I finally got it, drove it home for two hours and initially impression is it is a really nice car with some zip to it, comparing it to my 97 s/c mustang gt and my 03 cobra. Now for the bad news and hopefully some advice from you.

My outside temperature is stuck on 131 degrees ???

No heat-does the switch selector need to be moved to recirc instead of fresh air? When I checked the coolant it was low so I added some....

The windshield washer resovoir was bone dry so I filled it and it started leaking, anyone heard of them cracking?

The brakes pulsate/shimmy when braking, I read about this problem and that there really is not a fix yet excpet having the dealer resurface the rotors. True?

I installed an Injen CAI and a Y pipe and while under the car I saw what appears to be a reddish grease slung under the passenger side next to the wheel well that appears to be coming from the CV boot-any ideas other than it cracked?

The drivers side headlight has moisture in it after I washed it, have those gaskets/seals been known for going bad?

Sunroof makes a little noise while closed.

Chrome weatherstrips on the roof seem to be peeling-any ideas?

For those of you that have had these issues, any advice with the dealer wold be appreciated and anything else that I need to get taken care of-recalls, etc is great!

The car has 10K on it so it is under warranty...
Greg

 

Congrats on your new Max!! As for the list of problems, I had my brake rotors turned and the brake shimmy stopped. I had my chrome weatherstripping replaced for free but the actual factory warranty in 12 months or 12K miles for those particular pieces, also they had to replace my windshield when they craked it replacing the weatherstrip. I haven't experienced any of the other problems you mentioned, with the exeption of my front struts replaced. Even with the petty problems the 6th gens have it is still a great car, I love mine!!

Good luck.

Mike

 

Is your car still under warranty? If so, have your local dealer address those problems. With regard to your CV boot, I had a similar issue. Day two after owning my car, I noticed a little grease on the inside of my wheel rim. It turned out that one of the CV Boot clamps was loose, which permitted some of the grease to spin out. It was an easy fix. If your CV boot is not cracked and you suspect a CV boot problem, check the clamps. Good Luck!

 

Congrats on the new ride, I had the sunroof rattle, they can tighten it up no problem. The chrome strips were 3/36 I thought, mine were replaced at about 19K. I really think that doing those is subject to the dealers descression.

 

I bought my '04SE brand new. The chrome strips were peeling upon delivery due to the mistake of the dealer trying to peel off the protective plastic coating. The CV boot was cut (at the factory) discovered a few days later.
Both were fixed under warranty.
The front rotors were warped @18Kmiles. I bought the after-market drilled/slotted rotors which lasted about 2Kmiles. I had the stock rotors machined and put back on with ceramic pads. The braking is so good right now.
I got the shimmy sometimes. But by keeping the tires pressure at the right amount (>33psi), I don't see it anymore. I love my Max.

 

What is the optimal tire pressure-use the owners guide or have you guys found a different/better pressure?

 

Thats alot of problems if you just picked up the car. Is it a certified car if so take it back they should have found those problems during the certification process. If the dealer is any good they should ask for forgiveness after selling a car with that many probs. Help me out here but they should made aware of this. No car is perfect but did they even look at the car when they got it. Hope you get that resolved asap let us know how it goes. I would think they would atleast put washer fluid in it even if the car is not certified geesh. That sounds like they just rolled it right out of somebody's no care garage.

 

Congrats on your car. The brake need resurfacing and proper brake in - open road going about 40 mph, press brake firmly, but not hard, to almost complete stop and let go. Do it 4 -5 times at slight increasing speed. Avoid slamming on the brakes when newly serviced.

Windshield reservior pump seal cracked. Change rubber seal or silicone the crack. I vote for changing the seal. Unless the reservior itself is cracked.

Have dealer check the temp, car still under warranty?

Good luck.

 

I purchased the car from ebay, received a carfax on it that indicated it was a good car, it was a NJ owned car so cold weather/salt could be a sympton...

The car has 10450 miles on it so when I bought it I did knowing that there is still 26k of warranty left on it. My intentions are to make my list and give it to the dealer. It should not matter to them that I did not buy it from them but....

Anything else I should have them do while they have the car-any recalls or TSB's that might head off any problems?

 

congrats on the car. I had the brake shimmy as well. when i went in for service, i got new pads and had rotors resurfaced. the brake shimmy went away completely. it was covered under warranty

 

That's the best route to take the problems you described are have been discussed alot. The dealers will usually take them in and repair them some will give you a hard time just make sure they take care of it. Was the car certified?

