New Murano owner with an urgent need for advice!

[chrissy]

Good morning all, I am new to this forum so please excuse me if this is not the correct way to post. Recently my 05 Murano AWD started making these funny noises and I took it to 2 different mechanics and of course they found the worst issue that could be addressed and that was the timing chain. We bought this car used and we found out that the previous owner did not take care of this car at all!!!! No oil changes, no maintenance, nothing! The mechanic said the car would need to either replace the engine or replace timing chain and there's only a few hundred in difference when it comes to pricing. I LOVE my Murano and I'm trying to decide what is best to do at this time and I'm hoping someone here can help out may have been in the same situation. Currently the car has 116k on it and she's still running strong, thanks for any help!

[frapjap]

Welcome to NICO!
There are plenty of folks here who can help you out with your tough decision.
I'm going to ask a series of questions, but please don't be offended by any of them as we're just gathering all of the details needed to help you out.

- You did the right thing by getting a second (and now a third!) mechanical opinion, but how well do you know these mechanics?
- Most of the time, a timing chain does not need to be replaced. Alternatively, belts most certainly do need replacement. However, your Murano has a chain that has a very unlikely need to be replaced.
- Are you mechanically inclined in the least? If so, can you inspect for yourself whether or not your car has been taken care of? You'll find some tell-tale signs by removing the spark plugs and checking on their condition. If you remove the valve cover, you can see how often the oil was changed if there is buildup or gunk present. If you change the oil, inspect the color- it should be black.

- The best way we can help you is for your to post a video capturing the noise you're hearing. You can do this by uploading to Youtube or FB and providing a link to the video on this thread. You may just have a bad tensioner or pulley that is making a racket.
Also tell us if the sound happens all the time- at idle, under throttle, under deceleration; IE does it rise and fall with the RPMs or eventually go away?

The more info, the better!

[frapjap]

Also, not saying that this is your problem, but it may be worth looking into:

Ok, i don't mean to come off as an ahole but what your describing sounds EXACTLY like a plugged cat that eventually blew out and may have caused some engine damage. This does NOT sound like a timing chain problem, in fact i have yet to get a Murano needing the chains.

Beleive it or not but for some reason all VQ35s from like 04-06 have some sort of issue with the bank 1 catalytic converter (closest to the firewall). They have a welded on heat sheild that only has 3 spot welds holding it on and sometimes these spot welds break loose and sometimes they break clean off, other times the break off the cat and leave a small hole which now makes it sound like an exhaust leak and can sometimes set a check engine light for a Lean Condition due to air entering the cat near the o2 sensor and throwing off the o2 sensor readings. I seriously do like at least 2 of these a week, i swear i have a fatazz pile of cats stacked at work, i can snap a pic if you wanna see it!

What sounds like happened to your Murano is, and i've seen this a few times on Muranos specifically, your Bank 1 cat (im assuming b1 since we have very little issues with the b2) most likely started goin out, breaking up slowly into little chunks causing your rattle noise as the catalyst material is just rattling around inside the converter. Then eventually it plugs the exhaust completely and therefore you started choking off the engine causing your loss of power symptom. Then as you climbed the hill you put alot of strain on the motor and eventually the power of the engine's exhaust got soo intense that it eventually BLEW up and shot out the catalyst material straight into the exhaust stream into your Y pipe resonator/cat. I bet if you remove your exhaust Y pipe and shake it youll be able to hear and see all the material. You may have also damaged the engine if the catalyst material got sucked into the exhaust ports into the cylinders and scored up your cylinder walls and may have also taken out some compression and oil rings. I did a Murano short block under warranty for this same reason once, sucked in catalyst material which lead to oil consumption.

Read more here:
http://forums.maxima.org/6th-generation ... ise-5.html

[chrissy]

Thank you for the welcome! I am not offended in any means and thank you for taking the time to help me with my question. All my answers are below.

- You did the right thing by getting a second (and now a third!) mechanical opinion, but how well do you know these mechanics?
I don’t know the first mechanic too well but the 2nd one is a friend of my dad’s and he normally doesn’t bs me.

- Most of the time, a timing chain does not need to be replaced. Alternatively, belts most certainly do need replacement. However, your Murano has a chain that has a very unlikely need to be replaced.
This is what we thought too and my dad’s friend even told us that it is not common for chains to be changed at all so whoever had this car before us did not take care of it and keep up with any maintance. He did check out the timing belts and said that was fine and didn't need to be fixed. We bought the car with 93k and it has about 116k now, she’s a beautiful drive and we haven’t had any issues except for this.

