I have been having trouble with my 99 SE Ltd. Driving along and felt a shudder and saw the malfunction Indicator Light come on.

Took it to the dealer to have it checked. They did a diagnostic on the brain and it dumped out a ton of codes. The primary code was P1320 ING. Service manager said that in his experience so many codes spit out indicated a wiring harness problem (seemed possible, we had just gotten our first below freezing snap, maybe a nick in a cable and the insulation is shrinking or something). They cleared the codes and said to see what developed.

That night, light started blinking indicating a misfire. Car ran rough for a bit and then evened out and the light stayed on. Had intermittent troubles all last weekend with the idle or running rough at speed. Light stayed on.

Took the car back today. Same crap...ton of code spit out of the diagnostic. According to the service guy, the service manual says the wiring harness has to be replaced if the primary code I got kept popping up. I am outside of the Emissions System Warranty and the wiring harness is not covered under the 50k powertrain warranty. He says he will check with Nissan to see if they will spring for the repair regardless.

I have no guarantee this $2100 repair will work ($1300 for the harness plus an ungodly amount of labor...we haven't started negotiating yet). Now I am being told that Nissan has a repair kit from the brain to the emissions sensors and I also saw that there is a Service Bulletin on the NHTSA web site regarding the wiring harness.

Anyone have any similar issues? Know anything about the Service Bulletin? Any ideas? I am having a bit of trouble swallowing an entire wiring harness replacement. Seems a bit odd that the trouble would be intermittent if it is a faulty wiring harness. Thanks for any input.

Dan

99 SE Ltd
Arctic Pearl White
No Mods yet...just got the damn thing a couple months ago so this problem is *#$%*# killing me.

 

Your Maxima is a '99. You didn't disclose the odometer mileage. If below 36K, you are still on warranty.

 

It might help to know the other codes.

Diagnostic Trouble Code P1320 indicates a fault with the Ignition Signal. According to the factory service manual, the possible causes are...
- Harness or connectors (the ignition primary circuit is open or shorted.)
- Power transistor unit built into ignition coil
- Condenser
- Crankshaft position sensor (REF)
- Crankshaft position sensor (REF) circuit

Possible causes 2 - 5 are all less expensive than replacing the wiring harness. For that reason it is worthwhile to check them before spending $2K+ on the harness.

 

After all was said and done....the, umm, sharp crew at my dealer admitted that they had not checked the ignition coils and found one bad one. This was after another couple of trips and ordering a repair kit for the harness that I mentioned in the first post.

No problems since.