Hello

My key no longer unlocks all four doors, and when I use the door lock button on the drivers door, it does not respond, but I hear a clicking sound down to the right of where the fuse box is located on the drivers side.

Maybe a relay gone bad?

Thank You
Russ

 

Sounds like its your power door lock timer module. Push the lock button, follow the sound of the clicking. It will be coming from a grey or black box in the area you described. Unplug the module and slide the circuit board out from the bottom of the module and get yourself a soldering iron and solder and re solder any points that look bad on the back of the board. If your soldering skills aren't bad and your not sure which ones to solder than carefully re solder them all. Replace the board back in the module and plug it back in. Give it a try and post back. I'm about 90% sure that's your problem as its very common.

 

door lock timer is most likely the culprit, something inside of it needs to be re-soldered. theres a thread on it somewhere showing where to solder, common problem

 

What's your model year?

 

Definitely master power switch replace it got mine for 35 bucks on ebay

 

Doubt it's the switch if he's hearing the clicking from the door lock timer module. If he's hearing the clicking the switch is sending a signal to the door lock timer. I'd try soldering any bad points on the board of the door lock timer first being it's a free fix then move on to actuators and master switch.

 

Could be wrong but my guess would be its a 3rd gen. OP hasn't posted back.

 

as said, if theres clicking the switch is alright. 95% its the door lock timer, common problem

 

My question was what model year. Can't automatically blame the door lock timer when only 92+ had them, which only made the system more unreliable.

 

Any idea why Nissan went to the ridiculously troublesome timer system in 92+? It seems the early non-door lock timer systems have been completely trouble free all these years

 

True! I didn't realize they were only on the 92+ and as James said why would they change to a system like that when before 92 they had a pretty trouble free system? If i had to take a guess it's another money maker for repairs i suppose. Seems like in a number of circumstances they don't make things like they used to as the saying goes but i guess theres not as much money to be made if they made things that didn't break much lol

 

i doubt in 1992 that they knew it would be a problem 20 years down the line. same as the shifter bushing on the automatics, common problem on 3rd gens once they hit 20+ years old. they had no idea it would be a common problem down the line

 

Nissan probably still has problems with solder connections.

I remember re-soldering the clock in my 94, which was a fairly common problem. I also had a 97 Max and the clock had to be re-soldered, despite Nissan swearing up and down that they had "fixed" the cold solder problems in the Maxima.

The 5th gens also have solder problems, most notable the daytime running light module in the Canadian Maximas. And I've read in the the 6th gen forum of people needing to re-solder stuff.

It's kinds sad that Nissan can't seem to get soldering under control.

 

but everyone has their problems Ford Focus are known for the hatch/trunk lid wires breaking in half, GM for ABS sensors, etc. when you factor in the spaghetti mess that automotive wiring is, its hard to be perfect and not have problems 30 years down the line. i have a passionate hatred of wiring lol

 

It wasn't 20 years down the line, they were problematic several years down the line. My mom bought her '92 skyblue VE in about 1996ish. As far back as I can remember, the locks on that car were quirky and had the door lock timer issues that we all know and love. Of course, back in the late '90s it was fairly infrequent, but still giving problems way too early its life.

So Nissan surely knew how troublesome it was. And then they still went and plagued the Pathfinder and the J30 and all sorts of other Nissans with the same issues for another decade.

And yet the early VG Maximas to this day have virtually ZERO door lock issues as a whole. I genuinely am curious why Nissan changed the door lock system back then. It seems like they actually went from a simple system to a more complicated system.

 

I think it was to counter the problem where you would manually actuate the locks by driver side. Half the time, the locks would go down and pop right back up. It would take a few times to get them to stay. My parents car had the problem when it was at most 2 or 3 years old, at least that's when I first noticed it. They could have done without that feature, master switch is more reliable and didn't cause any problems. But back then, people instinctively locked their doors manually, and didn't think about pushing a switch instead. They probably had a ton of complaints about it.

"fairly common" might be an understatement. It's probably more like a 100% failure rate. The solder joint isn't to blame though. It's a heat issue, which translates into a poor engineering and/or heat dissipation. In the case of the clock, it's both. That fat 1xx resistor gets extremely hot, and the display has a very basic power supply circuit. Sometimes the resistor itself burns up, rendering the resolder job ineffective.

But for the most part, Nissan (Niles) is pretty reliable as far as automotive electronics go. Course it's easy to say that when you've spent a load of time figuring out how to fix the problems But, usually things work or they don't. They don't go haywire and take on a life of their own, like a lot of other cars do.

 

Its gonna be the switch that happened to my 89 maxi trust me

 

Do the pre-92 door locks have the feature where the locks will automatically unlock if the ignition is on, the driver door is open and you try to lock the locks?

Maybe Nissan was trying to "improve" the system which in turn made it troublesome.

As for me, I recently re-soldered all the larger joints on the circuit board. It appears all those joints go to the relay on the board, which carries larger amperage.