$1400, And The Problem Was... Mud
Mar. 19th, 2021 09:36 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
canyonwalkerWe got our Xterra back from the shop this morning. Actually it was ready at 4:30pm yesterday— the shop fixed it within 24 hours, which I appreciate— but I decided picking it up this morning would be more convenient for me. If I'd gone yesterday I'd have had to take a Lyft to the shop 15 miles away and deal with all the questions about riding with a stranger in their car during the Covid-19 pandemic. Going this morning, Hawk was able to drop me off on her way to work. Plus, my 8-9am work schedule cleared so I was able to take an hour off from work.
The bill for the repairs came to a whisker less than $1,400. For that they replaced a bunch of sensors: the CPS, the TPS, the other two CPSes, and cleaned out a bunch of crud that was mucking things up. What was the root cause of these problems? In a word: mud.
Hearing that mud was the culprit was ironic because I drove the truck into the service bay splattered with mud. "Betcha don't often see a 4x4 driven the way Nissan built it," I teased the service manager. He laughed and explained that he's an off-roader, too, as are his sons. "Where did you get the mud?" he asked, and I told him about Frank Raines OHV park. We forged a quick camaraderie.
When he told me on the phone about the problem being mud I asked it off-roading was the problem. "Not really," he explained. He'd seen a number of vehicles have the same problem without ever leaving pavement. The seals around the sensors were under-designed, basically. Nissan improved them sometime after our 2011 model year. He fixed our truck with better OEM parts than it had been built with.
Incidentally, the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light that's been on and off intermittently for the last 5,000 miles was was probably signaling this problem. It was likely not just a loose gas cap, as a local generalist mechanic had advised me. At first it seemed like replacing the gas cap fixed it, but that was likely because the problem was still developing. A few thousand miles later it became severe.
Well, the vehicle's back in our garage now. On the drive home it ran clearly smoother than before. I'm glad this problem is in the rear view mirror now. And I'm ready for my 210 mile roundtrip to get a Covid-19 shot this afternoon.
The bill for the repairs came to a whisker less than $1,400. For that they replaced a bunch of sensors: the CPS, the TPS, the other two CPSes, and cleaned out a bunch of crud that was mucking things up. What was the root cause of these problems? In a word: mud.
Hearing that mud was the culprit was ironic because I drove the truck into the service bay splattered with mud. "Betcha don't often see a 4x4 driven the way Nissan built it," I teased the service manager. He laughed and explained that he's an off-roader, too, as are his sons. "Where did you get the mud?" he asked, and I told him about Frank Raines OHV park. We forged a quick camaraderie.
When he told me on the phone about the problem being mud I asked it off-roading was the problem. "Not really," he explained. He'd seen a number of vehicles have the same problem without ever leaving pavement. The seals around the sensors were under-designed, basically. Nissan improved them sometime after our 2011 model year. He fixed our truck with better OEM parts than it had been built with.
Incidentally, the SERVICE ENGINE SOON light that's been on and off intermittently for the last 5,000 miles was was probably signaling this problem. It was likely not just a loose gas cap, as a local generalist mechanic had advised me. At first it seemed like replacing the gas cap fixed it, but that was likely because the problem was still developing. A few thousand miles later it became severe.
Well, the vehicle's back in our garage now. On the drive home it ran clearly smoother than before. I'm glad this problem is in the rear view mirror now. And I'm ready for my 210 mile roundtrip to get a Covid-19 shot this afternoon.
no subject
Date: 2021-03-22 11:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-03-23 12:09 am (UTC)OTOH the problem of too many things connected to one warning light could be solved like our BMW, which has too many warning lights. The owners manual has several pages of rosetta stone translation to help decode what dozens of hieroglyphics that can be displayed on the dashboard mean.
Actual conversations in the car have gone like this:
"There's a light on."
"Which one?"
"On the dashboard."
"Right. What does it look like?"
"It looks like... a bomb, frankly."
"Like a round bomb with a fuse on top, from Tom & Jerry?"
"Yes."
"Are there wavy lines around it, or no?"
"Yes, wavy lines."
"Are the wavy lines on the bottom, or on the sides?"
"Bottom."
"Is it yellow or red?"