New to this forum and although handy and with many tools as well as giving my car it's own spark plug tune-up and oil changes, am not a mechanic and hoping I can get some help from someone out there.
I have a 2002 Maxima SE with approximately 114k miles and although I've had this Max for about 8 yrs and have taken care of her, lately I've been less than diligent.
I'd been hearing a noise coming from the right passenger side of the engine that would be something that would probably only be apparent to an owner who knows his car and it sounded like a faint 'popping' noise when letting go of the gas pedal (only then). The car was not losing power and it also kind of sounded like a sort of a very faint exhaust noise like when the donut from my exhaust manifold to the pipe on my 69 Camaro had worn and needed replacement, again, so faint that only an owner who knows his car would notice.
This had been going on for some time and when I took it to my mechanic he couldn't really hear or find anything and he told me to wait and see if it got worse and then bring it back to him.

Well it looks like that may have now happened...I had lately noticed a bit of a rough idling and last evening when driving home the amber, "Service Engine Soon" light came on. I immediately stopped at a gas station and checked the oil and anti-freeze and everything was full. Not wanting to drive the car and have a full breakdown I luckily decided to turn back home and while driving back starting hearing a knocking and a gradual loss in power which I'm wondering if it is the fly wheel or even the timing chain. :bawling

I parked the car in my driveway and am uncertain if I should drive the car to have it looked at or maybe have it towed there instead and not risk further damage. I'm hoping one of you guys knows these 5th generation Max's well enough to at least give a hunch as to what's going on, any help would be much appreciated.

 

Kindly give me a favor, buy your self an OBD scan tool, its better to get with live feed like Innova or go to autozone ,ask them to hook up your car to their OBD reader its free, look for error code.
Read this
[url]http://www.nicoclub.com/FSM/Maxima/2002/[/url
For maintenance: Replace all sparkplugs with oem
Replace the valve cover gasket (rear), use the 6th generation valve cover 2004 ( better and cheaper)
Replace the ignition coil (1,3,5) with OEM genuine nissan
Replace the ignition coil (2,4,6) if needed.
Check all struts
Replace ATF with Synthetic OE ATF Amsoil
Replace filter with K&N filter.
Replace the fuel filter

 

Gotta start by pulling a code. U dont need a scan tool. Turn key fully on without starting ur car. Wait 3 seconds.........press the gas pedal fully down and fully let go 5 times quickly. Wait seven seconds and press and hold gas pedal down till the check engine light starts blinking. Its gonna blink 1-10 times for the first number. 1=1 all the way to 9 and ten blinks = 0..... theres 4 numbers in the code.... first set of 1-10 blinks is one number and so on 4 times. If you see another set of different blinking sequence you have more then one code.

Timing is important or it wont work . If you DO NOT want to clear code just shut of ignition switch when ur done. If you DO want to clear code ..press and hold gas pedal down after retreating code for about 10 seconds. And shut ignition switch.

 

To add a tidbit of information to what maximasicilian123 said, you do not start the car to read the codes. This would also be true if you connect a code reader because the ECU stores the code in memory.

Once you have the code, look it up in section EC of the service manual. The index has the codes in numerical sequence.

Link to section EC

 

Just get the code read.

 

Thanks for the reply Colt149, maximasicilian123 and DennisMik, these were very helpful suggestions and validated my suspicion that it may probably be one or more of the spark plug coils.
I had previously been getting the smell of fuel in the car cabin and thought that maybe a spark plug coil may be bad. Now the trick is to find out which one/s bad by checking the code with either an OBD scan tool or through the SES Light via the ignition.

 

Thanks Rbaksi, that seems to be the way to go since I suspect one or a couple of the plug coil banks is suspect since I smelled fuel in the cabin and needs replacement.