Is the dealer BS'ing (alignment)
 

I have 8,693 miles. I took my car in for oil change and to get it aligned due to feathering on the front tires at Bankston Dallas. I get there and he tells me "Hunter" won't be in till March to set up the machine. He says they program the specs into the machine. This car has been out 5 months and they still can not do an alignment. WTF!!!!

Is this guy nuts or is he telling the truth? Course of action?

Droid, I am feeling your pain.:mad:

Yes they are BSing you, they can manually input the values, the only problem some dealers had was that they did not have the tooling for the 18 inch wheels, my dealer just got them a couple of weeks ago.

I have called the service manager to inform him about the car and the feathering issue. "Uh feathering issue" (as Beavis) he said. Yeah we can input the specs. Let me look into it and I will call you back. First he had heard of it. Somehow it is not surprising.

Re: Is the dealer BS'ing (alignment)
 

Jim,

Call Clint McCord at Bankston Lewisville to set up an appointment.

972.420.9500

I new if I called you out (Warriors) I would get an answer. Want to hear from the service manager and his reply. If it is not done, I will call your boy for sure.

Haven't seen you in awhile.

Thanks Brad for the reply.

Just got a call from the service tech. Car is up on the rack, they are downloading the specs and will manually input them in the machine.

It is frighteningly scary how messed up these people can be at times.

Thanks for all your help.

If any of you have the same problem, take my word for it, they can get it right. All it takes is a little effort and a kick in the a@#!:icon6:

This should get interesting, as I was planning on calling Bankston Dallas to setup an appointment for next week to have my tire feathering looked at. It's getting pretty bad. Hopefully you have laid the ground work for it to be a little easier when I go in! Thanks! :)

THAT IS MAJOR BS!
 

I just got my car back from having several problems fixed at Trophy Nissan in Mesquite. My problem list was as follows:

1. Tire feathering, inside edges on both front tires. Noticed an increase in tire/road noise coming from the fronts especially when slowing down. mileage: 7000 VIN: 0172
2. Started to hear a metal rattle coming from underneath car back in the exhaust area in every gear at 3000-3500rpm.
3. Two annoying other interior rattles coming from dash area right of the center console guages. (One sourced to that little black insert thing opposite of everyones alarm LED on top of dash near glass on right hand side.
4. Grease Streak from window rollers

This is the results from todays service:

1. Front and rear alignment was done. (said the specs for the Z's adjustments were not input into the alignment machine so extra time was spent getting that done). They reset both front and rear toe because both were slightly out of spec. Drove car this evening and still hear the extra road noise from front two, I guess that is due from the already deformed POS tires. I will be pursuing new front tires and seems like I will be getting two new fronts from dealer.
2. FIxed! Found aerodynamic plate in front of muffler was buzzing. adjusted plate and noise was gone.
3. Both interior rattles were fixed! Will make sure tomorrow when i drive it more.
4. Rollers were wiped clean from buildup of grease. Seems like it may be fixed. Will know more with time.


I can say that the service I got from them was good and they tried to work with me and all my complaints as best they could. Demanded that the mechanic ride along with me so we could both listen to what my complaints were and each complaint was verified from him. (that was a relief) So if you need to take it elsewhere get up with BILL in the service Dept and they will know what to do! he is the service asst manager by the way......

Alignment Update
 

Just to give some closure to this ordeal. Called over on Friday afternoon and the alignment had been completed. Yes the toe was off on the vehicle causing the horrible feathering and rumble while driving.

No charge for the alignment and the car is much quieter while driving. I think I caught mine soon enough so it was not that bad.

For those off you approaching the 5-6 k mile raange start looking for the signs of feathering on the inner tread patches of the fronts. The noisey rumble at low sppeds should be a tell tale sign.

Thanks for all your help and insightful replies. This is like one big group therapy. I feel a hug coming on......:icon16:

So they did not replace or rotate (FL to FR, etc.)? I'm at 8400 miles and the problem is pretty severe....my tires are pretty bad. I'm taking my car in to Bankston of Dallas tomorrow. I'm pushing for front tire replacement, because the alignment won't fix the tires, just should keep it from getting worse.

