joefire31747

I just bought a 2005 Nissan Altima se 3.5, 5 speed transmission.

I know this is for Maximas but it's the same engine

The car will crank up and run then upon acceleration it won't go past 2000 rpms. When driving it won't go over 1500 rpms or 15 mph.. code reader throws the code for multiple cylinder misfire . That's all it says on the code reader ... Any help would be greatly appreciated .

JSutter

iTrader: (46)

Does it idle fine?

joefire31747

Yeah I believe it does ...

Talysdaddy

Hmmm.. when I got that same code, I needed new coils. The limits you're describing, sounds like you're in fail safe mode. This engages to prevent anything catastrophic to the engine, the only thing is I don't think fail safe engaged when I needed coils. However, it did when I needed new camshaft/crankshaft sensors though..
Try this, turn your car on, let it idle for a minute, rev your engine a bit and pay close attention to it, does it rev up like it does normally or does it seem less powerful?
My whole car would shake and engine sounded considerbly louder when I did this, as if the cars running on half it's cylinders (3 instead of the 6 cylinders it has, since its a V6 engine).
If you're experiencing this same thing, your coils are bad. Unfortunately, they're like $120/each at Nissan, everyone recommends buying OEM. There's lots of options for much less at eBay, Amazon, your local AutoZone/O'Reilly's, with just as many complaints of them not working or failing soon after and of course, successful reports of them working great. I have the worst luck so I opted for OEM, the choice is yours. It's likely that you won't need all 6 now, as they usually don't all fail at the same time. I recommend getting at least 3 now, since, getting to them is no fun. There's 3 up towards the front of the engine, not difficult at all, the other 3 are under the intake manifold, which basically requires top end year down, that took me bout 4 hours. I'm not a mechanic but Ive always worked on my own car, alternators, starters, oil changes, ect... Read that the stealership charges like $1200, I'm sure there's shops that cost much less, but keep in mind, it's not exactly cheap, cuz of the time involved for the process. There's plenty of tutorials and YouTube vids for it if youre tackling it yourself. Heads up, if you're needing this done, it's a perfect time to also change out your spark plugs too, as they're directly under each one of the coils. Highly suggest buying OEM plugs, NGK laser platinum, if you can afford a couple bucks more (on each plug), many recommend NGK Iridium's for a bit of a boost in performance.
There's total of 6 coils/6 spark plugs one for each cylinder in our V6 config. These OEM replacements should last for the rest of vehicles lifetime.
To determine which coils need replacing, do a Google search on "testing for bad ignition coils," or better yet a YouTube search would yield videos for better visuals on it.

I'm leaning towards your coils rather than the cam/crank sensors, since that's what the code points to. There's a separate code for the bad sensors, which you didn't get so.. Did you clear the code you got, did it come back afterwards?