We have 2 Nissans, each with a current problem, and I don’t know what to do!
1) My husband was driving our 2001 Sentra yesterday at highway speed, and the car just stopped. He was able to get over to the side of the road but was unable to restart the car. Car was towed to the closest repair shop, and a day later, they were able to re-start the car, and couldn’t determine the problem. Do I need to take the car to a Nissan dealership?
2) The Check Engine light came on on our 2001 Pathfinder. My husband took it in to his usual guy, who I don’t have a ton of confidence in to begin with. He said it was a CAM sensor problem, and had to order a part. I took the car back yesterday, and today, the check engine light went off (it had been on for about a week prior). Why might this be? And if it is the CAM sensor, is it safe to drive until it is replaced?
Thanks for any advice on either of these issues!
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It doesn’t need to go to a Nissan dealer, but it does need to go to a competant shop. Just because they were able to restart the car doesn’t mean they shouldn’t have been able to solve the problem. There’s a computer to help (downloading codes) as well as likely possibilities that they can check. I’m willing to bet he lost spark.
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It could be the cam speed sensor. It could be an intermittant problem and the computer may have reset itself. They do that for some problems after a specific number of restarts, but that doesn;t necessarily mean the problem is permanently fixed. If that’s true, the car is safe to drive. It may stop running properly at some point, but it’s not a safety issue.
Question: If I’m understanding correctly, the “usual guy” is not the one that looked at vehicle #1? Perhaps you should take it to him to look at. It sounds like he’s starting by checking the codes. Unless, of course, you have some specific reason that you don’t have confidence in him.
The Nissan check engine codes only set the check engine light if the problem occurs twice in 10 driving cycles. If it goes for 10 driving cycles without the problem, the check engine light goes out, but will come back on if the problem occurs again in any of the next 20 driving cycles. After that, the code is deleted from the computer and it goes back to requiring it to appear twice in 10 driving cycles. If you go for two more weeks without the light, then don’t worry about it. It could have been a bit of dirt or something.
As for the first problem, you might have to take it to the dealer, it may have a code that is not readable by a generic code reader. But again, I’d just drive it until it occurs again.
starting with #2. first; the cam position sensor is a cheap part, easily replaced. change it out. that shoudl take care of that.
NO. 1 by any chance was a kid in the front seat???..kicking the dash???..which may have shut off the inertia/accident fuel shut off???..and they reset it, by pulling codes??..and now it runs? what did the first shop do? anything? what did they say about the car?