Many many years ago I had a 280ZX 5-speed. I remember it had both Nissan and Datsun name labels so it was manufactured during the transition period.

One of the cool things I remember about that 5-speed is when driving through the gears, the engine would maintain RPM (it would actually let the RPM drop maybe 200 or 300) as you up shifted to the next gear. So if you were driving in 2nd gear and and the engine was turning at 3,000 RPM, when you let off the gas and pressed in the clutch, it knew to only let the RPM drop to some RPM like 2,700 which would be the right RPM to for shifting into 3rd based on MPH.

The engine would continue to maintain a higher than idle RPM for a long as the MPH speed matched or had some relevance to a shift point. If you pressed on both brake and clutch and started slowing the car quickly, the RPMs would drop accordingly. I was always amazed how the car's ECU system knew to adjust RPMs downward to when your foot was on the clutch and not on the accelerator so it would be close to the right RPM for the next shift point.

Does the 5-speed Maxima have any feature like the one I described for the Z car? Right now if I move through the gears up-shifting and I don't keep my foot on the accelerator to maintain and adjust engine RPM for the next gear, RPM will drop quickly drop to 600 regardless if I'm rolling at 70 MPH or 10 MPH. It seems like some RPM to MPH synchronization sensor is missing or not working on the Maxima as I remember it from that early Z car.

Am I looking for an engine RPM to MPH synchronization up-shift feature that doesn't exist on the Maxima 5-speed?

I just read the new Z cars now have a downshift version Synchronized Down-Shift RPM-Matching called SynchroRev Match.

Nostalga Pic: The Z car was like the one in the picture below.

 

Nope, no rev matching in the 4th gen. Out of habit with regular driving I go from 1 to 2 slowly, then 3-4-5 shifts are relatively fast. By using that pattern, you will find that the engine dropping revs will match the speed of the next gear ratio when you let the clutch engage. Of course if you're in a redline mood for 0-100 then its fast fast fast for every gear

 

Thanks DW!

 

Tonight I replaced a part tonight that seems to have stopped the sharp RPM drop between gears. Now Max #2 performs like the way I remember the Z car and Max #1. It idles better, the RPM bounce at 1,500 RPMs is completely gone.

I'll post a different thread with all of the symptoms (and there were an assortment minor ones) that have now been remedied.

A couple days ago I purchased a new Hitachi EGR. The new EGR made such a difference that it is hard to believe.

The new car feel is BACK!

 

Nice. I wonder how clogged your EGR port was too....I guess for the other thread lol.

You should look into TCW3 as well to keep your intake parts clean and carbon free for the long haul.

 

DW - Thanks for the tip about TCW3. I'll look into it..

The EGR tube and mounting bracket ports were severely clogged when I cleaned them in November on the original engine. However, it appears the mechanic that moved the electric EGR valve from the old 99 model engine to the 95 model replacement engine did not thoroughly clean the EGR pipe and mount ports. I remember getting a funny look in response to when I asked him to remove and clean the EGR tubes on the replacement engine. I think he said something like it well it doesn't matter because a cleaned pipe will carbon up again in a short amount of time. I remember saying go ahead and clean it anyway. In the end he didn't touch it -- most likely thinking I wouldn't be going through the engine again to check into whether some new parts I provided were actually installed...

So the replacement engine, inherited yet another troubled part from the original 99 model engine with the electric EGR. The EGR tube, pipe, and mount ports were all soaked in carb cleaner for days to make them squeaky clean as part of my recent engine clean up.

I found the original electric 99 model EGR to be severely clogged with carbon and the valve would not open and close until I separated the base from the electro motor part and cleaned the valve and body. The cleaning must have allowed something to trigger the P1405 code. So this week while testing the engine t after my recent clean up project, I found a couple of P1405 codes that triggered my purchase.

Because the engine has been running so much better with the refurbished injectors, new y-pipe, and other clean up items, I thought it was as good it gets..

While performance over 2,000 RPM was greatly improved after the major cleanup/refurb project, I still was not satisfied with the way it was running at idle and the 1,500 RPM bounce and sharp RPM drop between gear changes reminded me of an issue I corrected at one point on the Max#1 (on a vacuum EGR) soon after I bought it 4 years ago.

I just didn't connect the dots on the EGR problem until my oldest son mentioned how replacing the EGR on the 95 Maxima made it run a lot better, fixed the RPM bounce issue, and made for smoother up shifts into the higher gears after he overheard me talking to his younger brother about the EGR P1405 code.