Alright guys I am having a problem with my car. I took it to the shop to get it checked out but being that they couldnt recreate the problem and I dont have a check engine light on, they couldn't really do anything.


99 maxima. When i drive it most of the time its find. On Friday I was driving from work in traffic and whenever the car has to stop or crawl in traffic i loose all rpm and the car doesn't idle. When this happens the car is still on, the music never stops playing and the engine itself has now turned itself off.

as long as the car is going at a decent speed this wont happen but whenever i stop or idle it does. Now it hasn't happen often either. I find that it generally happens when i get off work and also once at lunch.

Maybe having something to do with the heat outside.

Normally when this happens i can simply put the car in park and start it back up and it will be find for the rest of the drive. however on friday soon as i started it back up it would die because once you start it up its idoling so it would sort of choke and die unless of course u gave it some gas.

i had to get it towed on friday but it drove find sat morning and i drove to work find today.

If anyone knows of what might be the problem or has ran into this problem I would appreciate if it you would share any suggestions.

 

damn, someone that has almost exact same symptoms as my 96 Maxima....

my car does that same thing, as it starts up and drives perfect, but when it gets really hot,(2 times it was pronounced most was coming home from work 6pm) it gets whacky.

1st time) Coming home, in city traffic, hit gas from dead stop and rpms where moving, car wasn't, until I let go and gave it more gas, did that til I got home, another 5 miles roughly...

Took car next day to Aamco, they said VSS(speed sensor) and knock sensor was bad... I thought my problem was tranny related(main reason I brought it there) I has them change my VSS and do tranny service (was never done in car, has 120k mi)

Got car, drov efine for 1 week - came home when it was 100+ degrees that day and...

2nd time) Got off parkway and in city traffic again, car did the same thing as previous, only this time, it was MUCH WORSE! even when I got out of the traffic onto open road, car wasn't responding to my foot on gas... rpms moving big time car barely did, made it home though....
Waited like 45-60min, got in car, drove around town, car ran perfect.

Took car to Cottman next, they did 2 hrs diagnostics, and couldn't resolve issue, but they said they thoughtt it was speedo-head cluster where problem was stemming from... $200+ spent, no resolution...

Finally, brought it to the Stealership: they wanted to chage MAF Sensor, speedometer, knock sensor, cvs, fuel filter, brakes, u name it... I told them to change speedometer and thats it... they wanted $715 to change MAF!

Got car from them and bought MAF from advanced auto parts, changed it out and reset the ecm after borrowing my neighbors obd2 accessory scanner..

drove it to work today, and it feels fine, but its also not hot, so can't tell if issue is fixed yet.... I'm praying it is.... I may let car idle when I get home for 45minutes and drive it to see if it drives normal... I will let you know...

 

i appreciate it. yea i dont want to be spending pointless money and the car doesnt get fixed..

this other shop said they diagnose for 85 an hour but there aint no guarantee they will find out what the problem is

 

Often referred to as stalling.

Check your MAF ground, then find a friend with a 4th gen and swap MAF's or just buy one for 50-80 from a parts store

 

ok will do i have a drop in k&n. could that be effecting it in anyway?

 

Yes if its really dirty or punctured, it could also be the reason your MAF fouled up if it is

 

the srvce mgr at Nissan did tell me that 1 of the pins on the MAF was coming up as defective is the reason it needd to be replaced. I bought a new MAF at auto store for 250, just hope its the root of the problem...

my car never stalled by the way...

 

yes the air filter is dirty. if i replace it will that take care of the problem or do i also need to replace the maf?. anyway i can have it cleaned or fixed instead of replacing it also?

 

yea, K&N drop ins have the tendency to screw up MAF sensors. The oil from K&N filters can get to the hot wire and cause all kind of problems. Same thing happened to me but on the 5th gen. All i did was cleaned up the MAF with MAF cleaner, get em at autozone or pepboys. and put it back in and it was back to normal and even better, oh, and i took out the K&N filter, went back to OEM.


Also, don't want to nit pick or anything but bad grammar really irks me.

idol-idle
find-fine.

 

well mines doesn't have any oil i had the MAF cleaned out 3 months ago. for that exact problem of oil on the filter. The filter was soaked in alcohol, i believe, to get all the oil off of the filter. So the filter shouldn't have any oil on it.

if i was to buy a new k&n filter would that be damaging?

 

max - get a obd2 scanner, connect it to the ecm under dash drivers side and pull any codes.... or have autozone or whomever do it, think they do it for free...

I read many people say that this gen have problems with heat and air/fuel mixtures.... speed sensors are very common on this gen along with MAFs...

get the codes and go from there bro

 

So you say the engine died, but it didn't stall? Which is it?

 

severino sort of hijacked this, his problem it didn't include stalling but the OP's did

 

ok will do..

so there is a possibility of codes being thrown even though my check engine light isn't on?

 

Ah, I see now. Didn't even look at the poster, assumed it was the OP.

 

hijacked this? I am responding to the OPs post, since it has very similar symptoms to what my car is doing.... don't thinik that's a hijack there pal - go easy