I just bought a 2000 Maxima SE, 5speed. It doesn't fell quite as peppy as 2K1 I test drove. It also has a small stumble at part throttle climbing a hill.

The car has 60K on the odometer and I was just about to do my own 60K freshen up.

I been doing the ghetto search and etc and found a couple post that mention that a car built between 4/99 to 12/99 should have the ECU reflashed. I did not find any info on what reasons to have this maintenance done. My tag inside the door says the build date is 10/99. How can I tell if this flash is needed? Also is there a way to tell if this service was done before? Either a reader telling the chip build, tag on the ecm saying it was done, or nissan records.

Also saw a TSB that mentioned coil problems, is this a symptoms also.

TIA,
Jeremy
2K Silver Max SE

 

i don't know about the ecu tsb, but the coils are a well-known problem, my 2k is an october car as well, first of the 17" wheels, and the previous owner had the coil go, they are over 100 bills, but a necessity, you will know if one goes because the engine will stumble, idle horribly, and it will set off a trouble code.

 

Ignition coils can also go and the symptom will be pinging. My max never had bad idling, or a trouble code. It has mild stumbling but frankly I can't remember when it started (bought the car with 37k). My car was a 9/99. My coils went because the thing was pinging increasingly bad, especially up hills around the $3k mark.

I don't know if you can check the ECU to see if it's been flashed or not. I'm wondering if the stumble you have (probably like mine - it's under full throttle, and just a touch noticeable sometimes and other times not at all) and I have is related to a bad MAF sensor. I do think that my MAF needs changing, but I've not bothered with it (another symptom of it, i believe, is the surging I get in the morning before the engine warms up when under partial throttle).

 

yes you can pull the trouble codes from the ecu even if they are non-existent anymore. The ecu stores any codes it receives and unless you've reset the ecu, they will be there. Unfortunately there's no SES diagnostic on post-99 cars, so you'll have to either get a code reader, go to advance auto parts and get it read for free, or bring it to a shop. The surgin when cold is probably not the maf and rather the ecu adjusting for the warmup parameters, which are in closed loop until the engine reaches operatiing temp(when the dot on your guage is covered by the needle, nissan's cool like that), when i was looking at max's i looked at one with a beat MAF, it would stall at idle uder no load.

 

THe surgin I am getting is after full warm up and in closed loop. I cleaned the MAF sensor and it was no change. Idle and driving is fine except for the occasional surge. About the pinging, I am running 93 octane and shouldn't have ping.

 

Call a nissan service department and give them your vin #. They will be able to tell you all the TSB's that have been done to your car.