Starting and Idle Issues

[shunk99]

New to this forum. Engineer by day, novice mechanic by night. I own a 2002 Nissan Sentra GXE 1.8 mnl 5spd. This is my work car - 20 mins to work on mostly highway in the Pittsburgh area. I've got about 87k mi.

My car started out occasionally momentarily cutting out/missing and I'd just keep rolling with no issues. It would usually happen once a day. Then twice a day. Most of the time when I'd pop it into neutral. Occasionally while driving. My favorite part of the story is no dummy lights and no codes.

One day it died after I exited the highway. Didn't notice until I was approaching the stop sign at the top of the ramp. Took me 10 mins (at least if felt that long) to restart. Flew to work as fast as I could since I didn't want to be stuck in between either spot. Continued noticing the misfire/intermittant miss when I dropped into neutral. Once in a while, it would hesitate on the highway at 60 mph. Began losing confidence it would get me anywhere safely. Still no dummy lights and no codes.

The stall was reminiscent of the time I stalled at a light when I first got the car - bad crank/cam sensor. It just died back then. So this time I thought the problem was electrical. Changed the spark plugs, the cam sensor and the crank sensor. Changed the in the tank fuel filter - nissan acted like that was totally unnecessary. Got fed up and sent it to the mechanic. He tried a couple times and really didn't do anything. He told me he thought it was the computer. Went to Nissan and had it tested - bad computer.

They wanted $800 - I had it towed home. Played with the connectors and cleaning. Found it starting on cooler days, but anything over 75 degrees seemed to fight starting. Ripped open the computer and found (really my wife noticed it with her super camera) some pitting on one part of the board. Figured I had nothing to lose. Left the computer out and tried starting the car - of course it isn't going to start. It showed me that the computer was at least illuminating the check engine light.

Went online and bought $200 used computer with 60 day warranty. Plugged it in and the sentra started right up. Seemed to do it's own idle relearn cause it idled about 1000 rpm for a lot longer than the other computer. I've waited about 60 days since it was installed and everything seems to be just like it was before. I noticed the duct work to the computer case and decided I'd never run the car without the a/c off again. I just want to get a couple more years out of this car. After that I don't care.

Anyway, I wanted to share because there is some really good information out on this site and for some reason I got one of those problems that wasn't listed. Hope it helps.