- Are you mechanically inclined in the least? If so, can you inspect for yourself whether or not your car has been taken care of? You'll find some tell-tale signs by removing the spark plugs and checking on their condition. If you remove the valve cover, you can see how often the oil was changed if there is buildup or gunk present. If you change the oil, inspect the color- it should be black.
Actually my dad’s friend did our last oil change and he did say the oil was dirty and very black so he changed the oil and also flushed something, I apologize I don’t remember but I believe it was the transmission that he flushed because he said it was very dirty as well. I am not mechanically inclined but I’m sure youtube has a video on how to do that lol. Is there something I should specifically look for when looking at the spark plugs? Should I be getting a tune up or when do I know when one is needed? Again thank you for being so helpful and patient with all of my questions.

- The best way we can help you is for your to post a video capturing the noise you're hearing. You can do this by uploading to Youtube or FB and providing a link to the video on this thread. You may just have a bad tensioner or pulley that is making a racket.
Ok I will definitely try to do that when my Murano starts doing that again. It’s so hard to explain the sound she makes without being in person. It has happened recently but when it does, she normally sounds like she just gave up and is struggling to climb a hill type of noise, we can definitely tell it’s some type of chain noise. Hopefully we can capture the noise on video to show you.


Also tell us if the sound happens all the time- at idle, under throttle, under deceleration; IE does it rise and fall with the RPMs or eventually go away?
It doesn’t happen all the time, we hear it normally when we pull off the driveway and start accelerating to leave and also it happens on the freeway when we have to speed up. I will have to pay attention to the RPM’s when that happens. It does go away, I would say when it happens it lasts for about 10-15 min and then it goes away. Since we’ve had the car I would say this has happened maybe around 10 times. This didn’t start happening until the recent flush and last oil change.

[chrissy]

Also, not saying that this is your problem, but it may be worth looking into:

Ok, i don't mean to come off as an ahole but what your describing sounds EXACTLY like a plugged cat that eventually blew out and may have caused some engine damage. This does NOT sound like a timing chain problem, in fact i have yet to get a Murano needing the chains.

Beleive it or not but for some reason all VQ35s from like 04-06 have some sort of issue with the bank 1 catalytic converter (closest to the firewall). They have a welded on heat sheild that only has 3 spot welds holding it on and sometimes these spot welds break loose and sometimes they break clean off, other times the break off the cat and leave a small hole which now makes it sound like an exhaust leak and can sometimes set a check engine light for a Lean Condition due to air entering the cat near the o2 sensor and throwing off the o2 sensor readings. I seriously do like at least 2 of these a week, i swear i have a fatazz pile of cats stacked at work, i can snap a pic if you wanna see it!

What sounds like happened to your Murano is, and i've seen this a few times on Muranos specifically, your Bank 1 cat (im assuming b1 since we have very little issues with the b2) most likely started goin out, breaking up slowly into little chunks causing your rattle noise as the catalyst material is just rattling around inside the converter. Then eventually it plugs the exhaust completely and therefore you started choking off the engine causing your loss of power symptom. Then as you climbed the hill you put alot of strain on the motor and eventually the power of the engine's exhaust got soo intense that it eventually BLEW up and shot out the catalyst material straight into the exhaust stream into your Y pipe resonator/cat. I bet if you remove your exhaust Y pipe and shake it youll be able to hear and see all the material. You may have also damaged the engine if the catalyst material got sucked into the exhaust ports into the cylinders and scored up your cylinder walls and may have also taken out some compression and oil rings. I did a Murano short block under warranty for this same reason once, sucked in catalyst material which lead to oil consumption.

Read more here:
http://forums.maxima.org/6th-generation ... ise-5.html

Great! Thank you for this information, after reading this I don't believe I have the same issue but I will definitely keep this on file for reference in case it does start having these same issues.

[chrissy]

I need to make a correction on my original post, I misquoted the miles, it has only 81k miles instead of 87k - I am not sure how much that matters in this case but I thought I'd correct it anyway.

