Chris: 05 Frontier

[NISTECH]

I have had 2 05 frontier's in the last couple weeks. The first one had less then 100 miles on it, the second one had 557 miles on it. Both had a code U1000 Can Comm. The code is only stored in engine , the rest of the systems are clear no codes and all Can diag results come back ok. The freeze frame data comes up with coolant temp at -40 degrees and the IAT at -58 degrees. all speed and rpm readings at 0. upon clearing the code and R/T it the code does not return. wiggle tests are coming up with nothing, Tech Line lately has been totally useless as I think all the new guys down there are rejects from Yugo and are completly in the dark about everything when you call them. I hear the latest and greatest from one of them is that nissan only writes TSB's now to fix warranty and not to help techs any longer. So if this is a common problem it wont show up untill there is several hundred of them and nissan is trying to save a buck and of course pay us half what its worth. So my question to you is ,Have you come across this yet?

[s13sr20chris]

no i have not. i rarely see can problems but when i do its usually a control unit of some sort. if you only get u code in engine and you get funky data monitor stuff in the of the engine type i would lean towards an ecm. whoo hoo how technical is that diag? ill tell you, csi be darned. i have been getting into the bad habit of guessing on things like that becausea)theese things are getting harder to fixb)my shop is getting less and less competentc)techline is full of poo and getting worsed)its getting harder and harder to make any time on warranty

regarding d...you know my warranty admin said there is no op code for can comm diag?!?!?! she said it has to be straight time!!!! so what happens if i get like 5 u codes on 5 cars in one week? my service manager wont let me have straight time for all that because he looks bad to nissan.

bro, dont get me started. you know i have been stuck REBUILDING vq motors for weeks now. mostly under warranty. i cant even get a short block authorized for a wasted crankshaft. tech line says, "get a short block". warranty says, "did techline give you a credit card number? no, well then what they say does not matter. we want you to overhaul it." plus they wont send me any part untill the motor is in a million pieces meaning one of my bays is tied up, the customer is ticked cause their car(or truck) has been down, and i am worn slam out by the end of the day. then throw in the fact that no one else in the shop has to do this stuff. there are two other team leaders. one is a master tech who has been around for 16 years. when he says he aint doing it the manager says, "ok". the other does not know anything about nissans. he just graduated from a camera manufacturing plant.

man, i have lots to vent. sorry, i dont have any more constructive stuff to say, but i would just slap an ecm in there. by the way, i know the vq30, vq35, and vq40 inside and out now. i could go through one in my sleep.

[NISTECH]

First Chris your warranty admin is a dumba$$. The U codes are the first ones in the EJ section of the warranty manual. The frontier QR25 pays 1.2 diag and the VQ40 pays 1.4 diag. Rip the book open and throw it in his/her face.

Our most productive guy in the shop % wise has been with nissan for many years but for some reason he has this "hearing" problem. so he cant do squeeks and rattles. HMM wonder why hes the most productive guy in the shop. Myself and 2 other guys that have been around nissan for awhile are the next in line for productivity and we end up being a good 10 to 20 hrs behind him. Talk about spoon fed. We arent teams at this shop we are individual flat rate.

As far as the VQ overhauls why are you having to overhaul so many of them? We hardly ever see a dead VQ. The only things we have been seeing engine wise is the SCV screws being ingested. We usually get away with just doing the manifold and extracting the screw[which is now a tiny ball] from the exhaust manifold and poping the plate out of the intake port in the head.

[NISTECH]

Both trucks were written up as waiters and the owners were in a hurry, so a quick check was all I got. Down the road they went with "Sorry nothings wrong with it at the moment, bring it back when its broke" Answer.I am getting to the point if warranty doesnt want to pay me to figure out what happened "when" it happend then I am not even gonna try. Its their buy back not mine. Here in california it take only 2 visits for it to go to buy back. If the customer choses to push it,since the light was verified as being on and a code was stored, It could be bought back because they returned twice for the same failure. Basically the dealer doesnt want to lose money on the labor, I dont want to lose the food in my families mouth because some warranty desk jockey at NNA wants to play games with my paycheck. Appearantly the desk jockeys want them bought back. thats the message I get anyhow.

Look at it this way Chris, when the Nissan smucks fall off thier high horse whos gonna be laughin last? We are since you and I could simply walk out of the dealer and goto work for a independant specialist shop while continuing to make a paycheck fixing nissans, washing our hands of NNA.

