Long term report - Y34

[Double E]

My 120K report on the Y34.
I bought this vehicle used at 44K miles in 2008. Its former life was in New Orleans as a leased vehicle to a pharmaceutical organization. The Carfax was clean.


LIKE
No….wait…I love this car. I love it more since I added an exhaust cut out on it with a remote control switch. It sounds awesome and I can open it or close it as needed.

I happen to get 21.6MPG on mostly highway driving every day. My commute is 28 miles at around 70MPH on average.

Style
It’s one of the most unique styles that Infiniti ever put on US soil and still one of the most unique on the road today among rounded econoboxes & homologous shapes that make me think "blah". It is the body style before the more rounded M models after the 2003-2004 (Y34) models. More information on the history of this body style can be found on wiki. It’s a good read about how it was first available only in Japan. You either love it or...love it.

It’s unique in that the doors are frameless, the passenger door still has cutouts for the trunk & fuel door release from the initial design as a right-hand drive car and the gas tank is positioned upright between the backseat & trunk. It came from the factory with a first aid kit in the rear arm rest. The trunk is also pretty big (to me). Some of those observations may not be noticed or liked by some, but it is fairly unique all the same.

Reliability
This car has been fantastic. No major breakdowns of any system, ever. It’s seemingly bulletproof in terms of how relaible it is. The one issue I happened to have was not a major system issue but was significant in that the fuel gague stopped reading properly. I removed the sending unit from the fuel tank, repositioned the float and it has worked perfectly since. (There is also an official recall for this issue.)

Interior
The seats are comfortable and the leather on them is wearing nicely. DO NOT USE A CREAM CONDITIONER ON THEM. The seats are perforated leather so the conditioner seals the holes and will not come out for a year or more until it dries and only then some can be vacuumed out. The cooled seats rely on these holes to be effective.

The in-cabin air filter is pretty easy to change once you've done it once or twice. The cooled seats work best if the under-seat filters are clean.

DON’T LIKE (described below are PCV, Paint, radio, NAV, steering wheel cover, trunk, brakes, gearing, creaks)

PCV
It burns a little oil at start up. Even after the air/oil catch can was added to keep the PCV system from letting oil into the TB, it’s still burning a little. My catch can may be too small and is still letting some oil by.


Paint
The paint on the front bumper started to bubble and peel away severely. The bumper appears to have been re-painted once before. The reason for the repaint looks to have been from normal wear & tear and typical scratches from close parking. The paint on the rest of the car is still pretty good, but not great. The clear coating on the wheels is peeling in several places.

Blose – This is my 3rd Infiniti with a Blose system and thay all lacked bass & punch in each system. One (‘97 I30t) finally lost the ability to control volume and it came with no steering wheel controls. It sounds OK, but will not knock your socks off.
Upgrading the Y34 stereo is accomplished mainly by removal and refitment of a new system. The caveat is that in the Y34, the Blose is an integrated unit to the NAV, HVAC, general vehicle settings and other integrated systems like the CD changer. Replacement with a different audio system in the Y34 will most certainly cause integrated systems to not to be integrated any longer and likely render useless the steering wheel controls. In short, you’ve “got what you got” with no option to upgrade without serious compromises. There is a way to integrate an aux input for an MP3 player that requires some serious wiring modifications and require some dash & audio component disassembly to get to.

Leather
I’m disappointed in the leather on the steering wheel. It has peeled severely and looks like that of a Hyundai after 2 years. Some people have had success with a warranty claim on later versions (post Y34) of the M, however you “got what you got” on the Y34 by now. I added a steering wheel cover to mine years ago and I hate it, but I hate looking at the beat up leather even more.

Trunk
The struts that raise the trunk are under engineered and do not raise it high enough not to have the auto closing system grab it again once the interior door-mounted switch is pressed. It closes nearly the instant it opens, making the door-mounted trunk release useless. A fix is possible with a new lift strut that can be DIY but requires removal of the rear seat back and interior-to-the-trunk trim removal. (I've since replaced them both. It was easy.)

Brakes
I cannot find brakes that don’t warp in this car. I got a set of cryogenically frozen rotors at a significantly higher expense than even dimpled & slotted only to have them warp in about 15 months. I’ll go back with the EBC dimpled & slotted next time and expect to replace them again 2 or so years, depending on how hard I push them.

NAV
The current version is 6.9 and the update costs $99 as of this write up. The Y34 NAV system is not impressive and does not allow for playing DVDs and there are no hack modifications for the Y34 noted on this site. Not impressive does not necessarily mean not good. It works and does the job well enough. The NAV settings and interface are logical and fairly intuitive.

Gearing
Turning 3000 rpm at 70mph is just not normal for a V8 these days. A 6th gear would have been ideal, even if it meant it hunted between gears a little on the highway and an extra $2000 in purchase cost.

Conversely, keeping the 5 speed automatic transmission and simply changing the rear end gear ratio might adversely impact the great acceleration especially from 50-70.

Manual shifting could be a bit faster. It does still shift down in manual mode as needed. Manually shifting down is not possible unless the engine speed is under the rev limiter's preset limit.

