Guys, some help and opinion needed. I have a 2002 Nissan Maxima Auto that i've owned for about 3 years. It had 78000 miles when i bought it and it has 131,000 at the moment. During that time i have drained the transmission and refilled with Mobil 1 sythetic every summer. I run Mobil one oils and have been very diligent about making sure everything is taken care of. I've been keeping a spreadsheet of all the work done on it and the mileage at the time.

So you can imagine my shock this past sunday when I pulled out of my driveway after parking the car for about a day, stopped to give way to traffic and when i hit the gas to join traffic, there was a clunk and the car would not move at all. I got it out of drive, tried to shift back into reverse to get off the street and i got this grinding of metal. I tried to put it into neutral and could hear more grinding. I tried to put it into park and got even more grinding. The car wasnt stalling or anything like that. Just grinding each time. I shut it, turned the key on but didnt start it, put the car in neutral, started it (no grinding) and had someone help me push the car back and out of the street. I took it to a shop that a friend owns figuring i had blown something internally somehow (although this made no sense). He just called me and told me that the transmissions busted due to an axle that was installed wrong. Sears Auto just replaced that for me a month ago. I'm fairly livid right now knowing that i take care of my cars and clearly considering taking the old transmission back to sears and having them pay for this but my guy is telling me that this could be tough. He can see that the axle install is what caused the transmission to go but he cant definitively prove it. Enough to write me something at least. Now I hadnt told him the car had a new axle at all. He pulled the tranny and thats what he saw. A new used trannny is going in right now.

Is there really nothing, absolutely nothing that i can do here? (I tend to do a lot of the work myself when i have the time but trannys I have little expirience with)

 

Take some pictures on the blown tranny showing and show where the axle connects to it, personally never heard of that before

 

Thanks DJ. You're saying you've never heard of a tranny busting due to a badly installed axle?

 

Bet you a dollar it's the axle's that snapped

 

Thats the weird thing- i want to run to the shop tomorrow and take a look myself but they're telling me the axle's fine.

 

Only way to tell, yank the axles out and oh take pics of busted tranny.

 

man that axle either snapped or wasnt seated competly in the trans and popped out go drive the damn car and check for yourself

 

You know something, Sears automotive did the same thing to me a few years back with my '87 Prelude 5 speed. I brought it to them to have the alternator replaced and for some reason they insisted that the only way to do it was to go in from the bottom and remove the drivers side axle shaft.

I'm guessing when they pulled the axle, some oil drained out and they never bothered to replace it because on a road trip that weekend, my transmission started howling and squealing pretty badly. Took it to a shop and they said half my oil was gone.

He also pointed out that Sears aligned the lift wrong and sent the lift arms right through the passenger side floor.

Of course, Sears accepted no responsibility for any of this, and I was too young and dumb to know any better than to say "ok" and walk away.

 

did he explain how a bad axle install would ruin the transmission? How does he know it is bad? What did he see?

 

It wasnt driveable at all man but this is a guy i trust but i'm going over there to take a look at the tranny today for myself and take photos and then try to deal with Sears. I'm tempering my pissiness (for lack of a better term) until I see the tranny.

 

Montego- thanks. Things is they're dealing with someone who takes care of their car and keeps all records. I want to talk to my guy so he can explain to me what he thinks happened and go from there. I intend for this to be painful one way or the other if that was really the deal and they dont own up to it. I've been taking my cars there for the last 15 years, maybe it wont get to that but we'll see.

 

I'll find out today. I'm going there today to get the story, didnt want to do that over the phone.

 

Rip the asshats at Sear's a new one if they don't fix it.

 

I broke my passenger axle the first time I took it out, I yanked on it until something broke inside of it. I didn't know any better and put it back in and I would get the EXACT symptoms you're describing. Anything other than park and there was a horribly metal on metal grinding noise. Turns out the joint was separated inside the boot and the tranny was spinning the axle and it was grinding on its other piece. Replaced the axle and its been fine ever since. I just don't see how a broken axle could damage a tranny.

 

It actually takes quite a bit of effort to make these transmission explode. I have about 175k miles on my 97 auto with probably a good 30% of the time beating on the car.

