started the car this evening to go back home after it sat in the garage in 39F weather for about 9 hours.
the car started but the engine made sort of rattling or knocking sound. i let it warm up for a minute and when i put the car on Drive, the knocking became more prominent and i can feel the car vibrating. i drove slowly and then the check engine light came on and blinked like 5 or 6 times and then went away. i kept on driving slowly (the engine sounded horrible) and after like 5 mins, when the engine got warmer the rattling/knocking noise went away and the car was running fine. in about 10 mins, the car is absolutely fine.
this is the 2nd time this has happened but the check engine light came on only today.

any ideas whats going on.

if i take the car to Autozone, can they still read the Check Engine light code that came on ?

The blinking SES light would be the engine is misfiring, the code would be P0300 a code reader might read either P0300 multi misfire or it may read P0301 - P0302 and so on to indicate just which coil is misfiring. That take care of the SES blinking now for the horrible rattle that sounds like metal hitting metal, I believe the term is known as value or piston slap which could have been cause by the engine misfiring or possibly very low oil pressure/low oil in the crank case you could also be running oil that is to thick for your climate. The VQ engines run best with 5w-30 how ever some fine 0w-30 works better for them ... any chance that you are running 10w-30 which given the lower temps is very hard on the VQ engine and does not flow as well when it gets very cold out. First thing I would check to make sure the oil level is correct and follow up seeing if you can pull any engine codes and go from there.

Sounds like a misfire. I would get an OBDII reader and get those codes.

misfire.

Thanks for the replies guys.

I did put 10w30 Mobile 1 Synthetic two weeks back. I have used this oil before also but never had this problem.

i will go have the codes checked tomorrow from autozone and see what i get.

Thanks
Faisal
2003 Maxima
67k

change all the coils to new versions

all the coils? thats unnecessary and expensive. the code will tell him which cylinder is misfiring and he can just replace that coil

HAH! Wouldn't that be awesome?! Highly unlikely (well at least in my case). You're probably going to get an Ignition Fault code, which means you're going to become friends w/ a Multimeter very soon.

Went to Autozone and they said since the CHeck Engine Light is not on right now, they cant check the code .

yesterday, i warmed up the car before leaving for work and the car didnt have any problems.

today morning, i did warm up for about 1.5 min and i noticed the engine misfiring at at stop light. 5 mins later when the engine is hot enough, there is no issue at all.

if the issue if from bad coils or spark plug, why would that go away after the engine has warmed up???
shouldnt the car be misfiring all the time?

They can check the codes, should be a pending code. Better yet, invest in a code reader. Honestly, Maximas should have come from the factory with a code reader in the glove box.

Pull the code, plug it into the search function here and you'll find everything about that code you need to know.

Amazon has a cheap reader for like 20 bucks. Gets the job done mate.

it misfires only when its cold? and you put a 10w-30 mobile one synthetic oil in it 2 weeks ago? As long as its not below 0 degrees outside then its not the oil and a cold start/engine wear problem. Thats a weird one right there. Get them to read the code. look it up on this forum and see where it takes you.

Sounds like you have a bad coil.

http://forums.maxima.org/5th-generat...-up-issue.html