Hey guys I'm new here so I don't know what to expect or how much info you want. I have a 98 Maxima with 113000 miles on it. It's a four speed automatic and occasionally hear a slight grinding/scraping noise. It's new and I've only paid attention to it once. I was driving from a red light and got to about 3000 rpm first gear then it shifted into second and the tach settled on its lowest rpm about 2200. Immediately after I heard the small scraping noise. I'm assuming it's something wrong with the tranny but that's the most my limited car knowledge tells me. If you need any more info lemme know. Any help is appreciated.

 

I have a 00 Max SE 4 speed auto with 160k and I have had a grinding noise similar to what you are describing for about 40k miles or so now. I am surprised that whatever is causing the noise has not broken yet. You are the first person who I have heard of having this problem as well! I posted on a thread and someone commented that it might be a leak in the flex pipe of the exhaust system because my catalytic converter is also throwing a code. I thought it was transmission at first too but I feel like it would have broken already. How many miles do you have on it? Does it make the noise when you rev it in park or neutral? I hear it loudest when I'm putting load on the engine and I take my foot off of the gas then it grinds until it upshifts (and drops in rpm). Let's figure this thing out.

 

I see you have 113,000 miles on it now. My bad.

 

Hey thanks for the reply. I know my catalytic converter is good since I recently passed inspection. I've never heard it outside of changing from first gear into second and it's still not all the time. The last thing you said about putting a load on the engine sounds accurate to my situation. The time I wrote about in the original post was when I was going up a hill so there was definitely a load on the engine. It's quite a steep hill and definitely put a larger load than normal on the engine.

 

Since the noise seems to occur while the engine is under considerable load, the engine and transmission mounts might be flexing too much.