Hello Everyone Newbie here

[rorischak]

Hello!

I see you guys have an excellent message board system here. I just purchased a 2011 EX 35 Journey AWD 19" tires for my wife and one of the first things i did was start looking for a forum. Glad you guys are on here and it is updated!!

I thought i would give my impressions of the car right off the bat. There are 40k miles on the car and we went on one trip with it this weekend. We put on 488 miles and loved most of it. Here are a couple of thoughts...

driving the car is great.... damn thing is like an indy car, very fast and very tight handling. I love it!!! One issue i have noticed is that steering the car is a bit of a handful. When the road gets grooves from other tires in it it wants to hunt back and forth. We needed a break on our trip so i stopped at a Sears to have them check the alignment and nearly every ajustment was off. There was no green on the screen. I had them perform the alignment with the exception of the left front the camber is off by 1.2* and they said there is no more ajustment in the system for that. I am going to take it to another Sears (it is under their warranty package for the alignment anyhow) and see if a different tech can dial it in closer. That alignment made a HUGE difference!! it was about 95% better than it was.

Keeping with the same theme the steering is very heavy and tight. Driving with one hand actually makes your hand/writst tired because of the effort it takes to turn the wheel over a long drive. I believe they call this "tight on center" because there is not much boost for the steering. I am wondering if anyone else notices this? I dont have issues on short drives but when you are in the car driving for 4 hours you tend to notice it so i keep switching hands.

The Engine in this car is amazing. I have owned a number of Camaro's over the years and the power on this car feels better than those!! a ton of fun to drive

Transmission - I like the 7sp transmission. We did drive a 5sp in a 2010 model and that felt good too but i have no issues with the extra cogs. I know there was some complaints about the down shifting but i think it is fine.

Storage and room - I was well aware of the complaints about the interior size and accepted this when puchasing this car so i have no complaints.

Ammenities - I like everything the car feels very luxury like and the quality of materials seems very good. (this is my first Nissan product i typically buy Acura) the stereo is very good the touch screen and nav combo is great. My wife loves the power folding down and up rear seats.

Couple nocks on the car - She reall wants remote start and it is tough to find someone to install it. I am gonig to call dealers and see what they have to say. I did some research and people are saying that these things are difficult to put on Infinity's because of the massive amount of electronics. We shall see. I did talk to some people that said it is hard on the starters and my thought is .....WHY???? How can that be? YOu are starting the car waiting for it to warm up inside and walking out to get in and drive away. You are still only starting the car one time ... in this case you are just not sitting in it.
Lack of little pockets for storing stuff.
Could use slightly larger in diameter cup holders.

Over all with our 500 miles we put on the car it seems great!!!

I look fwd to talking to you guys on the forum.

Thanks,
Bob

[AWGD8]

Welcome to NICO forum!

I think the tight handling of your car pretty much due to the 19" rims with a very low profile tires. The 18" rims are ideal. Balance between comfortable ride and handling. I have a 17" rims and it still handles fine, I can corner fast and gas a bit to let the rear lose a bit once in a while

In the future, I will changed to 18" rims so I can get a lower profile tires at least 55 or 50 series.

The EX35 with a 17" rim/tire combo seem a bit lighter/nimble coming from the stop light. On the freeway, the 19" will be tight and stable.

[XIS]

Welcome!

Amen to AWGD8... My RWD with 17" steers effortlessly... with my pinkie finger if I had to.



More than agree on the lack of little discrete storage places. UGH... that's about my only real beef!

[rorischak]

Thanks to the reply. Yeah i kinda figured that the tires has something to do with it. I would like a little more steering boost for example my gmc sierra has 20" tires and AWD (denali version) and steers like a dream but then again GM is known for sloppy steering and numb on center.

Maybe down the road i will look at a pair of 18" rims but the damn 19"'s look badazz. Tough call. :-)

[meanie]

I also have a 2011 EX AWD with OEM 19s (Turanzas). I bought it new but only recently began to experience tramlining as my tires hit about 25k. The same was true of my 2010 G37 xS at about the same mileage (Dunlop SportMaxx 18s), so it doesn't seem tire brand specific. There's a lot of discussion and griping about it on the MyG37 site, although it may be worse for stickier summer tires. A good blurb on what contributes to it is on Tire Rack: http://www.tirerack.com/tires/tiretech/ ... ?techid=47. Coming from a G I did originally feel the EX required more steering effort, but it seemed less twitchy than the G and I came to like the feel of it after a while. I'm not changing my tires out at 25k, so I'll live with the tramlining till they wear more.