Creaks/rattles
There’s a terrible rattle in the windsheild defroster vent that I cannot locate. It seems that many other Y34 units have this rattle. I’m not aware of a TSB for this.
Another creak is in the B pillar of the driver’s side. It is only apparent in turns or hard acceleration. As a Japanese model, this car was only available as a V6 and body reinforcements were added to put in the V8 as a US spec car. I suspect that one of these reinforcements located in the B pillar is loose, twists when the body is flexed or has broken. It may even be a piece of trim in that area moving as the body is flexed. I will probably not look for the real cause myself as it has not gotten worse and the car still feels super-tight at 120K miles.

General upkeep
I use 5w/30 Mobil 1 (syn) and Purolator Pure One filters every 3000 to 3200miles.
I rotate in clean air filters (OEM type) about every 6000 miles and just clean them until they don’t come clean any longer, then I toss & replace it and keep cycling them. I keep 3 in the cycle process. It’s easier than hunting down a retailer that carries it when I need one and I take more notice of the filter condition with this interval.


I have the transmission flushed annually or at 15 months. The rear end gear fluid is the same interval.

I did my spark plugs at 95K or so and there was an impressive performance from the old ones. The difference has probably diminished somewhat 11000 miles later but the plugs that came out were only 25K miles old and looked horrible.
I use the highest octane I can find in this car, no exceptions.
I keep 40lbs of pressure in the tires.

Mods
There are few that are possible with the Y34. If you want a little louder exhaust, one way is to tie open the secondary exhaust valve at the muffler. If you live in a warmer climate and want to get rid of super-heated liquid running through the throttle body, another is to bypass the coolant passages into the TB. A different muffler would probably do even better, just keep in mind there's easy way to have true dual exhaust on the Y34.

I added a remote-actuated exhaust cutout and it’s awesome. Really sounds cool. I used the Raceland unit with remote control.
This clip is what it sounds like but this is not my car:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIe_1w6i5ho
The butt-dyno tells me it pulls better at speed, but it may be a bit slower off the line.

I have removed my engine cover and left it off. I can more easily look for issues that way and have found no ill effects. At one time, I removed the plenum to the air box in attempt to remove airflow restrictions but found no difference in the butt-dyno. The stock air intake to the filter appears designed well enough that I left it on.

I’m not sure if the UpRev tuning system is available for this car. If it is, please post up the before/after results.


That’s my report…

[kermit the guy]

wow !!!! thats a noiiiiiiiice! report !!!!

[MaxBolus]

2*E:
Nice writeup..my experience is similar, but I don't have the energy to put together such a doc, hahaa.

couple notes- your mileage is great, I'm only seeing 17.5/22 on mine at 165K.
I also pulled the engine cover (as with my PC, stereo amp, etc.) for e-z access, but I left the intake plenum off because it gives the engine a cool sound under WOT. ;-)

cheers!

[Double E]

Yeah..I think my mileage is that good strictly because of my daily commute.
However even with a lot of stop & go, the lowest I've seen is 19.

I forgot to add that I'm running 40lbs of air pressure all the way around as well but it's probably onlt good for a few 10ths of fuel mileage.

[SoThrowedMex]

Great read OP. I really enjoyed it. I just purchased my 03 M45 and so far I love it. It had 95,xxx miles on it and is still in tip top shape.

OP, do you have any tips and or recommendations to keep this car up to par?

[szh]

Great read OP. I really enjoyed it. I just purchased my 03 M45 and so far I love it. It had 95,xxx miles on it and is still in tip top shape.

OP, do you have any tips and or recommendations to keep this car up to par?

Definitely check the transmission and/or replace it asap. If your car has never had a transmission flush, then I don't know how safe it would be to do one now, but this is a pretty mandatory (but unstated by Nissan/Infiniti ) thing, that a powered flush (i.e., cycling through the gears using the BG or similar system for maximal fluid transfer) every 30k miles is important.

Unfortunately, our heavier Infiniti cars can have problems with transmission failures somewhere between 100k or 150k miles if it is not maintained well. And the cost of replacement is way high (probably near $4500).

Z

[SoThrowedMex]

Great read OP. I really enjoyed it. I just purchased my 03 M45 and so far I love it. It had 95,xxx miles on it and is still in tip top shape.

OP, do you have any tips and or recommendations to keep this car up to par?

Definitely check the transmission and/or replace it asap. If your car has never had a transmission flush, then I don't know how safe it would be to do one now, but this is a pretty mandatory (but unstated by Nissan/Infiniti ) thing, that a powered flush (i.e., cycling through the gears using the BG or similar system for maximal fluid transfer) every 30k miles is important.

Unfortunately, our heavier Infiniti cars can have problems with transmission failures somewhere between 100k or 150k miles if it is not maintained well. And the cost of replacement is way high (probably near $4500).

Z

Say what? are you serious? Oh no!! You are scaring me. Seriously. I wouldnt have the slightest clue on how to do any of that, nor do I have the money to fix that if the transmission messes up on me. No!!!!!!!!!

