I have a 2013 Juke Nismo that I drive quite a lot. It’s currently at 73k miles and I’ve had it for just over 3 years. That said, it’s always driven very well with no major issues, but there are some minor issues that I am worried about.
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when the car heats up, after about 20-30 minutes of driving, the engine produces a loud, high pitched whine, simily to a supercharger sound that gets higher and lower as the engine revs higher or lower. This is a cvt transmission so the rpms can actually go down as the car accelerates, but the whine follows the rpm, not the speed. I thought this might be an indication that I needed to replace the cvt fluid, and I did that, but it was no help.
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occasionally, when sitting at idle, the cars rpms will drop from the usual idle of about 750 rpms. The needle doesn’t “hunt”, the rpms just dip for a second and then they come back to normal. But the dip is enough to where the car will shudder a little bit as if it’s about to stall. The weirdest thing is that I have noticed that I can actually cause the shudder to happen if I pull back on the power window lever if the window is already up, which makes me think the problem might be electrical or in some way related to the alternator.
Any ideas? Should I be worried about either of these two problems?
Can you re-create the sound while in “park”, by raising the rpm. Someone could perhaps observe/listen with the hood open. Just speculating, but perhaps a bad alternator.
If unsure, get yourself one of those for $10-15 and observe charging voltage life while this is happening.
The sound does happen in park, but only after I’ve driven for a good long time, like my normal commute to work (about 40 minutes). The engine chain thing may have something to do with it as my dealer never notified me of that recall, so I’ve never had that replaced also. Would the alternator also affect the compressor on the ac not coming on sometimes? Because that has been happening too. It’s very brief and doesn’t happen all the time, but sometimes the ac takes a little while to get going. Once it does it’s nice and cold, sometimes when I start it up, the ac blows hot air and the air won’t cool down in idle unless I rev the engine or drive around some…
It is a service campaign, not a recall. I looked it up at safercar.gov, the web site that keeps all the recall data for the NHTSA. That may be why your dealer didn’t contact you. Get an appointement for a checkout at the dealer and see what they say. You might bet it fixed under the service campaign.
I’d take a look at the serpentine belt tensioner and pulley.
Belt slipping could affect the AC.
Serp tensioner pulley could be squeaking.