Lately I have been noticing an unusal problem with my lights, and tonight it happened twice. After having my lights on and then turning them off to leave the car my passenger side headlight will stay on. The light switch is in the off position, and if I just jiggle it the light will go off. Very similarly, sometimes I will be driving and my hi-beams will come on for no reason at all, and I have to jiggle the light swtich for the low-beams to come back. I have done the fog light and corner light rewire found on Craig's website. It seems doubtful that I did something to cause this problem in the rewire, since the it was a very easy rewire. Is this another random 3rd gen problem that is unexplained?

 

There must be some kind of short or wearing going on in the combination switch. It's actually a very simple yet clever design. Twisting the **** moves a pawl along a track that pushes different combinations of little pins down to engage some copper contacts. Kind of like how a camshaft works.

Remove the steering wheel cover, unscrew the unit from the column, and if you're very careful not to break the tabs you can almost fully 100% disassemble this thing and see what's wrong (dirty, bent contacts, worn pins, etc.). Good luck!

 

It's the combo switch. Same thing happened to me and drained my battery. Got a new one from Courtesy Nissan, I think it's about $50 and 15 mins to change it.

 

Did you find out what was wrong with it? If it has anything to do with the contacts it's not all that much work to disassemble and it costs nothing.

Once you have it apart a bit it's immediately obvious how it works. Kinda neat.

 

In fact, I'm an electronics guy and I worked on the switch couple of years ago. I found out the contacts were not aligning to the right points that's why I got one side high beam sometimes. At that time, I stuck a thick paper inside somewhere (I can't remember where) and was able to make it to work for a few more years. Then one day, it turned on one low beam by itself. I decided not to mess around with a faulty switch anymore and ordered one from CN. The reason is not wanting my battery goes flat. IMHO, this generation of Nissan definitely has some part quality issues which leads to a laundry list of common problems such as windows regulator, VTC noise etc.

 

yeah, and I think I am slowly going through every one of those common problems. I have had my car for 3 or 4 months and I have a broken window regulator, broken antenna motor, broken axle boot, and now this switch. Thankfully my VTC's work fine.

 

You're so lucky with your VTC. Mine started to make noise couple of months after I brought it (used). It sounded like a diesel car. I finally decided to ground the VTC and it works fine since then. Good luck with yours.

All my windows regulators have been broken and "repaired" (I fixed them cause I don't want to buy new regulators because of a broken plastic).

All my BOSE speaker amps went bad and repaired. The BOSE head unit was replaced. Now the second unit can only play radio.

Antenna? Of course ! I changed it to a cheap Walmart fixed antenna.

Front crank oil seal leak - seal replaced.

Driver side door windows/lock control panel. Got a burnt resistor which burnt out part of the PCB causing all power windows failed. PCB repaired and resistor replaced. The PCB was also holding moisture between the pins of an IC therefore it was randomly opening all the door locks or triggers the alarm by itself.

Clock? Of course ! I resolder everything and it works.

Random seat belt chime? Yes, got that too. Haven't got time to fix the magentic switch or jump a wire to it.

Glad that my A/C still works fine and blows very cold air. I'm 609 certified so I can buy R12 if I need to. I can't live without A/C in summer. It's 98F here.

 

Hey, I was thinking of replacing my broken antenna with a fixed antenna too! Can you tell me how you did it? Is it hard to do?

Thanks!

 

Very easy and it's pretty much self explanatory. Go get a fixed antenna from Walmart for $10 (ok, you may want to get a better quality product). The instruction is basically in the new antenna package. The challange is to get the old antenna off. The nut at the base of the OEM antenna requires a special tool to loosen it but I get away from it by using a small screw driver and a little hammer by tapping it sideways. I suggest to put sufficient padding around in case your screw drive slips it will still not scratch off the paint. After you get the old antenna off, you can disconnect the power control connectors and the antenna connector. Put the new antenna on and connect the antenna plug to the new antenna. You don't need to worry about the power control connectors.

 

Thanks!

 

The seatbelts on 3rd gens are under limited lifetime warranty, you can take it to a dealer and get this random chime fixed in a few hours. It's happened to me twice since I got my 93 Max 2 years ago, once for each front seatbelt! Hoppefully the random chiming is gone for good now...

And I got lucky with my VTCs too, I bought the car a few months after the first owner had them repaired, he was sick of paying for all the stupid random things breaking, and wanted to sell it while it was still working! Here's what I've had go wrong already:

passenger side window regulator (replaced w/ courtesy one)

power antenna stuck (got a nice CD player, shoved it back down, and never use the radio in my car now)

Control rod seal (replaced seal)

Reverse/neutral switch on tranny (replaced...messy messy, also ended up putting RedLine MT90 in the tranny at the same time)

power steering high-pressure hose (had a local shop replace it)

Now my 1st gear is making a loud whining noise, and the engine is squealing when I shut it off after more than 10 minutes of driving...dunno about either yet...

I love Maximas in theory, but come on...ever seen a Honda with silly problems like these so often on 80%+ of the cars? I sure haven't...my last car was an Accord, and the next one will probably be at this rate also

 

Thanks. I know I can take it to a dealer but with a 3hrs wait, I'll rather do it myself for 30 mins.

What's the "Control rod seal"?

I do too have a 1986 Accord which has many more miles than my 92SE. I'm dealing with a lot less problems with the Accord. Consider the Accord is 6 years older, I would have no problems saying the Max's quality is not on par with the Accord. I like my max, but I'll like it better if I didn't need to go through all the common problems.