I have taken the Murano to 5 different places to have the engine looked at and I'll tell you my experiences with them and it might help you out some. We still have not figured out how to get the rattle to stop, but we are onto a possible solution. The first place we went was Perfection Tire on the recommendation from a family friend. They heard the noise, checked the oil and other fluids and the heat shields. The shields checked out fine, they told us that the oil was really low and that could be the cause and said we should change the oil. So we set out to change the oil and in the process noticed that the ac/alt belt was damn near shot - and that the tension bolt for the power steering belt was broken off (which had us complaining to the dealership we bought it from which is a story unto itself). After changing the oil (we added full synthetic), replacing the cracked belt and the bolt the rattle was still there so we took it to a local mechanic on the advice of the guy we talked to at Perfection. They said they drove it and heard the noise and said it sounded exhaust related. To be honest, I am not sure they drove it because I never saw the car actually leave the shop, unless they were stealthy about it.
I took it to a muffler shop and they put it on the lift, checked everything, and then started it while it was on the lift and got the car to rattle. They said that they heard the noise, it was not exhaust related as everything checks out fine as far as the exhaust was concerned. They said it sounded internal. While at the muffler shop I ran into a guy that works for Commercial Tire and he said to take it to them and see what they can do. At this point I was willing to try anything so I took it out there and got some answers and at least good possibilities to check on. The mechanic at Commercial said it sounded like a detonation noise and that it was taking in too much fuel (which could explain our crappy mpg). He told me to take it to the local Nissan dealership or a place that can hook it up to a computer that can read Nissan codes and have it checked out.
I do not trust the local Nissan dealership AT ALL (another long story) so I called several places asking if they had the tools and computers required to work on Nissans and found an import repair shop that could look at it. Took the Murano to them and they drove it, heard the noise, hooked it up to their computer, and did all sorts of things with it and came back with a pre-detonation "diagnosis". There were no codes that popped up (no check engine light either) and told us to change from the mid-grade fuel we were using to a non-ethanol supreme to see if that helped and to take it out on a road trip to clean the carbon build up out of the engine. I had 3/4 of a tank of mid-grade to burn up so I added Lucas fuel treatment to help clean out the carbon, and took it out on the road to clean it out. The rattle subsided some, but it did not go away. We just refueled the car with the recommended fuel and the rattle has actually come back as bad as it used to be.
I finally broke down and called the Nissan dealership and told them what was going on and they suggested changing the fuel and cleaning out the carbon first as well - before going in for major repairs that may or may not fix the problem. I also asked him about retarding the engine timing if it was pre-detonation and he said that there are sensors that are supposed to automatically do that and if the car is not throwing any codes then he does not believe there is anything wrong with the sensors.
Our next plan is to burn this tank of gas, add some more and use SeaFoam through the intake to burn even more of the carbon out. After we do that, we are then going to change the spark plugs and gaskets. We are hoping that this will stop the rattle issue we are having as electronically, everything supposedly checks out.

I am not sure if this helps with your problem at all, but if your check engine light is coming on, I would say that it is throwing a code that something is wrong. Does this mean it is your CAT(s), I don't know. It could be related to your whole electronic system in that you would have something shorting out, something has come loose, or that some sensors are failing. It could also be similar to my problem and that it is detonating too soon, or not enough. I don't know how many miles are on your Murano, but you could try changing your plugs (which would also require a gasket change) - if they haven't been changed recently - and see if that helps any. You could also try changing the fuel, if you do not use a high octane fuel, and cleaning out the carbon build up. I wish I was more engine savvy to help you out better.

I took my car out onto to some back roads to take a video of the noise so people can hear what I am talking about. Have a listen and see if it resembles what you are experiencing yourself. http://youtu.be/nl_e0-DZuBE

I don't know if this was the correct way to do this but while searching the forum I stumbled across this thread and the sounds in her youtube video sounds just like ours however ours is not as loud. I hope this helps with the troubleshooting.

[darylzero]

Actually my dad’s friend did our last oil change and he did say the oil was dirty and very black so he changed the oil and also flushed something, I apologize I don’t remember but I believe it was the transmission that he flushed because he said it was very dirty as well. I am not mechanically inclined but I’m sure youtube has a video on how to do that lol. Is there something I should specifically look for when looking at the spark plugs? Should I be getting a tune up or when do I know when one is needed? Again thank you for being so helpful and patient with all of my questions.

If he flushed the transmission, which is a CVT transmission you will want to make sure he used only Nissan NS-2 fluid.

It doesn’t happen all the time, we hear it normally when we pull off the driveway and start accelerating to leave and also it happens on the freeway when we have to speed up. I will have to pay attention to the RPM’s when that happens. It does go away, I would say when it happens it lasts for about 10-15 min and then it goes away. Since we’ve had the car I would say this has happened maybe around 10 times. This didn’t start happening until the recent flush and last oil change.

If this started after the trans flush he could of put in the wrong fluid. From what I have heard there isn't really a way to do a "flush" on a CVT, it's more of just a drain and refill. Some correct me if I'm wrong.
Check your work order from the mechanic and see if it lists what trans fluid was put in.
This could be why you are hearing a weird noise and it's not the timing chain.
Also, you still have 4K miles left on your transmission warranty, so if anything is wrong with that Nissan will replace for free up to 120K as long as it wasn't tampered with, IE wrong fluid put in.