Saturday, I went to the office to print a map and get directions to the camp site for that night. I was driving home from the office at 1pm and I merged from one interstate to another (GA 400 North to 285 West for you ATLiens) and the Max sputtered, then wouldn’t rev past 3000rpm, and then the Check Engine Light came on. Luckily, I was still in the merge lane when this happened, so I pulled over to the right shoulder and stopped. It had just started to sprinkle when I left the office and of course by now, it was full on raining. Since I didn’t feel like getting wet, I decided to stay in the car for a few minutes to wait for the rain to either pass or go back to a sprinkle. (For those unfamiliar with Atlanta weather, the saying is “If you don’t like the weather here, just wait 5 minutes.”) So I shut the car off and waited a couple of minutes. I started the car again, put it in drive and tried to go a little and I had the same problem. I put it in neutral, pushed the gas and I got the same problem, so I knew my transmission wasn’t the issue. I decided to call a tow truck and have it towed to the dealership and let them figure it out. While on hold with AAA, I hear a “whoop whoop” and then see flashing blue lights in my rearview mirror. I stay on hold for another minute as a police officer walks to the car to see what I’m doing on the side of the road with my hazards on. I tell him what happened and that I’m on the phone with AAA and I should be okay. He says he’ll stay for a minute even though I told him he didn’t have to since it was raining. I then hear the “whoop whoop” a second time. He heads back to the car and they take off. The rain stopped, I rolled down the passenger side windows and jammed to 2Pac because I was just in that kind of mood.

At 2:30pm the AAA tow truck shows up. It wasn’t a flat bed but rather a dually with a crane. I just looked at him while he started to move the arm under my car. Luckily, it cleared fine. We get to the dealership fine and drop it off and I start to talk to a guy there and he started to tell me that it would be $89.99 for them to even look at it to pull any codes, etc. but I stopped him in mid sentence and told him that I don’t pay for anything but $50 at the end when they’ve fixed my problem. He just looked at me. I continued and told him I have the full extended Nissan warranty and I just had the front and rear O2 sensors replaced in January then March and that’s how the warranty works. He then talked to another employee there and got confirmation from the computer that I was correct. He said he’ll go have the codes pull, the car looked over and he’ll get back to me.

Around 3:30pm he comes and gets me and asks if I just got the K&N panel filter and I immediately knew what had happened. (I had just oiled the filter last weekend and appeared to have over oiled it. That caused the Mass Air Flow sensor to malfunction and cause my problems on the highway.) I told him I got the filter when I got the car and it hadn’t been oiled for some time. He said the CEL was for the Mass Air Flow sensor and he’d have to check if he had one in stock. I waited for a few minutes and he came back with parts in hand. He also got my print out and noticed my address. He said he lives right down the road from me and asked if I knew where his street was. I didn’t, but I said I ride my bike down that way all the time. He asked what kind and when I said an R6, he cringed because he had just sold his R6. We chatted for another minute and he said to just come on back while he worked on the car in the garage and we’d continue the conversation there.

At 4pm, he put the new sensor and stock air filter in and bolted everything back together and said he had to reprogram the computer and I’d be on my way in a couple of minutes. He hooked up the Consult to my car and went to close out the work order. He came back, looked at the Consult and said, “$hit.” Obviously not something you want to hear from the tech who just worked on your car. He said something happened and he’d try to reprogram the ECM again. He said “$hit” again. At this point I was getting worried and asked what was going on. He said that the Consult had either lost power or dropped in voltage while reprogramming the ECM and the operation failed. When he tried again, the Consult didn’t even recognize the Maxima’s ECM. If it didn’t work a third time, he’d have to swap out the ECM with a Maxima off the used car lot and try again. It didn’t work a third time. He talked with another tech and they decided he couldn’t swap out the ECM since it may not work properly from just any 2001 Maxima. So he said he’d have to order me a new one from Nissan.

At this point it was just past 4:30pm and we went to talk to the Service Manager to get suggestions on how to get me a loaner vehicle. They didn’t have any loaners to give me and their rental car agency was closed. I said that I’d take the new, 4-door, black, 4x4 Titan they had sitting out front. I didn’t get it. The tech offered to take me home since he lived right down the street. I said alright since my brother and a few other people I knew were out of town and I didn’t want to wait around for any of my other friends to get there.

Monday morning he calls and said even the most experienced tech there couldn’t get it to work so he’d have to order me a new one and have it over-nighted to get me running by Tuesday. Tuesday I got another call with the update that the Nissan distributor for the Atlanta area was out of stock on the ECM I needed and the next closest distributor was for the Chicago area. They should over-night the one they had to Atlanta so I should have a working car by Wednesday.

I received a call Wednesday at 4:30pm. The ECM had arrived via Fed-Ex Ground and the tech had my dash off ready to install the new unit. He would call me again once everything was back together and the EMC was programmed without incident. I awaited the next call. More bad news…the new ECM that was sent to the tech was for a Maxima with traction control, which mine did not have. He figured out it was the wrong part while he tried to program the new ECM and after everything was installed and put back together. He would have to re-order the correct part and since the day was over as far as shipping and receiving was concerned, the order would not go in until Thursday morning. That meant that he would not have the new part until Friday afternoon at the earliest and have my car put together until Friday evening at the earliest. So, I again waited for the next call, hopefully a call with some good news for a change.