[ArcticBlue]

Welcome, and thanks for the good input. My only beef with the car after 20K miles is the throttle. Tip-in is abrupt, difficult to smoothly transition from part to moderate throttle. I've had other, turbocharged, cars with the same issue. Our EX has done this since new - anyone else notice this?

[rorischak]

Thanks for the info Meanie.

I have heard of that issue with the "G Series" but i did some research online and did not look like the EX had that same problem. Very interesting though. I know the tires that are on there now are very agressive set of Continentals but off the top of my head i dont know what type. I will look into this further.

Yes, the throttle tip in is pretty crazy but i like that and it jsut takes some feathring to get use to which i am trying to do. If i ride with my wife and she is driving she basically snaps my neck off...haha and then she laughs. so it is going to take a while to get use too.

[AWGD8]

Try the snow mode if you just want to feather the throttle, that if you have an AWD....

[NJGuy]

Couple nocks on the car - She reall wants remote start and it is tough to find someone to install it. I am gonig to call dealers and see what they have to say. I did some research and people are saying that these things are difficult to put on Infinity's because of the massive amount of electronics. We shall see. I did talk to some people that said it is hard on the starters and my thought is .....WHY???? How can that be? YOu are starting the car waiting for it to warm up inside and walking out to get in and drive away. You are still only starting the car one time ... in this case you are just not sitting in it.

I agree with you that the remote start systems shouldn't be harder on starters compared to manually starting the car. I would think that the number of starting cycles is one of the biggest factors in that part's longevity. I would only agree with those other people if there was some other fault in the system that wouldn't allow the car to run, resulting in repeated cranking of the starter.

I haven't looked nor do I plan to look into remote starters, but I can see why it could be difficult to get one installed. While it doesn't look that hard to bypass the brake switch signal, the necessity of the intelligent key's presence complicates things a bit more.

I'm not too familiar with how the intelligent key interfaces with the car, but there is probably some type of module available for aftermarket systems that will let the remote starter work without the intelligent key present. I guess you'll have to research a bit further to find these things out. I personally prefer the products offered by Directed Electronics Inc. (DEI), and would recommend that you look at their offerings first. However, there are probably other companies out there that can also offer a solution that's just as good for your remote start dilemma. The most important thing here is to have a highly qualified and reputable shop perform the installation if you can't do it yourself.

By the way, Nissan now offers the remote start option for Altimas equipped with the intelligent key. Nissan advertises that the remote starter has a range of 100 ft. I'd imagine that it would be quite difficult to retrofit this system to your EX.

[EXceptional]

Welcome aboard Bob.

[danncas]

As far a remote start. It depends on cars. Some of the luxury cars and other with lots of electronic and fiber optic in them is not so easy and know one wants to try. I had a MB a BMW and Saab and know one would even try it. The security system was the biggest hurtle. After all these aren't ' Chevys

[Pardito007]

It's very possible to have remote starter installed on EX. I purchased it through the dealer and had them installed it as well, it's integrated into the intelligent key fob.(press Lock button 3 times to start/stop engine). 24k miles already and no issues at all. Very happy with my ride. Love my 2011 EX AWD Journey.

[SamanthaJane]

Hello all. You all sound so enthusiastic. I was when I first bought my EX35, but the battery has died 3x (approximately every 18 mos). Parasitic tests were run: nothing. Then the dealer admitted that there was an odd 'feature' with the charging system of this model. They wouldn't confirm if the same was true with the G models. Apparently, the battery does not start re-charging until you have traveled approximately 10 miles. So you need to drive about 20 miles per one-way trip to keep the battery charged up. Since most of my trips are local stops of 12 miles or less...the battery eventually drains. Has anyone else had this problem? If I had known of this 'feature' I would not have bought the car.

[EXceptional]

That's the dumbest thing I've ever heard of.

Why would Infiniti design something like that?

I hope it isn't true.

Welcome to the Forum.

[XIS]

I call bull shi!t. My daily trip to the office is 7 miles. No battery issues here.

That stealership dude and his momma need a good hard slap in the face.

[meanie]

I call bull shi!t. My daily trip to the office is 7 miles. No battery issues here.

That stealership dude and his momma need a good hard slap in the face.

Or better yet, send him across Death Valley in the summer in a Nissan Leaf!