Nellanaesp

I had too cool of a little bit before I decided to post in here, as I was fuming at the dealership when I had to have my car repaired for the second time in 2 months on Friday for something which I thought should be covered by the dealer, but here goes. Sorry for the longevity of it.

I bought my 2006 Maxima at the end of July of last year, and immediately the A/C wasn't working right, and the SES light came on. I took it back in, and they determined that the car needed a new CAT converter. Luckily, that was covered under the 80,000 mile or whatever it was warranty, but I had the distinct feeling that if it wasn't they were going to make me pay. Mind you, this was the day after I bought the car, and it was already having troubles.

So after a short wait, they came back and said that they would recharge the A/C for free, since that seemed to be the problem. Well that fixed it for the time being, and they replace the CAT converter. All was well, or so I thought.

At the end of August, I left for 4 months on a short deployment to Iraq, where I had a friend drive the car periodically to ensure it stayed running right, as a precaution. He didn't encounter any problems, but as soon as I got back at the beginning of January, I immediately had issues.

The ABS would activate every time I braked, on dry surfaces. I did some research on the site, and decided to simply clean the ABS/Speed sensors (all 4), and that apparently fixed the issue. Then, a couple months later, after the snow and ice melted and the road finally became clear of all the road salts and dirt, the same thing happened again, so I repeated the procedure, and all was well until this past week, when I returned from a 13 day vacation where my car was parked in my garage the whole time.

Before I get into that, I'll mention that last month (April), when it started getting warm, I found that my A/C didn't work at all. I took it in for an estimate, and they fortunately had put dye in there last time they charged it, so they found a leak and repaired it. I reasoned with them that this was an issue that surfaced the same day I bought the car, but they wouldn't budge and I ended up paying them out of pocket almost 500 dollars to replace a simple hose. I had taken it to other places to get estimates, but they were all more expensive than the dealer.

Now, back to the ABS issue. This time, I went and cleaned the sensors, and the problem (to my surprise) got incredibly worse. As soon as the car started moving, the ABS would activate as well as the traction control. It seemed like the car thought I was driving on pure ice. I was incredibly dangerous every time they acted up, as it at least doubled my braking distance, and now I could not accelerate properly either. I immediately drove it to the dealer, where they diagnosed it and found that the rear speed sensors had gone bad (which I feared would happen), and the hubs were all rusted and corroded over. They fixed both the rear wheels, drilled a hole so the water could properly drain so that it wouldn't happen again, and gave me the bill of over $1,000 that I reluctantly paid.

I'm infuriated that I had to pay for the ABS issue. This is a design flaw and a huge safety flaw that Nissan obviously knew about, as the dealer had in hand the TSB as soon as I brought the car in. My question is this: why is it the responsibility of the owner of the car to pay to repair such a flaw that interferes with normal braking and acceleration? This safety hazard should have been a recall, not a TSB. What would have happened if the ABS decided to go bad when I most needed it, and I ended up injured? In my eyes, I'm lucky that I spotted the problem as soon as I did and was able to transport the car safely to the dealer to have it fixed and that it didn't pop up in the worst time.

I wrote a letter to Nissan about the issue, which I sent on Thursday, and have not received a reply (understandable, as it's Memorial Day Weekend). I'm going to the dealership tomorrow to raise hell to the managers and see what I can get out of them. I am highly dissappointed in Nissan because of this, and I wish them to know why.

I'll make it clear though, that I love everything else about my Maxima. It's everything I'd hoped for when I bought it, besides the well over 2 grand that I've spent repairing it in the last 10 months. I just want it all to end...