 

Similar comments all around, seems difficult to Pinpoint how this happened, i do know that on a manual transmission car pulling out one axle i forget which side makes tranny fluid come out and you'd have to top off the level, not sure if this applys to automatics though

 

I don't trust Sears, they used to be good at what they do, but now they have non ASE certifed mechanics working there. I work for Autozone, and I get commerical accounts from Sears getting parts from us, the guys at Sears are nitwits, cuz most of them don't know what the parts is called or worse, I get mechanics from there come in my stores they don't even speak english well, most of them are from Russia. I was like wow, they put people who don't know what they are doing. That goes same with PoopBoys, cuz they don't pay them well so therefore non ASE mechanics too. Thankfully I can do the work myself, unless it's overly complicated job, then I'll take to a place I can trust.

 

Sounds like you may be missing the retaining ring on the outer cv joint. Same thing happened to mine when I was replacing my struts. I guess with the hub flopped over it was enough for the join to separate. I didn't realize the joint had come apart and went to pull out and got a horrible grinding noise. Apparently the previous owner changed the boot and didn't put the ring back on.

 

Was your car moving though Andrew? Here's my logic and tell me if i'm wrong. We have two axles going into the tranny. If you were to break one, ideally the power would go to the other axle and you'd still be able to move, albeit very painfully, unless my logic is wrong here of course. I had zero movement and the noise was coming from the general area of the tranny. BTW, no fluid leakage anywhere.... going there shortly, will find out what the real deal was...

 

Without LSD power is applied to the spinning wheel. Your car wouldn't go anywhere.

 

I never actually tried to go anywhere with it. It was like.. foot on the brake, shift into drive, GRIND GRIND GRIND, shift back into park, try to figure out what's making the horrible noise.

 

if the retaining ring was not installed properly then it is possible for the axle to come out of the tranny differential and strip the grooves smooth on the differential which in turn you'd need to replace the tranny or rebuild.

I would not want to bring my car to pepboys or sears same as I'd never take advice from the idiots at the parts counter of autozone.

 

It doesn't work like that, if 1 breaks the car won't move.

Did you find out what blew up the transmission?

 

More and more aggravation . Went to the shop and my guy had left the shop for a bit and one of his employees let the junk yard company pick up the tranny. So I was never even able to take my photos and take a look at it. I have to swing back so he can explain to me again what he thinks happened (too mad to talk to him at that point) but the new used tranny they put in is shifting good, the axle was apparently undamaged so they put that back in (yet another thing i dont get- tranny messed up over a badly installed axle and the axle comes out unscathed??). I dont know, lots of things not making sense still.

 

Make sure you tell them you want to keep the old busted tranny.

 

Sounds like bullshyt ive been in the same position they tell u this is broken u tell them to save it for you then you get there and by some mistake it got thrown away.......you will never know what happened your just gonna pay the bill and move on and thats that. We may never know

 

Find out who took it and go look at it assuming it is local. If the JY took it then likely there is not major damage unless the guy wants a project, I guess it is a popular transmission.

 

Yup, right there with you, only its a guy i've known for years to do honest work. I'm going to have to suck this one up and hope whoever had the tranny before took care of it.

Its crazy, but it seems i've replaced things on this car i've never replaced on my 96 5 speed that i've had for 12 years. The 96'S rocker panels are rusting through, AC's been gone about 5 years, shes got no ABS but she still runs fair. Sound like an old guy now ha ha.

 

junk yards often require the old tranny to be returned for core, even if its destroyed they scrap it for alloy.

sounds like your tranny went and it might have been a coincidence with the axle replacement timing.

ask maybe they took pictures of the damage?

 

Most transmissions don't die on the spot like that, usually it would be a slow painful death. Like, hard to get in gear, metal grinding, no R but full D.

It's hard to think that the entire gearbox got shredded because of an axle.

That's why getting pics and the old tranny is worth giving the Sears folks a royal pissing fest.

 

Possibly. No luck on the photos, I was supposed to do that when i got there.

 

I don't beleive after a month of driving the car with the newly installed axle, that their installation caused the transmission to have issues. I thought transmission fluid doesn't leak out when you remove an axle, so your fluid level should be fine. A month later you have problems??? The axle was splined up correctly for those hundreds of miles...

 

I an sorry to hear that you had to deal with this. This hastened to me as well but it was literally street driving one mile from the shop who installed the axle. At first they were helpful but now that they have installed two junk yard transmissions that have both failed, they are now refusing to help us. Luckily for us we found a lawyer to take our case on a contingency basis but it still sucks! We haven't had a second car to use in five months and it will probably be about six months to one year to get this handled. Good luck to you