I have a 1985 maxima that I have had for about 2 years, and has not given me any problems except 2 alternators in that time. About a year ago, though, I started to notice an intermittent problem. It started happening only when going up hills on the freeway. If i got off of the throttle, and then back on it, it would chug a few times before running normal again. It felt like it was "missing" a cylinder for a few seconds. Again, this was very intermittent, only happening about 3 times in 2 years. Then about 2 weeks ago, as I was leaving work and after my car had sat for about 12 hours, I could not proceed normally. My car was sputtering, chugging and would not hardly run at all, but only above idle. This lasted until the engine had warmed up a little. Then, it would only run normally at idle and above about 2500 rpm. So now I am at the point where the car runs at idle fine, but as I input the throttle, it will start to chug and cough until I reach around 2500 rpm, then it will smooth out and feel like it is running normally. My gas mileage has dropped of considerably as well. I did not mention that I had a service shop run the usual diagnostics and they are stumped too. He suggests I find a Nissan specialist to look at it. If anyone has had any of these types of difficulties with their gen 2 maxima, I would greatly appreciate any insight at all you might have. I have read with some interest the Hesitation thread, and I am going to look at the cap and rotor this week.
(I can't believe Mike did not look under the hood though to see if he had any obvious problems...shame on you Mike! Plug wire off!?)

Anyway thanks for your help.
Bill

 

there was a fuel injector recall on 2nd gens (I think it applied to all years).. might be part of the problem... could also be some kind of intake problem.. something got through and clogged up the works perhaps. I'm far from an expert, but if your car is sputtering under acceleration, its either fuel or air... might even want to check your sparks. If all that has been checked (and the recall was done), I dont know what to tell you.

Greg