Who did you work with over there? I'm planning to have a Tech ride with me to demostrate all my issues. I've found that it helps much better to have them ride along with you.

I will update folks as well as to how it turns out.

They did the alignment (toe). No rotation. I did not push for new tires as mine were not that bad (as REO 40's go). It has solved the noise issue for sure! I deal with Tim Dick and he is aware of this issue as I nailed him last week. Not that impressed with him after a few months of dealing. However, he is well aware of this issue.

Keep us posted.

I believe the tires are directional...can't rotate them even R to L.

I've got the same issue as everyone else. I brought it up when I was in to get the tranny replaced and they acknowledged it was a problema nd were gonna do an allignment but I didn't have my stock wheels on. They said that the machine "stretches" the wheels a little bit, so they recommend doing it with the stock wheels on. I agreed :)

I'm going back soon to get the alignment and probably a new set of front tires...mine are pretty bad at this point with 7600 miles.

So far the dealer has been great in my dealings with them.

--wes

The kind of rotation they are doing for this problem is "cross rotation" where they remove the front tires from the wheels and swap them wheel-to-wheel. This keeps the rotation direction the same but moves the former insides of the tires to the outside. It seems like a half-assed solution to me, because it doesn't fix the bad tread on the tire but merely moves it to a different place. But if it solves the noise problem (and the alignment corrects any misadjustment) then I will be happy.

I have mine in the dealer right now doing this very thing, so I will find out tomorrow how it works out.

Hey z350z, what dealer do you take your car to?

I've got some things to get worked out, and the Santa Cruz dealer is only open on weekdays when I am at work. I was hoping you had a good recommendation for a dealer in the San Jose area.

-D'oh!

Sorry I didn't see this question until now. The dealer I am using is South County Nissan in Gilroy, which is where I bought the car. I don't know if I would call it a "good" place to get service done. The good news is they're not busy and you can bring your car in just about any time. The bad part is they don't seem to care very much about any problems you have with the car and have no interest in resolving them. They sell so few cars that it's not like they're thinking about learning something that might be helpful for all their other Z customers.

They were not able to resolve some rattle problems I asked them to look at and had no interest in how I fixed the problem myself. I also wasn't thrilled with the way they handled my tire feathering issue. They seem to have very outdated methods and attitudes about cars -- very old-school good-old-boy types, if you know what I mean. It feels more like a Buick than a Nissan dealership. So I can't say I would recommend them at this point.

It's kind of sad, because I was very happy with the purchase experience and they had a great 350Z expert on staff, but since then I've been less than impressed.

My quick update on dealer and tire feathering....

Cross-swapped tires (per Nissan's instructions), did not do alignment (cause Nissan didn't say too, go figure)....have to bring the car in again next week for Nissan Engineer to look at it.

There reasoning for not checking my alignment was that two other Z's had been in for the tire feathering and their alignment was ok, so they didn't see the point.

Will update again next week....

PS- the other four items that I brought the car in for AGAIN still were not fixed (mainly because Nissan again doesn't have official fixes out there)....drivers seat shifting, visor rattle, dash rattle, grease on windows!

Dallas people help me out.... I just moved to Dallas about a month ago, and I am looking to have some work done on the Z, such as have the tires/alignment looked at, tranny checked out, and some random noises inspected.

Who is the best dealership service wise to take the car to?

I have dealt with Courtesy in the past on my Maxima (I spent a lot of time in Dallas before I moved), and had so so encounters (actually pretty good, but they wanted to charge me $700 to change shocks springs).

Any advice would be greatly appriciated.

cross rotating tires
 

Didnt think you could swap left to right-vice versa. If they are rotational sensitive they will run opposite when swapped. Am I not thinking right?

They actually take the tires off the rims and remount them, rather than just moving rim w/tire. This moves the feathering to the outside of the tire....they are still rotating in the same direction.

long beach nissan remounted the tires so the feathering was on the outside but they had the tire direction going the wrong way! i ended up swapping the tires myself. also they didn't have the necessary tools to remount the tires so they had to send them out to a wheel shop. it took them about 5 days to fix the problem. they did adjust the toe for the front and rear. let's see if it fixes the problem.