Hello everyone . Happy Friday been a while since I posted on here. I see several people have either left or gone silent like me over the past few years.

Hope everyone is enjoying either cars. I know I have since day one. Never left me stranded till one month ago. Engine just kept shutting down on my way home from work. I had no idea what it was and I had the car towed home. I made the rush hour news that evening - "... a white jeep on the right shoulder..." waaat did they just call me?

My boyfriend had the car diagnosed in less than 2min. The empty coolant reservoir was evidence enough - RADIATOR LEAK! Just great a car with only 85500mi? Got some coolant and a funnel, no doubt what the issue was - reservoir held the coolant fine the radiator didn't... Boyfriend looked up the radiator swap procedure and we watched a couple of you-tube videos and after reading some step-by-step write-ups it seemed the general vibe was that the AC system needed to have the R134a recovered from it. Then after the radiator swap the system needed to be evacuated, and then recharged with R134a again. This was the greatest obstacle. We looked into renting the tools from O'Reily but AutoZone had only SOME of the tools needed. We needed an R134a recovery pump and a tank. How much did the dealer want for the job? Nice of you to ask. Two words will constitute a suitable answer, "Too much!". 2000 bux/bucks/dollars whatever your favorite nickname is for money. Dealer wanted $800 for the radiator itself. We looked up the parts list online and with the highest quality parts spent $450 on radiator + reservoir tank + upper/lower coolant hoses + water pump + thermostat + radiator cap + retainer clips/plastic retainers + 2 gallons of coolant + 2quarts of automatic transmission fluid. After completing the job all we needed was to have the AC evacuated and then recharged at the dealer - cost roughly $200. So total cost $650

Lest I forget the cost of the R134a recovery system + scale which will be used on 2 other cars and pay for itself in short order $950.

Grand total $1500 for ALL THIS.

If we towed the car to local shop to recover the coolant and back to work on it ourselves approximately $100 with free AAA towing. If we didn't buy the tool we could have got the job done for $750 not the $2000 the dealer wanted and even less if we replaced only the radiator itself (cost $185).

Seems like the radiator is a weak link in our EX35s. Complaints are all over the internet not sure if it has been addressed in the newer models. The part costs are not too bad compared to other luxury/performance brands of cars.

Same experience here - leaking radiator - local indy shop repair and 635$ out the door - car happy!!
I have been fighting a leaking radiator & stalling issues since July ! It seems the radiator was the cause of all issues! The ECT sensor sends temp to ECU but is out of range with low coolant levels causing air/fuel ratio errors ==== stalling issues. Stress levels off the chart!!! Whew...glad its over!!!

Nice to see you back. Still loving your wheels and brakes!
If you want a good laugh, search on my radiator story.

XIS wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 23, 2017 8:29 am

Nice to see you back. Still loving your wheels and brakes!
If you want a good laugh, search on my radiator story.

Thanks a lot XIS... I also picked up some M37 18-inchers with one size wider than OEM tire width... 245 I think all round? Use for winter duty to preserve the 370Z wheels. Nice to see you still on here. That was YOU that blew out your R134a for the "in-garage" recovery method My boyfriend in his research mentioned that there was no way around evacuating the AC system to get that radiator out of there reasonably. Said that someone on here loosened some bolt/screw and had mistakenly "evacuated" all the R134a from their system. No long term health effects after that experience?

I'll link here for other curious members new-radiator-oh-my-t593861.html?hilit=r ... %20oh%20my. 3 years ago for you almost to the day you posted that. I'm just imagining looking out the window while washing dishes at a DIY neighbor out there doing something to their car and then here comes all this "smoke" billowing out of their garage for over 5 minutes and them running out of the garage. Hilarious since we know no other equipment or property was damaged!!!

mikey1951 wrote: ↑

Sat Oct 21, 2017 5:45 pm

Same experience here - leaking radiator - local indy shop repair and 635$ out the door - car happy!!
I have been fighting a leaking radiator & stalling issues since July ! It seems the radiator was the cause of all issues! The ECT sensor sends temp to ECU but is out of range with low coolant levels causing air/fuel ratio errors ==== stalling issues. Stress levels off the chart!!! Whew...glad its over!!!

Glad you are back on the road. I'm embarrassed that at the time I had no clue why I was loosing power. Its good that the engine is "smart" enough to "preserve" itself in a tough spot.

We swapped out as preventive maintenance the following (in addition to the radiator):
Upper/lower coolant hoses
Radiator cap
Coolant reservoir bottle
Rubber radiator mounts

Also included in our costs were parts for future coolant system maintenance:
Water pump
Thermostat

Not included were the following:
Serpentine belt
Belt Tensioner
Idler wheel/roller? (have to ask what this part does)

Yep, had the same issue at around 90K miles. Radiator was replaced under extended warranty! Have 130K miles on the car now and that has been the only issue.

that's a nice setup you have there. I was thinking of something similar with wider wheels/tires. Do you have sway bars installed in your car EX-KAT-35?

Hello I've heard about your staggered set up, I have a 2017 QX50 RWD and would like to have a staggered set up as well. I don't plan to be as aggressive as yours, but I would like to go like 255 in the rear and 245 in the fronts w/ 19" rims. If it doesn't take much of your time, what rim size, width, and offset would be idea to go with this set up? I don't want the tires to stick out too much from the fender.

I'm still here as well! I turned in my 2010 ex35 (still a little sad) because it had a melting dash and got a 2016 qx50! Still loving it

sev wrote: ↑

Fri May 01, 2020 8:43 am

I'm still here as well! I turned in my 2010 ex35 (still a little sad) because it had a melting dash and got a 2016 qx50! Still loving it

Good to see different folks are on here and posting

Also nice to see you stayed in the Infiniti family!

I acquired a 2008 EX35 a few months ago. It has 175k miles and I am impressed with it other than that it is too small and has terrible ground clearance for what is supposed to be a crossover (the s*** rougue has more ground clearance). I am 6’4”/230 and while the seat goes back far enough, my hair grazes the ceiling every time I move. It is our 4th car and basically I use it to commute to work. I work 40miles from home in Minnesota, I hate FWD including transverse mounted anything even if it is haldex AWD. There are few suitable medium ground clearance rear drive based awd options that get above 20mpg and will comfortably do 100mph comfortably for the price.

It is not designed for towing, the ground clearance sucks but the bones are awesome. The v6 and the awd system are stout and silky smooth. Winter tires are on the stock wheels with blizzacks and the non-winters are a set of 20’s from an FX.

Ha, I'm in MN too with a 30 mile commute and a 2011. However, I spent 18 months at a job with a 3 mile commute, last 18 months with a 30 mile commute and the last 4 months at zero commute so am only at 75k miles. I went down a rabbithole of reviews last weekend looking for an upgrade while the vehicle is still worth something. No point. Nothing excites me under $100k/$55k used so while the market is flooded with high performance crossovers costing foolish amounts nothing seems to match the price/performance of the EX35/37 as far as driving satisfaction. Yeah, not for tall people so that's a deficit, but really tough finding something I want that would truly be better = my definition of better meaning a full second quicker to 60 and still a good value...and with a good engine sound.