Luds

So today marks the 2 year aniversary of the purchase date of my 02' Max! 2 years and 35k miles. It's been a pretty nice ride.

Anyway, 3 days ago I drove over a bump and the left speakers cut out again. It was very brief(5 seconds) and they kicked in again. Just the same, I called the dealership and scheduled to get the thing replaced while it was still under warranty. As usual, they won't order the part and I have to take the vehicle in.

I took the car in today for a 10am appointment and they could not find a problem with it. The service manager comes in to get me and asks me to come along for a ride. We're pulling out of the service garage and I notice they have the radio on. I'm thinking, "you've got to be kidding me... the CD is cutting out, not the radio."

And of course, after 10 minutes of driving over every bump the guy could find, the deck performed perfectly, not eveing skipping(which it had been doing too much of lately as well). Also, the guy driving was killing me. He was accelerating slowly but would take the car up to 4k or so and adventually shift. At one point we were cruising at 50 mph in 2nd gear!!! Geez, try 5th buddy!

So guess what, we get back and the manager says they can't replace it unless they find a problem. I'm thinking they are pretty skeptical because I've had the damn head unit replaced like 7 times. So I wasted an hour of my time. That sucked...

On my way back from lunch the CD player cut out big time. A work buddy was with me and he's like "drive it the dealership... give em' hell". So I babied the car back to the dealership (heaven forbid hit a bump and it works again) and they obviously agreed to order me a new unit.

So long story short, what a frickin' pain in the ***. I've had this stupid deck replaced so many times I'm ready to do... I don't even know.

I'm just curious, are their any other 02' 03' people out there still having their decks replaced? Anyone still running into these Clarion head units that still do this? I thought this problem was suppose to be solved...

Thanks for listening to my rant... and thank God for cold beer.

JettmiesterMax

You must have posted as I was posting. Did you read my post?

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread.php?t=318922

I am not "still" having problems as you have been, but mine just begun..at 50K! So, I am not covered by warranty.

There is a post within here somewhere, that gives a date of manufacture on the head units. When your new one comes in, be sure it was manufactured after this particular date.

5 spd

iTrader: (2)

if you guys have non working stereos and want to get rid of them, hit me up with a pm.

Luds

JettmiesterMax,

yep... we posted at the same time. Your thread popped up like one minute after I finished typeing mine. I thought it was pretty funny... as soon as I ask the question someone is posting about their POS head unit.

Yeah, I'm at 35k miles so the warranty is almost up on the car. The dealer did say that I actually get 12k or 1 year on any refurbished deck they put in. So since I had the last one replaced this winter I actually had til like 42k miles or so. And when they replace this one the head unit will be warrantied until ~48k miles. I guess I'll just have to make sure I replace the piece of junk once a year.

Simply put I think it's pretty lousy that people like us pay $1000 for "premium audio" only for it to fail like crazy.

Is there anyone out there who has not had their head unit replaced?

TonyMaxNismo

Damn that sucks for you guys. I never had problems with my head unit and after a year I replace it with a t.v head unit so if you intrested, check out ebay soon cuz I'm selling the head unit w/ the factory speakers and tweeters when I get some pics set up.

housecor

iTrader: (2)

I've had 2 go bad in my 9 mths. of ownership. Qwal-it-ee.

biged8

i had 3 replaced soo far .the 2nd was bad right after they replaced it.the first had the left channel problem and the replacement had the skipping problem.3 weeks and no problem on this one yet.

Max20SE00

iTrader: (3)

I have a 2000 wit Bose and never have had it reaplaced

scopium

damn nissan is really cutting budgets..

mclee45

iTrader: (13)

its not nissan's fault... clarion is the company that makes the stereos for nissan. Nissan just buys them from clarion.

FanaticMadMax

I'm not aware that the headunit are Clarion. I thought premium headunits are BOSE. As those who have non bose, I didn't have a clue who makes them.

JettmiesterMax

Bose designs the "sound", Clarion the headunit, whether it's Bose or not. So Bose is not to blame being the problem lies within the H.U.

I do also blame Nissan, for not standing ground for it's consumers on this matter and demanding Clarion to replace evey unit defective with new. We should not be hearing people complain of having their HU replaced more than once. And to get a refurbished one? That is unacceptable IMO.


I think I'll get a 2000-2001 Max Bose headunit. I don't want to rewire and redo everything. I am not one to care if I can "outblast" others with my car stereo. I just want a decent stereo, and that is what I no longer have.

cobymoby

iTrader: (2)

If you have had the deck replaced 7 times I would think that someone along the way would have realized that the problem is not the deck.

I don't really know much about your problem but my years of trouble shooting tells me that if you replaced the same component 7 times it has got to be something else. If the deck is breaking, then something is making the deck break those 7 times.

cobymoby

iTrader: (2)

If you have had the deck replaced 7 times I would think that someone along the way would have realized that the problem is not the deck.

I don't really know much about your problem but my years of trouble shooting tells me that if you replaced the same component 7 times it has got to be something else. If the deck is breaking, then something is making the deck break those 7 times.

JettmiesterMax

It is an error in manufacture. There is poor quality in the headunits built within a certain time frame. The date to look for is posted in a sticky here in these forums. The replaced headunits are "refurbished" ones that were not refurbished correctly. This is where the repetitive problems come into play.

The defect is most definately within the headunits.