 

greg -

I had forgotten, but your mentioning it reminded me that my brand new '04 SL was delivered with no fluid in the windshield washer reservoir. The dealer apologized and filled it up. The next day it was empty again. The dealer then replaced the reservoir. No problem since.

You should be able to get as much heat as you want on either 'outside air' or 'recirculate'. The heat won't come immediately, as the smart sensors won't let much air thru until the engine temp is suficient to warm the air. But if no warm air after a few miles, something is wrong. Warranty fix.

The outside thermometer on my SL is the most accurate of any car I have ever had. I compare it constantly with the temp reported by nearby radio stations, and with the three thermometers on various parts of the outside of my home. Insist that the dealer fix that.

I'm not sure if I've heard about water in the headlight lens here, but this must be fixed, or it will eventually cause corrosion and failure of headlight assembly parts.

The chrome roof strips have had to be replaced by many here on the forum. Even if the dealer mumbles something about 'appearence items only warranted for 12 months', you should be able to sweet-talk him into replacing them because of the very low mileage.

 

check the plug to the to temp sensor. maybe loose/unplugged

 

Where is that plug located?

 

Don't resurface the rotors if the shimmy is bad.

Just completely replace them. In fact get the Service dept to do it. If they won't ask them if they can fill out some paper work to get Nissan to pay for it (even if out of warranty). In certain situations Nissan will replace it if the Service Dept. approves some paperwork ( i forget what it's called.). I had it done. And work was done outside of warranty period.

Last resort:
Buy rotors from Napa if you have to (Very good and cheap!!!...no seriously!) and give them to the Service Dept to install. Service dept.'s price on rotors can be outrageous (depending on where you go).

 

Congrats on your Maxima and welcome to the life of spending $$$.. LOL.. Good luck in all your searches, and hope you get all those probs worked out.. LAter.

 

Thanks for the welcome but as far as spending money I had a 97 mustang GT with everything done to it and then an 03 Cobra, thank goodness for my bank account there aren't a whole lot of bolt ons for these cars. First day I had it an Injen CAI and a CE Y pipe went on it! The only other thing I may to is a RSB, not sure if that is worth it on the SL.

 

i also have an 04 sl, I had the no heat problem and it turned out to be air in the lines of the cooling system there is a fix for it . It's covered under warranty. I had to have new front rotors put on my car at about 32,ooo miles and I would think the headlight would be covered under warranty. Sounds like minor problems, i'm sure you will love the car and congrats on the purchase!

 

It is at the dealer, what a list of things to fix! At least the service writer did not say anything about the things not being covered. Just very disappointed that the flagship car with 10k on it has these many problems. I have been a Ford guy and this is my first experience with an import and thought that the quality was be better.

 

Inside the center console storage area, there should be a sticker attached to the cover that list proper tire pressure for the vehicle...

 

Saw it and set the pressure at 33 as per.

 

Well come to find out that the car has been wrecked before and that is why I am having problems on the passenger side. The guy I bought the car from bought it from an auction, he has sold many cars on ebay and has almost perfect feedback and the car had a clean carfax. Not sure what I am going to do, not even sure legally what I can do. I have been in contact with the seller and we are waiting to get an estimate from Nissan to fix stuff before moving on. The windshield resovoir was fixed with bondo as was the coolant recovoir and the CV boot was held on by a zip tie vice a clamp. I am just sick...

 

Sorry to hear about your situation. The 6th Gen really is a great car. Wow. Hopefully you guys can work something out.

 

I would immediately return the car to him if he never disclosed to you the car was in a wreck. I believe this voids any warrenty work you can have done to it because once the dealer see's this shabby work, he will know the car was wrecked. Bondo is normally a BIG flag when getting warrenty work done. Work fast, most states have time limits on when you can return a car if it was miss represented.

Last, this is strictly my opinion. NO former wrecks, their problems just seem to never go away, also any moron shop who would fix a windshield resovior with bondo and a CV boot with a tie wrap problably left you some other hidden surprises left to be discovered. As a last resort, get a lawyer, you will win...

Good luck

 

congrats on the purchase.... how much did u pay for her?

 

We have spoken and he seems willing to work with me. I honestly don't think he knew about the problems, but you never know. If he bought the car and did not know it had been wrecked, it has a clean title and a clean carfax I really can't blame him 100%. We will see what the estimare from Nissan is and go from there.

