Missing Oil

[Haitian_King]

I'm not an Altima owner, but my friend is. I'm a member of the Q45 forums.

I told him I'd ask you guys about his Altima problem. He has a Silver on black 2003 2.5 Altima. Told me that upon starting it the other day, he heard some sort of rattling from his engine. He said it sounded like beans in his engine. He turned the car off and restarted it and the sound ws gone. The car was fine afterwards. He then drove from Atlanta to NJ. After the drive, he said he heard the noise again. He added 2 quarts and it went away. There's no sign of oil leaking or burning. He's worried that he might have wrecked something driving from Atl to Nj with a low oil quantity. He said that he gets regular 3k oil changes, sometimes even @ 2.5k.

All the info I gave was what he told me. Can you guys shine some light on the problem?

[MaximA32]

Have him take it to a dealer and have them perform an oil consumption test on the car. If that's not feasible, have him do an oil change and put 4.5 qts in and then after 1000 miles, check the oil level. If the level is low, he has an oil consumption problem and he needs to take the vehicle to a dealer immediately. If he does have the consumption problem, they will replace the engine and it's generally under warranty as long as it's within the 5yr/60k.

[Haitian_King]

Thing is, he bought it from an auction. I don't know if it's still under warranty. I'll talk to him and find out. Thanks for the info!

[Krusty]

The 2.5 or qr25de engine is highly known to consume alot of oil. The issues comes from the precat. Im not exactly sure of the science but my sentra used to burn alot of oil before a aftermarket catless header was installed. You should highly recommend him doing it. You can get the SSA for 150$, it takes like 2 hours to install even if youve never done it before. I went in with my stock header for oil consumption test they fixed it but the problem just came back.

[xekushnr]

I dont think I've ever heard "beans in the motor" before, thats pretty funny. It sounds like he might have had a little valve tap from oil starvation. Follow NSR A32's advice and have your buddy bring it to the dealer.

[driftingmy240sx]

i am a nisan master tech and we see this all the time. normally it is accompanied by a p0420 code. due to the egr function being performed by the variable valve timing catalyst amterial gets "sucked into" the engine and wastes the rings. the car then burns on and wastes bearings.

other cause - the head gaskets fail on the 2.5 and waste the piston rings also. i have seen the ones with leaking head gaskets make noise on start up due to coolant n the cylinders.

if the cat has failed or the recall for the cat has not been perfomed the engine could be warrantied up o 8/80 per the recall. i recommend having a dealer run a service comm on the vehicle to see if the recall for the cat is still open. if not you may be able to get a "nice tech" to warranty the motor and cat. (nissan will replace the motor 8/80 if the recall was done and the cat fails later also).