Thursday morning I received a call and the tech said that a matching ECM had come in, but it was for their regular stock and not the special order he requested. But he was going to install it anyway and get it programmed by noon and call me back. He called back around noon and said that the ECM worked and accepted the program and he drove the car to test everything and it passed and it was ready for me to pick up. I told him I’d be there in a couple hours.

While I was ****ed at what happened, I never *****ed about it because this guy essentially hooked me up with the MAF issue. He kept me informed the entire time and he was as frustrated as I was (almost) about everything that had happened. I never asked for a rental car, even though they offered, because I have another car to drive around and my motorcycle. So, I’m going to try to see if they’ll waive the $50 deductible that I have to pay for the original MAF issue since I never used a rental car for 6 days. I hope all goes well with that.

 

Bummer! Have a drink and forget about it.

 

Sounds miserable. I know it all sucks, but it sounds like u got a tech and dealership the went the extra mile for you. That's pretty rare.

 

Atleast it is up and running now

 

What a week...I'm glad your back up and running...

 

Good for you! My max is broke down second week already, have to drive around in Mom's Civic.... My friends tease me that Nissan after all is not that reliable....

 

TRULY an anomaly with Nissan Service Advisors.

 

Wow, that's a lot of headaches trying to correct the problem then getting the parts for it. But at least they knew what they were doing to fix the problem.

 

if it doesnt kill your car it only makes you smarter . Glad things are/will be working out.

 

Glad to see it's solved.

And you get a new maf

 

at least you have you car runnign right and it isnt costing you too much $$$

 

Perfect example of how **** happens.
Even though I usually don't read post about "my car stalled on the road" "my dealer sucks" "had to towed my car today" etc. I must say after reading your first paragraph I found your post interesting and very detailed, so I continued to read.

Going a little of topic.
Depending on how low you are that type of tow truck is better than a flat bed. Once those arm thinbgy clears the front lip and cross member it's all gravy. Usually when pulling a car on to a flat bed, 8 out of 10 times your front lip might scrapes the flat bed due to the angle.

MIKE

 

I picked the car up and was ready to talk to someone about having the $50 waived and the cashier told me there was NO CHARGE! The car drives fine too. Overall, what happened sucked, but I'm happy with Nissan for taking care of me on this.

CandiMan: Thanks. I usually try to give a lot of details because I hate reading posts that I can't follow. I think you're right about the crane vs. flat bed truck. If I remember correctly, my 97 Max scraped in the rear when it was loaded onto a flat bed truck.

 

talk about a long post...lol..but definately glad to hear that its all resolved and that the dealership didn't screw you...you always hear about the bad incidents, glad to see they did good by you!

 

Damn man... beer's on me tonight. I thought I had a bad day yesterday getting 3 of 5 shipments in with the wrong parts! Least I wasn't without ride for a week!

 

Eric jammin to 2pac...

Glad that it worked out for the best part man, too bad you didnt get the Titan...haha, you would had fun in that!

 

I really admire you for keeping your cool in a situation like this. Most people just explode when a tech tells them something like that.

Glad to see you have the car back now, and enjoy that new MAF

 

Although you got the run around, you had great patience. good deal man!

 

sorry to hear that, glad it's all worked out though

it's a good thing you were in the right lane and didn't get stuck in the middle of 285 or 400

sounds like you and the service guy really hit it off. did you get his number?

 

Same here. I have a knack for writing myself (used to major in Theater for developing screenplays/scripts) and I couldn't stop reading. Just something I thought I'd point out.

 

Anyone know why they have to reprogram the ECU in the first place when they replace the MAF? Many of us have replaced the MAF ourselves without a ECU upgrade and have not noticed any ill effects.

 

Sucks, but sounds like you dealt with knowledgeable, friendly and helpful people. Count yourself lucky!

 

 

Considering you are admittedly the cause of the problem in the first place, I think you're damn lucky to get away with just the $50 deductible. It's not like the MAF failed on it's own, making the $50 deductible fair. You damaged it yourself, and you're complaining about $50 for a ~$300+ part plus diagnosis and labour? Give me a break. Your dealership is definetly being VERY good to you, even with the parts screw ups, which happen at every dealership.

 

It was all your fault for over-oiling the K&N, right? So I hope you either cleaned off the excess oil or put in a new filter or else the new MAF could go too.... Glad it all worked out in the end.

 

They didn’t have any loaners to give me and their rental car agency was closed. I said that I’d take the new, 4-door, black, 4x4 Titan they had sitting out front. I didn’t get it.



too funny.

but glad to hear everything worked out... i guess there are some good dealerships out there. and i am sure that extended warrenty help out a great deal with them lettting it slide. how much did you pay for it? nissan wanted over $2000 for a warenty on my car... thats when i laughed, and said no thanks, i will fix my problems in my driveway!

i hope my car doesn't take 6 days to fix when it goes under the knife for tranny problems... but if it does, may i borrow your bike?

 

It was to clear the Service Engine light that came on when the sensor blew.

 

I actually bought the car from my mom (I know) with the warranty already on it so I'm not sure what it cost from Nissan.

 

It was not 100% determined that the oil was the problem, it COULD have been the issue. The only reason I was considering asking for the $50 waived was because they had my car for 6 days on something that was 100% not my fault and I didnt requested a loaner for that time period. In the end, they waived all fees without me even asking for it.

 

I actually did get it. He's a cool guy and still has one of his track bikes.