[szh]

Definitely check the transmission and/or replace it asap. If your car has never had a transmission flush, then I don't know how safe it would be to do one now, but this is a pretty mandatory (but unstated by Nissan/Infiniti ) thing, that a powered flush (i.e., cycling through the gears using the BG or similar system for maximal fluid transfer) every 30k miles is important.

Unfortunately, our heavier Infiniti cars can have problems with transmission failures somewhere between 100k or 150k miles if it is not maintained well. And the cost of replacement is way high (probably near $4500).

Z

Say what? are you serious? Oh no!! You are scaring me. Seriously. I wouldnt have the slightest clue on how to do any of that, nor do I have the money to fix that if the transmission messes up on me. No!!!!!!!!!

As long as it is in good shape, I would not worry. It is just that uncared for transmissions have problems - and, of course, not all transmissions fail like that.

I'd suggest looking at the fluid in there now - put a few drops onto a clean coffee filter and see if it is still fairly red in color, without impurities or darkening. If it is, then you are probably okay. If it looks (or smells) burnt or dark in color, then be careful!

If it has not been changed ever, then definitely replace it asap though. Even if you don't do a full flush, a drain and fill (which changes out about 50 to 60% of the fluid, followed by another one in 10k miles, will be a good thing. An Infiniti or Nissan dealer can do the work for you without too much cost. If you want a non-Infiniti place to do the work, then make sure to use the Nissan Fluid J or S transmission fluid (or exact compatible) - it is required!

This isn't just an Infiniti thing, by the way ... most modern auto transmissions are expensive to replace - some more than others!

Z

[Tony Two-Tone]

VERY nice write-up! I have 130K on my '03 and I love it!

[Tony Two-Tone]

Oh, and some double-sided tape on that defroster grille will take care of the rattling.

[Double E]

Thanks! It's at the dealer now for the recall now. I'll add the tape once it's out & see what it does for me.

[kermit the guy]

doublE -what recall you go for ?!

[sebvox]

The fuel gauge recall that every Y34 owner should be getting, even if your fuel gauge is still working.

[Tony Two-Tone]

The fuel gauge recall that every Y34 owner should be getting, even if your fuel gauge is still working.

You're in DFW too? We need to get a meet together.

[Double E]

Yep... did the recall. there were 3 other Y34s on the lot when i dropped mine off. all were '03.

I cannot tell anythng is different but it was very clean.

[SoThrowedMex]

Yep... did the recall. there were 3 other Y34s on the lot when i dropped mine off. all were '03.

I cannot tell anythng is different but it was very clean.

Actually my Y34 didnt have the gauge issue. Took mine to the dealer yesterday and they said it didnt refer to my vin however they did fix 2 other recalls somethign with the passenger side airbags. They definitely treated me well. Even washed & vacuumed my car.

[sebvox]

The fuel gauge recall that every Y34 owner should be getting, even if your fuel gauge is still working.

You're in DFW too? We need to get a meet together.

I need to get with you on the double sided tape fix. I have just been shoving foam brush ends between the dashboard and windshield as a temporary fix. Where are you at? I only see very few Y34's in DFdub.

[iakona]

thanks for the detailed write up. glad it's still running strong at 120k. i just got mine and it is just now turning 60k.


i too have that damn dash squeak/rattle. right in the middle at the front. but i'm not sure if it's the dash or the vents. i think it's the actual dash attachment point right at the front.

[Double E]

Thanks! (I'm at 127K now.)

I've localized my rattle to the dash where it meets up to the windshield. I though it was in the vent area, but after shoving the "clip" end of a pen cap in there, it has wedged it quiet.

I'll prpbably come up with a more suitable fix that's less visible after I can be certain the cold weather doesn't make it move more.

[xxNite]

for the dash rattle fix, I used an air conditioner foam gasket (.4" x 4" x 8") You can squish it into the front center of the dash where it meets the windshield. it'll be hidden from view from the outside by the black edge pattern in the windshield. it needs to present a constant down-force at the point to keep the dash from squeeling.

[Double E]

Sweet. Thanks!

[Mark Linkous]

Hello,
Excellent writeup indeed. I purchased my 2004 as a CPO and added the Infiniti Elite Warranty in 2006. I really was blessed in that I did get my Steering Wheel replaced under warranty. Same goes with the Shift Knob which on Y34's with the Natural Bird's Eye Maple Wood Trim were prone to turning green.

I had a similar rattle when I first purchased my car. While it took going to 4 different Infiniti Dealers, Infiniti of Tampa fixed it. The rattle, at least on mine, was located where the LCD Screen and Dashboard meet. Or so I was told. Regardless, I have had no rattles since.

I have had my Transmission Fluid changed every 30,000 miles, but have not had it flushed.
My car is actually at Coast Infiniti right now having the 90,000 Mile Service being done. In addition to the AT Fluid, they are replacing all Drive Belts, In Cabin Air Filter, Balance & Rotate the Tires, new Windshield Wipers, etc.

My car has been dealer serviced its entire life. While I realize it is now worth about 1/4th of what I paid for it, I plan on keeping it for many years to come. I still absolutely love my car and it has been fantastic in terms of reliability.
Cheers,
ML