First I would like to say whats up, I just recently (a month ago) bought a 96 Maxima GLE w/75k miles on it. Am very impressed with its performance and comfort to this point, and hope to drive it for at least another 75-100k miles (seems very realistic after researching the vehicle).

Anyway, there are a few issues that I have that I need to have resolved to help me sleep at night . Like I said I just bought the car and am not sure of its tendancies, etc. I noticed that sometimes while shutting it down I hear a pulsating low-freq sound that sort of vibrates the car (almost like something is loose?). Might it be a faulty air pump or something? It doesn't happen everytime, and almost seems to happen after I run it for at least 15/20 minutes. Now, that being said, I was examining under the hood while the car was running yesterday and uncovered a similar deep air-type sound in the engine. It seemed to be coming from the back right. Is this a normal sound or is something wrong? I don't think it's anything too terrible, just want to make sure. I also have driven the car nearly 1500 miles in the last 2 weeks with no problems (except that I feel that performance is sometimes not consistant, which could be myself just being paranoid). Thanks for any input I would be greatly appreciative, this maxima.org resource is extremely cool to have!

 

anyone at all?

 

quite possibly, the hissing...maybe a vacum leak?

do your RPMs jump around?

 

nah I don't think that they jump around... if i let off the gas while at say 2500 rpms it will go down considerably (maybe to like 1000) and then increase once i press the gas again. i think that is hjust normal for the car though?? i wouldn't say it was a hissing sound either, more like a "rumble".. i dont know its very hard to describe - and probably normal.

 

one of your engine mount could bad. If you hear metal hitting another metal when you shut it down. The rubber part on the engine mounth could be broken and it hits the metal part. Vibration could be caused by that.

 

i almost positive now that it's some type of air sound... like a vacumn leak or air pump.. would this hurt performance?