1998 Pathfinder won't start

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Hello all!

So for the past 200+ miles my CEL has been on (190k miles on the pathfinder presently). Over the past couple years I have had an intermittent CEL & when I checked it in the past it was either for the evap valve by the fuel fill, the cats, or for a knock sensor.

So today I pulled out onto a street and noticed some rather bad chugging and all of the sudden the CEL started flashing shortly after the chugging stopped the flashing CEL stopped flashing and just remained constant. I bagan noticing that it would chug if I gave it more than about 10% throttle and if it chugged for long the CEL would start flashing.

Well I made it into work (all of a 4-5 mile drive) and popped the hood. The car stalled a couple times and each time I got it started again and looked around the engine bay to see that the air intake duct right at the throttle body was pretty badly cracked (a pencil could almost drop in through the widest part). To me this was the obvious problem (had a similar issue on my 240). During lunch I went out to it with some electrical tape to wrap the duct and patch the hole. After that I tried to start it up - and got nothing. Well it cranked fine and strong but it wouldn't fire. I tried starting it a few times and waited to hear for the fuel pump to cut off after turning the ignition to "ON" and still nothing.

Anyone have any suggestions or anything that I might be missing? I would like to be able to get it started and home before we get some bad weather tomorrow. I could get it towed but would prefer to just drive it home to further fix it there...

Thanks in advance!

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Well I have some further revelation:

I pulled the 3 easiest spark plugs while at work the other day and they looked to be pretty fouled up and had the slight smell of gas (1 of them might have been slightly wet). So upon noticing this I went to the parts store and bought a set of NGKs and replaced those 3 spark plugs. I figured that it should run on 3 if they were the problem; and sure enough it fired right up and was sounding quite strong - revved fine, pulled fine, seemed to be showing no weakness and the CEL was not flashing. With that I drove it about 2 miles in 4WD (we had a lovely snow storm here in NC and all of the roads were snow-covered and slick). At around the 2 mile mark it died and it wouldn't start yet again. Same issue I was having before - strong crank but no ignition. I then decided to attempt to replace the 2 spark plugs that are in between the intake runners and noticed that they looked to be a bit on the white side but not too terrible (not like they were running super lean or anything). After replacing them I tried starting it with no success. I had 1 brief glimmer of hope when it seemed that it wanted to fire up but that only lasted for probably 1-3 revolutions of the engine.

Now I just finished getting it towed to my house so that I can better assess and fix the problems... I'm rather confident that I've got an ignition problem... I bought the Pathfinder 3 years ago with around 167k miles on it. I believe that the previous owners had replaced the distributor fairly recently (the aluminum was far newer than anything surrounding it along with the distributor cap looking brand new). I am not sure how long ago those parts had been replaced.

If anybody has any helpful advice or a direction for me to embark on feel free to reply!

[Towncivilian]

Have you checked for dirt / dust build-up under the distributor cap? Is the rotor excessively scorched?

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I did remove the distributor cap to check things out and it looked pretty clean. There was a touch of carbon dust along the rotor contact and the rotor 'blade' has a few small scorch notches in the leading edge but not what I would consider to be serious or bad scorching - though it could be enough I suppose. I think that it could use new spark plug wires as the ones in it are factory. Not sure if that is contributing to the problem or not as I don't see any visible signs of damage to them and the contacts inside of the boots are extremely shiny. I'm going to go clean all of those contacts with come electric cleaner & see what happens. Once I get it started I will get the codes scanned asap to see what else might be in need of attention (occasionally I've also had upstream O2 senor codes).

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Well upon further inspection of the distributor cap, I noticed that there were hairline cracks emanating from the contacts for each of the cylinder contacts. I went ahead and replaced the distributor cap & rotor and tried starting it once again to no avail... I noticed no change in the starting characteristics at all. I'm beginning to get rather puzzled by this!

Even if there is a small air intake leak still (going to call & order that 60 degree elbow from the throttle body to the to the plastic tube from the dealer tomorrow - it's currently patched using electrical tape), that shouldn't prevent it from even attempting to start!

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So here's an update:

I pulled a spark plug & tested to see if I actually was getting a spark (with the plug grounded of course) and found out that I was in fact not getting a spark. This is with a new cap, rotor, & plugs. To further troubleshoot I went and checked to see if the was power coming into the distributor & found out the following:

11.2V were going to what seemed to be a little capacitor or sorts on the side of the distributor.
0.05V, 0.2V, 5V, 11.7V, & 5V going into the distributor connector.

I then checked to see what voltage was leaving what appears to be an integrated coil and saw 11.2V from it with the ignition on. While cranking the engine I would see voltage jump to 17V at what appeared to be regular intervals. Next I put the cap back on & checked to see if voltage was getting to the ignition wire connections on the cap while cranking. This turned up ZERO voltage at any point in cranking & yes I did notice the rotor turning while cranking in an earlier test (though I cannot verify that its rotation matched the cranks (or was 1/2 the speed of it) because at that point I was just bumping the starter to rotate the rotor in order to easily remove it. For the other tests while cranking the engine a friend was checking voltage & I just thought about checking to make sure the rotor was turning at the propper speed...

