I bought a 1999 Maxima SE automatic (62K miles) a few months ago and have a question.

When idling with the car in gear (D or R), it will sometimes miss. It won't do this all the time, just every once in a while. It seems to have gotten worse since replacing the plugs at 60K with NGK platinums (factory spec). It does not miss in P or N and it is worse with the AC on but still does it with the AC off.

I have searched the archives here extensively and it seems this is a common problem. The following people have asked questions about something very similar: Canuck, Camaro1698, DaveMax99, Eric99SE, LU318, gkush, ny96max, oakmax, TurDz, SLHines, $tillen$ux.

A lot of you found it was a bad coil pack. How was this diagnosed? I have no check engine light coming on and no codes on the ECU. I have tested each coil pack according to the Haynes manual and found nothing indicating a problem. This is so intermittent that I can pull one coil pack at a time to try and isolate 1 cylinder.

I am going to clean my Throttle Body tonight and run a bottle or two of Techron through the next tank (Premium unleaded used always).

I guess my next step is to buy a new coil pack and swap it in, one at a time, until it goes away. If that doesn't work for the front 3 coils, I'll do the same in the rear.

Any other suggestions?

Thanks,

Allan

 

first...what exactly do you mean by 'miss' ?

 

When idling with the car in drive or reverse, it will 'hiccup' or 'cough'. The revs will drop down to 400 or so for a split second and then recover. The car lurches slightly when this happens.

It has only been doing this for about a month. The first five months I owned it there was no problem.

Allan

 

same thing happened to me...cleaned the tb and that fixed it

 

I have 99 GXE with 42,000 miles. A few months ago the car started missing while at idle. It would occur intermitently, but tended to occur when the engine was warmed up. The dealer changed the air filter, fuel filter, and trasmission fluid. Spark plugs were OK. The problem was reduced, but still happening. They could not identify the problem. I called another dealer, they said "just bring it in" even though they could not really say if they had encountered this problem before. It really doesn't cause a problem, so will hold off until I can get a better idea of what is causing this.

 

Did ya pull any codes?

 

At the end of the coil packs there is a little boot that goes on the spark plug. A lot of times when the spark plugs are changed, this boot may get stuck to the plug, and when pulled out, it will crack, or sometimes break off in chunks. When this happens, the spark will arch onto the engine block instead of through the spark plug. This will cause that intermittent miss you were talking about. Unfortunately, if you don't try getting some of those boots from the junkyard, you have to buy the whole ignition coil pack. The best way to see which one is missing is either listen for it, or hook up a scanner and watch for codes, or monitor each cylinder. Once you let it run for a while with the scanner hooked up, and the miss happens a couple of time, the code will pop up.

 

i got 100k 1997 gxe. i had the same problem.

http://forums.maxima.org/showthread....hreadid=154830

i describe the same thing halfway down. others have suggested bad fuel injectors.

 

I have the same issue, and no codes...so, I'm wondering if it
turned out to be a bad coil pack...

Thanks!
FLO_BOY

 

Allan,

Sometimes I get a slight *puff aside from the normal hummmmm of the muffler..

Sometimes it goes hummmm*puff hmmmmmm. One time one cylinder just completely stopped working, but now it works, weird...

Could be a coil

 

FLO_BOY:

I haven't tried replacing the coil packs yet. The problem went away for a few weeks but has returned.

I'll probably spring for a coil pack and try swapping it in and out to see what happens. I'll post if I have any luck.

Allan

 

similar problem here , 96 GLE with 99k miles on it. THe CEL code that that was pulled 0201, ignition circuit signal. However I tested each coil pack with the unplug and isten method, none seemed to be bad.


Kevin