2000 Max bought 1 month ago. Previous owner 73 yr. old lady. Car had 7642 miles. Now has 8473. Cannot over emphasize how clean this car is. No shoes have ever sat foot on the floor mats. She bought clear plastic mats to go over the original mats. Car still smells new.

About 2 weeks ago I noticed a zipping sound from under the hood @ shutoff. Local dealer says it's the motor mounts, $558.84 to replace. I told the service mgr. I thought it was absurd that something like this could happen with no more miles than the car has on it. Local dealer says if I choose not to fix nothing will happen. I called original dealer & told him what local said. He told me he has seen that same thing, owner didn't have it fixed, eventually shorted out & fried entire computer system @ a much higher repair bill. Also saw somewhere on the internet someone said their motor mounts "burned out" & car would not start.

Questions & Problems: 1) Which is true? Will it or will it not cause problems down the road? 2) If I repair, what's to say the same thing won't happen again in the next 8500 miles.

Original dealer said to call Nissan Consumer Affairs & tell them my situation, first time Nissan owner very distraught over this blah,blah, blah.

Has anyone ever called NCA? If so, do I have a chance @ either getting Nissan to cover the repair, or at least furnish the motor mounts & I pay labor.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

 

um.... unless there's something about the VQ motor mounts that i don't know about i'd say those mechanics were on cocain or some other heavy duty drug. all the motor mount does is hold the engine in place and they also keep vibration down. there is no possible way for a bad motor mount to ruin any electronics at all (unless this is something new that i've never ever heard of before but chances are that's not the case).

 

The GLE model has some electronically variable motor mounts. If it starts to make noises, just unplug them. What the dealer is quoting is a major ripoff as I think only two of them have the feature. It does not hurt your car at all to disconnect them.

 

Just checked the FSM. Functionality is as follows:
idle (stopped) = soft
driving = hard

 

whoa.... that's awesome! learn something new every day. i would have to agree though, i don't see how the motormounts messing up could cause any other electrical failures.

 

well i am shocked.. electric mounts.. on a maxima

another electric crapola to break.

i'll go examine them at daylight. interesting.

 

Guys this is in the FAQ, you should all know that the GLEs and SEs (at least 4th gens on) have electronically controlled motor mounts, but only if you have an automatic transmission. Does anyone know why they didn't do this for the manual? Obviously it has something to do with the way the engine moves when you shift.

 

See if they will cover it under the powertrain warranty. It's good for 5 years/60k miles.

 

Sounds weird, but I seem to remember at least one person in the 5th Gen forum saying that a bad electronic motor mount fried his ECU. If you don't want to pay the price to have the mount replaced, simply unplug it and live with the slightly rougher idle.

 

How do you know if you have electronic motor mounts???? Minez are busted too!!!!!!!! Good going Nissan Never again!!!!!!

 

My guess is they didn't put them on the manual trans models as it was too difficult to know when the clutch was going to be engaged to stiffen them. Besides people with manuals are usually looking for performance and not squishy motor mounts (wheel hop anyone =))


I think the default is soft so if you unplug the autos odds are they will stay soft all the time.