I was driving my car... everything was running great. I come up to a stop light, light turns green, i take off normal and the car become underpowered. The more gas I give it, the less power it made. I shift second gear, it felt like the engine was making 30hp. I let off the gas and the engine turns off. I had the car towed home.
If I try to restart the car. it takes a few seconds to turn over and it idles very rough. Once it heats up it dies.

Cant just be an ignition coil. the car is making much less power than just one or two cylinders going out.
Cant be the altenator, the battery still has full charge.
Could it be the headgasket? The car never overheated and Im making stock power. I drained the oil and it looks fine.

Im about to run a compression check and see what I come up with.

 

MAF. I assume it won't rev past 2,500 rpm?

 

Maybe stop racing all the time and driving it hard? Bring to the dealer since it should still be under warranty or close to it?

 

ah shut up, thats no fun. I honestly hope u dont belive that. Jeff92SE is right, prob MAF, u can fix it urself, see if u can pull and CEL codes? I beat the bag out of the 96 SE and it work perfectly fine till the day i traded it in, and now im beatin the $hit out of my 02, and loving it. Hes got an 02 6spd, buy an auto if u wanna baby ur car...

 

not to be smart...but make sure you have gas

 

Its not the MAF, I tied using the MAF out of my brothers 02 altima 3.5, and it does the same thing. I know its not the MAF because Ive blown atleast 2 of them already and the amount of power my engine is making is much less than even 'limp mode' that a blown MAF makes.

 

Hmm time to check the ecu codes.

 

Dead fuel pump?

Take out the back seat (bottom), remove the access cover (3 bolts I think), see if you hear noise from the fuel pump when you first turn the key, and also when you try to crank it.

Wait nevermind, you said it does start but it dies after it heats up.
Definitely check ECU codes first and go from there.

 

NO ecu codes. I did the ignition trick with the key and nothing. I also plugged my laptop into the obd2scan to double check and its not showing any codes.....
I did the compression check, everything looks good, all within 5psi of eachother. I did notice that some of the sparkplugs are drenched in gas. So fuelpump is good but its obviously not firing on those cyclinders.... is it possible for more than one ignition coil to go out? How would I check to see if an ignition went bad? pull the coil, set it to the side, have someone crank it and see if a spark jumps?

Also could it be some other sensor? IVT, CrankAngleSen., CamTimingSen..... How would I check for those?

 

Best way way is to watch for Cam/Crank Sensor Signal lines on a proper scan tool and see if they are present or dropping out. Might not set codes at all.

If your car was affected by the sensor recall have you had it performed?

My suspicions (in order of most->least likely)
- Cam/crank sensors or their wiring -- especially cam sensor if same bank of plugs is fuel-soaked (3 front or 3 back)
- Bad coil packs (not likely IMO due to #of cyls affected & model year)
- ECU or engine harness

This kind of stuff can be a real ***** to diagnose, especially if you have a situation where one wire, somewhere in the engine harness, is shorted to ground...blah.

Swap a working coil (one of the non-soaked plugs) with a soaked plug coil and see if the other plug now floods out when you crank the engine, that will narrow down coil problems.

 

The problem is code 0011, 0021. IVT... which has to do with the cam position and crankshaft position sensors. I believe I found a recall for those on our cars. Now I have to convince the dealer to replace it for me..... *sigh*

Could I take these parts off of my brothers 02 3.5 altima and see if they work on mine? I hate taking my car to the dealer. They've screwed me too many times. (search my name if youre bored and want to see what crap ive been through in the past).

thanks for all your help guys. much appreciated.

 

To be honest with you all, my car actually did die once on my driveway and i did not know what was wrong with it, i thought i'd have to tow it to the dealer... ...and then my friend brought a gallon of gas and put it into my tank. I felt really stupid for a month.

 

yes it will work. I've swapped an auto 3.5 altima crankshaft position sensor to a 6spd maxima before. The odd thing was the one of the altima didn't work prior to this but after I swapped the sensors both cars worked perfectly.

 

You just found out your awnser. If your plugs are drenched in Gas , you probally fouled them. I had that happen to me in my 92 prelude once. Car had the same reaction as your MAX. I say throw a fresh pair of plugs in there to see.

 

If your car's included in the recall call the nearest dealer ASAP and have them send a wrecker -- Nissan will pay for the sensors and the tow bill.