Hi, I'm new to the boards. I have a few questions to ask regrading some things going on with my 96 Maxima. First, the thermostat stays pretty close to "C" and slowly rises when I idle, but when I drive at Highway speeds, it slowly goes down. Not sure what is going on. Second, when I'm doing normal driving and release the gas pedal the car shakes back and forth a little bit giving a "stall" type feeling. If you guys could tell me whats up I'd appreciate it very much. Thanks

P.S It's Auto.

 

Your thermostat is probably blocked open and you must change it.

For your second trouble, i dunno, i have a 5 speed...

 

first i'll say welcome to the boards, read the faqs for asnwering of the easiest questoins, anyway it seems like you need to check codes first, its on the sticky in red on the top of the 4th generation forum, odds are that it is your engine coolant temperature sensor (ECTS) the codes on the ECU will tell you whast wrong, if you get no codes aka 05-05 code, i would have to guess that your thermostat could be stuck in the open position, are you getting heat in the car? check if theres heat. and check the codes, how high does the needle go towarsd H

if i understood you correctly, you're saying that your car does not warm up, and it stays close to C, when you idle the needle goes up, and when you speed up the needle goes down again, its opssible that the coolant temp sensor, or thermostat might be bad, but also it crossed my mind that your radiator fan might not be engaging either depending on how hot the car gets when at idle

bump.... anyone else?

 

I would also check for heat and see how much he gets, but I'd be very surprise if this isn't his thermostat. It's a $15-25 part and you can replace it yourself if you want. It requires draining the radiator, then just undoing where the thermostat goes into the engine. I bought an autozone $15 medium one on the weekend and put it in on sunday. In my case the car would take a VERY long time to start warming up, then spirited driving at low speeds would bump it, but when on the highway, because of all the airflow, it would hover in the medium range of heat again, so i knew the thermostat was locked open. They generally seem to fail open - I had the same problem on my sentra a couple of years ago.