My 2002 Nissan Altima recently had to have a new catalytic converter put in. Now it has burned through two fills of oil with no signs of leaks or excess or dark exhaust. Nissan and my regular mechanic both said the engine needs to be replaced. It has had regular tune ups and oil changes. I read a forum that has alot of people complaining of the same thing and have been told to replace the engine to the tune of five thousand dollars. There also has been talk of legal action to make Nissan recall these vehicles. What should I do? Thankyou in advance
Just curious. How many miles on the car? Buy it new? Ever have any overheating episodes?
With no leaks the engine has to be burning the oil and this means past the rings or valve seals. A compression test and/or leakdown test could possibly verify ring condition. There is no test for valve seals.
You may not notice oil smoke because the converter is catching it and this could have been the reason for the previous converter failure.
If your car has less than 80k miles on it the converter should be free to you.
The problem with class action suits is that sometimes xxxx may freeze over before anything actually ever gets done and you may not want to wait that long.
Your only option, depending on a number of factors, is possibly contacting Nissan’s regional office and politely asking about a good-will warranty on an engine if it’s needed. The car is 7 years old so I would not hold my breath on this.
It has about 85,000 miles on it. I purchased it from Hertz Rental Sales at about 30000mi. I bought it under the belief that Nissan was as good as Honda or Toyota. It’s too bad because I was seriously considering another in the near future but this has put in alot of doubt. This is my first foreign car so I don’t know alot about them other than word of mouth.
Eesh, you bought it as a used rental car? That might’ve been the first mistake. It’s entirely possible that renters beat the hell out of it, which could easily have shortened the life of the engine. If you contact Nissan asking for good-will help and they ever find out it used to be a rental car, you’ll get laughed out of the office.
I’d be careful not to let this experience sour Nissan’s reputation to you, as a rental car might be an even more suspect purchase than a simple used car. They really do last a very long time with proper maintenance and sensible driving, but rental cars often wind up not having the latter part of that.
After reading the original post my first thought was wondering if this car was purchased new. After getting more of the story I agree with budd2049 that Nissan would laugh you out of the office. I retract most of my original comments.
Buying a rental car is a coin flip; some people will luck out and others won’t.
The people who have rented this car before you bought it do not care one whit about how they treat the vehicle.
Speed Channel has a show on called Pass Time in which everyday people race cars at the drag strip and a panel wins cash for predicting their 1/4 mile times. They always save a special car for the end of the show and in a recent episode the last car was a new Dodge Charger. This car was a rental for the weekend (car rental company was not mentioned on purpose) and this “rental racing” is not a rare thing to occur.
Just an example to show you what kind of abuse a rental car can be put through.