Tuesday, Mar 09, 2010 at 09:39
Hi Ajd
Nissan 3lt diesel engine failures would represent the biggest single mechanical issue out there with a mass of info from this site and almost ever other site.
It began around year 2000 and continued since then but with failure rate dropping off as Nissan improved reliability and of course later models have less mileage.
In some countries with better consumer laws a total recall and engine replacement was carried out some years ago, e.g. in England.
Very broadly speaking engines fail by 150,000km with some never failing and some at 50,000.
I only have direct knowledge of 5 people I have been driving with, 2 Patrols and 3 Navara 3lts , One hung on till 198,000km - one went at 50,000.
In each of these 5 cases issues such as carbon build up / dirty Maf sensors etc combined to make the turbo boost control system loose control and overboost.
Two of these blew hoses , and were fixed without destroying the engine.
Just after Xmas , my brother , an automotive engineer, caught one just before major failure and it was essentialy choked almost solid with internal carbon build - (it had also blown hoses which had earlier been replaced cheaply without
investigating the soucre of the problem).
During this long journey Nissan found things like inadequate oil splash to the pistions and small fixes like more oil were done which no doubt saved a percentage of the failures.
FollowupID:
677917