 

Too much if the cars ends up not being what it should be. Did you sell yours?

 

Doesn't Carfax buy back the car if it's their mistakes?

 

I don't know about their "buy back guarantee", but if the report was clean then they could say they're not at fault. Usually if you wreck and don't report it, and get the car fixed under the radar, it will never show up on a VIN check.

 

That may be true, however all the bondo repairs would have been a good hint, what happened to a visual inspection when buying and reselling. Sorry, someone dropped the ball on this one...

 

I believe that carfax should take responsibility for this since there was an accident that they could not show in the report. I have definately seen a disclaimer on carfax's website that if a buyer finds out that the car they ran a report on has been in an accident, and if this was not shown in the carfax report, then Carfax must buy the car back from the buyer.

 

That's what I thought. They claim they don't miss anything.

 

I agree with that... I'd never buy a car based solely on a carfax check. Hell, I've never bought a used car precisely because I wanna avoid this type of thing, but I know that if I ever do I'll pay my mechanic to go look at it before making a decision. It's like buying a house and using the inspector that the seller recommends... I know people that have done this and paid dearly for it in the end.

I think if anything, Carfax has allowed for this type of thing to happen more often that it should. I think people will do a VIN check and assume that the car is fine because it has a clean history, and that if not Carfax will have their back, when it's actually far from that...

Carfax will only honor their guarantee if the car has a branded title, and you have a copy of their VIN report before you purchased it, and if you registered for their Buy Back thing within 90 days of buying the car. If the title was never re-issued indicating that the car had been salvaged, flood damaged, etc, you could have all kinds of problems with it that you don't know about.

And like I said, if the car was in a wreck but never reported, then Carfax would never know about it. And they have another condition to their guarantee... that even if the car does have a branded title, but the buyer knew or "should have known" of its existence, then they can reject the claim and you're stuck.

 

They won't do that... Carfax never said that they'll have every problem that every happened to every car. This is the misconception that people have... I know of cars that have been in significant accidents (new hood, radiator, etc, at least $4k worth of damage) that Carfax knows nothing about.

Carfax clearly states on their site that their reports will show prior salvage, flood, or total loss and accidents reported to them. If the owner, the repair shop or the insurance people never report it to the DMV, or it never makes it from the DMV to Carfax, then all bets are off.

 

Thanks, I'll never pay for their services. I almost bought a car online w/ Carfax. It was too good of a deal.

 

In reading the fine print from Carfax I won't be able to go after them either. Unless the accident was reported there is nothing for them to notice. I was under the impression that Carfax was a very good service but after this experience I learned that they are nothing more than a database search engine for a VIN.

 

You need to have a body shop give you an appraisal of what was repaired incorrectly- if the body and paint work is shoddy you should go after the seller with a lawyer. All you mention so far is bondo on the w/washer and coolant reservoir which sounds crazy - who would glue together 20 dollars worth of parts to hide an accident on a 20k car ? Any way your bondo story doesn't really tell you anything about the true accident history of the car.

Check it out quick while you have time to go after the seller. Good luck.

 

I don't know what good a lawyer would do-if the seller says that he did not know about the damage when he bought it and sold it to me wihtout knowledge of the damage and he ran a carfax on it and it came back clean I don't know what good getting a lawyer would do...

 

I know I stated earlier that a lawyer would be a last resort, carfax and the seller MAY have been unaware of any prior damage, however that does not mean you should get stuck with something you may have never intended to purchase. If carfax did not catch it, the seller didn't, but you DID doesn't mean you should be stuck with it.

If you think your willing to live with the history and accept the seller’s option to properly repair the shabby work, than go for it. Understand several points by doing this, 1, you may have paid more for the car than it is worth because most vehicles that have been in accidents do tend to depreciate more in value (when buying and selling) and 2, they tend to be more susceptible to long term problems if the initial damage was fixed in a shabby manor.

Still your call, like you said, if the seller is willing to work with you and YOUR happy with the repairs, that's all that really matters and anything us Orgers tell you is strictly our opinion. Good Luck bro, I really hope everything works out in your favor...

 

Well carfax is not going to be an option as they emailed me and said sorry, my bank said the same thing and the Nissan dealer has quoted $3k for parts and labor to fix the things that I pointed out were wrong, the drivers side headlight is cracked which is why there is moisture in the headlight so they included a $850 light assembly. Now to contact the seller to see what he will do...