Hey guys. I just picked up a 2003 SE TE 6-spd for a song. I've been on the forum for a while now and though I'm not new to Maximas, I am new to the VQ35.

I've had the car about two weeks and it's ran flawlessly. Then, one evening coming home from work cruising at about 50mph in 6th, I had to slow down because a car in front of me was turning off, slowed down to about 35, tried to resume light acceleration in 6th and the whole car started lurching.

I've read and searched my *** off (See Dfj240's 'Bogging under Load') thread. And nothing is quite like how my car is acting.

It idles and revs perfectly in neutral, or even coasting with the clutch in. But anything more than 1/2 throttle (maybe even a little bit less) the car starts to act up and struggles very much pulling. It is even more pronounced if I am cruising in a high gear (4th-6th), any bit of throttle past 1/5 or so will cause the whole car to stumble along- however VERY light throttle the car does ok.

Before it started acting up though... I did notice a very dramatic "vias kick"... or at least what I thought was a vias kick. Where under half throttle or so (when possibly the pedal position sensor sent more voltage) the car would start hauling ***... which was great... but the 'kick' was SO dramatic. Like it was almost hard to accelerate briskly without it being annoying and acting like a WOT dump at a certain pedal position.

To my knowledge all the coils and MAF are original, (the Car has 136k miles) But wouldn't any one of those things cause a CEL, or even some problems at idle, or when revving?

I plan to do a tune-up soon... but don't want to start dumping money into it if this is something someone has had experience with before. Also, it might be worth noting my temp gauge never reads past 40% or so...

Thanks very much in advance to all who have information regarding this issue.

 

I'm experiencing a similar issue on my 2000 (auto tranny). If you have factory coils (without the gray dot) and MAF, you may want to replace those since they are so trouble-prone. I changed those, but it didn't fix the problem.

 

Congrats on your new purchase. Have you checked the spark plugs to see what kind of shape they're in?

 

Thanks, I do love it. Been working very hard to clean it up from the previous owners state. Just sold off my old 3rd gen and B13 SE-R after it threw a rod.

It was running so good and now this I can't catch a break.

I checked out the front three spark plugs, they look to be in need of replacement as I suspected. The left and center plug had a coating of white corrosion, and the right plug was a tad darker, still with corrosion caked on; albeit a bit less.

The coils LOOK brand new, though they're probably OE and don't show many signs of wear anyhow huh? I did check the front three injectors with a multi-meter and they're all coming up at 16.9/17 ohms.

 

It would probably be a good idea to get new plugs. As for the coil packs, it's difficult to tell their age unless they're dirty which would mean they've been there for a while. Most of the time of something goes wrong it will take a few driving cycles in order for it to trip the SES light, unless a coil pack just dies and then it will go off and blink. If the MAF is on the fritz, it could possibly cause this running condition. I had one go out on me once and it never had the chance to trip the SES light because there weren't enough driving cycles to trip it. Give that a check and clean it if it looks like it could use it. If there was a K&N filter in there or if there was at one point in time, it can kill a MAF if it's over oiled.

 

the MAF hardly throws a CEL , it usually takes a dump and the ECU for w/e reason doesnt pick the poor frequency rating . Not unless it is completely dead or unplugged will it throw a CEL.

you can use a multi meter to test the MAF to see if it is in good working order

see videos below

 

Yea, Amave and Behr are spot on I think. I would change out those plugs first, especially if you've found them to have build up/corrosion. If not, I would suspect the MAFS would be your next good bet there. If you can use a scan tool and monitor run data, I would drive the car and see what your MAF readings are under load, as well as resistance testing the MAF to make sure it's within spec. It could be on it's way out.

-Nathan

 

Yeah, I was planning to do plugs but was going to buy parts here and there so I could do it all when I had the IM off. Perhaps I'll just swap out the front ones and see if I get lucky. After the car started having problems I did take the MAF out and clean it. Felt like it maybe helped for the first 15 seconds of driving. As soon as I went out to the main road to pick up speed- back to shuttering.

My first two hunches were MAF and Coils- so I very much would not doubt it if it was the MAF. In fact, I would almost rather it be an MAF right now than one of the rear coils. I see some people saying to test voltage and some saying to test resistance. I'm at work right now so I have not dug through the FSM enough yet to see if it shows you which pins to test and what values are within spec- though what I have seen in the FSM points everything CEL related to Consult II. Do they show how to test the MAF via a multi-meter?

Will get some plugs when I leave work and swap them in when I get home to see if it helps. Would the white corrosion indicate they're running lean? (Ie. Perhaps a bad/slowly failing MAF could cause this?)

If I could get my hands on an OBDII tool, does anyone know what kind of specs I would be looking for when testing MAF voltages at certain throttle points?

Thanks a lot to everyone who's helped this far. I need to look into doing the VQ30DE-K MAF swap (with thermistor)... the price on our VQ35 MAF's is just outrageous...

 

Just thought I would update this thread.

So the missing at half throttle eventually turned into a dead miss...

I had to drive to work and back every day and it slowly would get to where I had to apply less and less throttle for it not to hesitate. Then eventually it went out completely and started flashing a SES.

Not only did it misfire though, it also picked up an unhealthy knocking from what sounded to be cylinder 3, silent at first but gradually louder with engine temp... and very dramatic under the car near the rear of the engine.

The code was a P0303 (Cylinder 3 Missfire). Which, evidently is the only coil you can't replace without removing the upper plenum. Great.

Since I had to be in there I went ahead and replaced the rear valve cover with one from an '04 Maxima. As well as the IM gasket, new plugs, the coil for cylinder #3, and some new vacuum tubing for the VIAS.

Overall it was pretty easy with the help of my cousin, and the car runs flawlessly... WAY more power, engine sounds silky smooth.. the loudest thing going on in there are the injectors ticking away, absolutely no knock after beating on it for a good 15 minutes (only a little bit of beating )

I am definitely wiping my brow on this one, that knocking had me scared- I guess the plugs were in so bad of shape with the electrode worn down to a nub... that it just refused to fire anymore. For all I know the coil could be good and the plugs were just that bad.

Hope this helps anyone out in the future with this problem.

dirty...


My cousin doin' work while I play with my phone...




And after the rest of the work and a can of brake clean gone on cleaning up that IM...

 

Glad to see you got it back up and running.

 

The car got a great owner

 

Lets not forget there is also a TSB for HESITATION ON ACCELERATION WITH M/T:

http://maxima.theowensfamily.com/tsb/NTB03-022.pdf