[s13sr20chris]

Look at it this way Chris, when the Nissan smucks fall off thier high horse whos gonna be laughin last? We are since you and I could simply walk out of the dealer and goto work for a independant specialist shop while continuing to make a paycheck fixing nissans, washing our hands of NNA.

yeah, iv been thinking real hard about working unit repair. engines, transmissions, differentials, etc. also though about getting in with a tuner shop. even though about building performance oriented powertrains out of my garage.

"Sorry nothings wrong with it at the moment, bring it back when its broke" .

yeah, i use that one a lot now on warranty stuff. now a cash ticket where i get paid for check out is totally different.

First Chris your warranty admin is a dumba$$. The U codes are the first ones in the EJ section of the warranty manual. The frontier QR25 pays 1.2 diag and the VQ40 pays 1.4 diag. Rip the book open and throw it in his/her face.

glad you told me that

Our most productive guy in the shop % wise has been with nissan for many years but for some reason he has this "hearing" problem. so he cant do squeeks and rattles. HMM wonder why hes the most productive guy in the shop. Myself and 2 other guys that have been around nissan for awhile are the next in line for productivity and we end up being a good 10 to 20 hrs behind him. Talk about spoon fed. We arent teams at this shop we are individual flat rate.

As far as the VQ overhauls why are you having to overhaul so many of them? We hardly ever see a dead VQ. The only things we have been seeing engine wise is the SCV screws being ingested. We usually get away with just doing the manifold and extracting the screw[which is now a tiny ball] from the exhaust manifold and poping the plate out of the intake port in the head.

we have a wierd system. we are all paid on individual hours but the team leaders get a little kickback for every hour turned by a guy on the team. in exchange i help them out and i have an apprentice who turns hours for me. thats why i can take the hard stuff and still end up with a decent check.

i dont know why its been like this. just this last couple months the darn things have been dropping like flys. some have been the customers fault(cash) but some were poor assembly. the vq40 i have now was the result of a crankshaft woodruff key disintegration. that same truck also has a busted up torque converter from hasty installation and mysterious metal powder all through the bottome end! talk about a beer:thirty truck.

[NISTECH]

Chris I think you would fair up quite well in a tuner shop. Better then I as I am not a FI expert. The problem is getting with a respectable one.

On the VQ do you think it was some kinda compound for setting the engine up?? kinda like lapping compound, Maybe it ate away at some of the bearings? I usually dont have a problem getting the big components. I ask my parts department what the most expensive parts are,Damed if those always seem to be the bad parts

[s13sr20chris]

not sure what actually caused it. i did notice the last motor still has some grey moly type assemblly lube on the cams.

i did originally write it up for big stuff like crankshaft, vtc sprockets, etc. but warranty said to tear it down and check the heads. so i pulled it all apart and showed my service manager the heads. they are fine. he pointed out a small scuff on a cam bearing surface and declared it to be a crack. he said, "thats all it takes". and told the writer to tell nissan he needed a long block. he really wanted to find something wrong with the heads as he is as sick of theese teardowns as anyone. he got into a shouting match on the phone with warranty telling them if they did not authorize a long block they could come pick up the truck.

oh well, over a year since i went to school and counting.

[NISTECH]

Dude So sorry to hear that you arent getting sent. You need to somehow explain to the owner or manager that you going to school benifits the dealer as well not just you. Once they grasp that they try to get you through as soon as possible. Sad part is I see in NNA all the classes offered out your way and wished I was closer to those schools when I had several classes to accomplish masters. They always seem to have availability too, now I see why. I Am finally putting the nissan training behind me next week. last class I needed. Its the Climate control class. The new one. Unfortunitly my class is the first one being offered so there is going to be a curiculum writer there to go over the class he structured while we are in the class. I just know we are going to be there till 5:30 some nights. Then I have to make the hour and a half drive home in stop and go traffic.

Chris do the benifits in the dealers back there out way the independant shops benifits. I know different states are different ways. I guess I am asking what makes the dealer more appealing of a place to work over a nissan specialist shop?

[s13sr20chris]

yeah, my service manager doesnt see the value in sending techs to school. the shop is down to one nissan master tech and me(a lowly dfrt with engine specialty).

the indy shops have all the benifits(well some do). i cant really think of any reason, off the top of my head, why i should work at a dealer. uh oh.

[NISTECH]

Yea I was curious , out here most of the independants dont have the generous vacation packages, 401k, generous health coverage, employee 100% payed by dealer, dependant partially covered by dealer. Alot of them dont even offer benifits.[at least the smaller privatly owned single shop buisnesses.