Some time last fall I had an issue with my repaired tilt motor. One morning it just gave out, but next day resumed its function. I opted to simply adjust the steering wheel and turn off easy entry function.
I was not sure what was wrong with the motor, and thought that perhaps the motor itself is giving out.
The telescoping motor died sometime earlier, dont recall when exactly.
After the initial repair in 2015, I did received "updated" part from Dorman in 2016. That kit was on the shelf until yesterday. Since I got time on my hands, I decided to fix both motors.
Followed my own links to get the motors out, but ran into an issue with removing telescoping motor out. Mine died in a position that was very close to the dash, preventing easy motor removal.
The procedure explains that you want to pull on the steering wheel, while actuating the motor to completely telescope/retract it out. I was not successful in that procedure.
What I did instead was used a prybar between the white bushing and the rest of steering column. It did not require much effort and applying prybar pressure while actuating the motor accomplished the task.
Note that motor had to be bolted in while performing the task.


Extend telescoping motor before removing


Once I removed both motors and laid them on the bench, I was greeted by all familiar failure of telescoping motor with original gear, the gear splits open and due to metal shaft design, just slips over the metal round gear, resulting in complete failure of the motor function.



I was more interested in what happened to my repaired motor. Below is the carnage. The gear split open, much like oe gear does, however note at the mode of failure. With a square metal boss, the plastic gear can't just slip and rotate. It stays in place, resulting in ability to still function, as long as you are not riding over broken part of the gear. So overall, its an improved design in my book, though not immune to failure.



On the positive side, I had no issues whatsoever with redesigned Dorman parts this time around. Both shafts were perfect match for factory threads and no time
had to be wasted to file anything down. I can wholeheartedly recommend the Dorman kit vs buying new factory motors or even salvage ones.

Again, the most important part is to mark relative position of how parts are put together prior to disassembly. After replacing the shafts, just realign things
to the marks that you made and preloads will be perfect.

maxud

I can now, though 2 years too late

Captive8

Thanks for all the info here, guys.....good show.

I wasn't aware of the telescoping motors failing also. My original tilt motor failed in such a way that the Dorman kit doesn't contain replacement parts for its' failure mode. I wound up with a few extra new and like new motors for both T&T, and a few other trinkets along the way.....glad I've hung onto them.

maximatxilca

I am attempting this myself in Nov 2021. The tilt threads still do not work perfectly so I will have to file down. My question is about the telescoping function. The motor and spindle are both good.However the column seems very stiff to move was this anybody else's experience? It really requires some major effort to get the column to go in and out without the motor attached. Do I have to take the steering column out in order to get it to move with ease? As the car has been like this for 8 years it may just require "working" back and forth to get it to free up.All fixed, did not have to take the steering column out. Did have to do some filing on the tilt shaft, the telescope shaft was good. I was trying to figure out how to turn off the "Easy OUT " function but cannot find that thread any help? I only have the Amber screen but cannot get to a screen that has the easy out option to adjust.