SO can anyone help to determine if my problem is that the new distrbutor cap & rotor don't match the distributor ( my old 240 had this happen) or that the distributor is in fact faulty? Can anyone verify the voltages that I was seeing or point me to the location in the FSM that would tell me them? I could not find any diagnostics to test the coil/distributor in the FSM - even checked the index...

[Leo1998]

I would test the coil if you didn't get spark to your plug...pull the coil wire off the distributor and plug spark plug into it, hold with insulated pliers and ground the plug to a bolt, have buddy crank it and watch to see if you have a nice bright blue spark. If no spark or weak spark, i would look into replacing the coil...They do go bad, Keep us updated. For a visual: http://autorepair.about.com/od/troubles ... manual.htm and http://autorepair.about.com/od/troubles ... nual_2.htm

[Arrow]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't believe the Pathfinder (at least not my 3.3L VG) does not have a standard "coil" that can be replaced. I've tried testing it but not sure that what I'm finding is showing that it is good or faulty because I cannot find any diagnostic procedures for the distributor or coil in the Pathfinder.

From what I can tell the coil is integrated into the distributor itself and therefore it would not be possible to conduct the type of test that you're suggesting...

[Leo1998]

Yeah i just went and looked at my '98 Pathfinder and you are right, i didn't even notice when i replaced my distributor cap. This is my first Nissan ever, i've owned Fords and Chryslers. Loving the Pathfinder though, wish i would of bought one years ago. Mines at 113k miles and paid 2 grand for it. I just did the valve cover gaskets and they are clean as a whistle but now i think i have to do the oil pan gasket because i think the front "U" gasket is leaking. Still have a small drop of oil on the pavement.

So it sounds like you are getting spark to the distributor but not to the plugs, and the rotor turns. It's got to be somewhere in the distributor. Is there a way you can tell if the rotor is delivering the spark or just spinning?

[Leo1998]

I just found this, similar to what i was saying..."If your ignition coil is hot and you can get a spark coming off of the coil wire, the only thing I can suspect would be a problem with a bad rotor in the distributor. If the coil is delivering to the distributor but it travels no further, the energy must be dissipating somewhere. If a rotor has a short, the plug wires will never be delivered any spark.
Also a distributor cap with a missing carbon button which rides on the top of the rotor may be missing. I really cant think af any other things it could be.

I just read another post and the guy was saying that the distributor bearings are know to fail, and to test this pull the distributor and turn it by hand to see if it's hard or rough to turn, if that's the case replace the distributor.

I'll keep looking around for you, beings i'm bored! i'll keep "editing this spot.
This may sound silly but did you check all your fuses?
Check the MAF sensor. If it's dirty, you won't be able to start the engine...i doubt it's that.

I read a couple stories about the same as yours but, nobody ever came back and said what they did to fix the problem. Let us know...and good luck.

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I will be sure to update this thread once I solve the problem!

I am pretty confident that the coil within the distributor has failed but will test it either tonight or tomorrow. Speakingo of testing the components of the distributor, I finally found where in the FSM the test are - EC 355 for anyone who wants to know! The reason that I think the coil is bad is because even though I can read voltage and notice a jump in voltage to 17V while cranking, that voltage seems VERY suspiciously low for the output voltage from a coil. IIRC the coil output voltage should be several THOUSAND volts if not in the range of 10,000 volts. The reason being that it takes a pretty large voltage in order to jump the gap between the rotor & the distributor cap (and even more voltage to jump the much larger 1mm gap for the spark plugs)...

That being said, I will post up what I find out once I finish the diagnostic testing of the distributor components!

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Well I followed the diagnostic procedures for the distributor assembly components & following is what I discovered:

Primary Coil: should be 0.5 - 1.0 ohms; measured 1.0

Secondary Coil: should be approximately 12k ohms; measured 10.93k ohms (not sure if that is "approximately 12k" or not)

Last thing I checked was the Power Transistor - should be anything except 0 ohms; measured nothing... Well actually my multimeter seemed to not read there to be conductivity between the terminals for the test...

So my guess is that the power transistor is likely shot & that the secondary coil may be out of spec... Anybody else got any thoughts? Or can verify that they get a reading between terminal 8 on the power transistor plug & terminal 2 on the camshaft position plug (the one that plugs into the distributor)?

[Arrow]

Hey everyone!

I just wanted to let everyone know that replacing the distributor solved my problems! And also for anyone that is inclined, replacing the distributor is RIDICULOUSLY simple - in fact it was the easiest $200 repair that I've ever done on any car (probably the easiest repair that I've done PERIOD). The only real catch it to make sure that you index everything so that you can properly align the new distributor and get it in the same position as the old one (and verifying timing with a timing light is a plus, but if you index things correctly checking it is just something to put your mind at ease).

[Towncivilian]

Glad to hear you've fixed it! Thanks for reporting back.