For the rest of the thread see here:

https://my350z.com/forum/showthread....0&pagenumber=1

First of all I have to thank my350z.com and all it's members. My dealer knows I am a contributor here and reads my posts. I know that helps expedite what you want at a dealership.

OK, Nissan sent 4 engineers to look at my car today within 5 hours of dropping it off!! Nissan sure looks serious about this car. Here is what they said; "There is nothing wrong with the drivetrain at all. The noise I am hearing is a shield that protects the driveshaft. At this time they don't have a fix so take the car and drive it as I normally would. They were going to have a conference call tomorrow with the engineers back in Japan. They will fix the problem!"

I did not get to talk directly to the engineers, but I was told this story by the service writer & the sales manager; Lee Bowles. Lee has been a straight up guy so far, so I take his word.

Maybe ZISME already knows about this and can PM me or RxO.

 

thanks and i am bookmarking this. please keep us updated as far as a recall on this so we can get the same fix you get.

 

WOW !!! Steve..great job..someone is finally seeing some real attention from Nissan...great to hear

 

Outstanding news Raceboy!!! 1. I'm glad your baby is ok. 2. I am extremely impressed with how Nissan is handling this problem. This is why the Japanese car companies kick ***, and have ensured a hand in my pocket for the forseeable future! Bravo Nissan for standing behind your product. Would you like to see what some domestic companies do in a situation like this...check this out...this is regarding the 2003 Mustang Cobra...this is how NOT to address a problem.

http://forums.stangnet.com/showthrea...hreadid=172947

I never read through all of this, so not sure if it was a happy ending or not. What I do know is that when this first went down, all Ford did was turn its head the other way. I would have lost it.

 

Did they mention anything about the Bose stereo system?



....and the condensation in the headlights?

 

Yeah, the car still makes the noise. If anything it is getting worse and now noticeable in 1st and 2nd gear as well. Hopefully I will have more information later on today.

 

I was following that thead on stangnet. Ford ended up taking the car back and getting him a new one. Unfortunately he had to drive 6 hours to pick it up. I think he got a few perks out of the deal too, but it took some time to resolve.

 

Actually, that post is exceedingly POSITIVE about Ford SVT. Here's a couple quotes from the guy himself:

And finally....
I have always been impressed with Ford's customer service, much more so than Nissan's so far. If Nissan handles raceboy's problem as well as they did this Cobra owner's, I will be very impressed.

 

Keep in mind that the stang guy is impressed with the SVT guys...not Ford in general. This would be the equivalent of dealing with NISMO, TRD, etc...less people, more specialized, and more pride in their work. This is Nissan we're talking about, not some specialty team.

At any rate, I've had nothing but bad experiences with Ford, so I won't even go into it!

Honda impressed me quite a bit though. My first car out of college was a used '94 accord with about 40k miles. A couple of weeks after getting it, I found out that the water pump needed replaced. It should have cost me $350. I called their national customer service and explained that I just graduated college, and I don't have a lot of money to fix it...the car should not have done this at 40k miles, etc. The woman apologized, and put a check in the mail the next day for the full amount of the repair. She said, "consider this a graduation present from Honda." Well, needless to say, Honda won a fan that day! After watching my parents struggle/fight with Ford growing up (that's all my dad bought) ...I was pleasantly stunned.

 

Steve,

Thanks for your update.

If your noise comes from the shield, then it sound like the same problem I have. I heard intermittent background metal rattling noise when the car is running, and louder metal rattling noise when I upshift from 2nd to 3rd or 3rd to 4th. The louder noise I heard is a function of the vibration from drive shaft. First I thought is the noise from the exhaust. Hopefully, they have a fix soon, so I can enjoy the car more.


Hope they found the problem with the Bose soon too.

 

The timing on the Cobra problem was interesting. Based on the posts the timeline is about like this:
June 15- problem identified (shortly after car picked up)
July 7 - approved to get new car (after doing everything possible to fix the problem)
July 13 - replacement car picked up. (took a while to locate right specs)

He picked it up himself because he wanted to drive it home. Several folks on the board encouraged him to return the car under the dealership's 3 day total satisfaction guarantee, but he hung in there and he is now quite pleased with his car.

 

Thanks for the update on your Z. I realized I am having the same problem, but it is only when I do something that would cause some strong vibration, including hard quick shift or disengaging the clutch when going uphill for example.

Hoepfully, the fix will be a general one and all of us can be happy from it!

Thanks for making this issue public Raceboy, these forums are greating for letting people like myself know that our problems are not isolated ones!
Hopefully, Nissan will let solve this soon

RaymanZ

 

Ok, this may be naive of me, but for a short term fix couldn't someone put some rubber washer/grommet between the bolt and driveshaft guard? At least it can isolate the metal parts. Stupid, but the logic works when fixing a license plate rattle. =) Of course it'll probably get hot enough to melt the rubber into little sticky messes.

 

Yup, that is exactly the problem. No news yet today, but I did as told and drove the car as I normally would; HARD!

No problems or noises when driving hard for 30 straight minutes, but as soon as I slowed down it reappeared. I am not worried about it at all at this point.

 

Wow Steve.... I am impressed with the action taken by Nissan. It's good to hear another fellow road racer is on top of the flaw, and it seems that Nissan is being responsive...

:beer: Cheers :beer:

 

Look like tightening it up doesn't help yours either. When I revved hard and shift fast, no noise, but when I shift slow, that when the louder noise usually appear during right after upshift.

 

gang, NISSAN has to be reading this. Theres too many readers in here; enough to get nissans attention.

it would be interesting to know what percentage of 350z owners and future owners read this forum

has there ever been a web forum sponsored by a car company???

 

I also get a vibration that resonates at certain RPM (close to 6000). It sounds like it's coming from behind me, but it may be the same thing. I hope there's a fix for it. Between that, the rattle/ringing from the passenger visor, and an intermittent rattle in the instrument cluster, it's not the quietest cabin to be in. (But I still love to drive it!)

 

thats so funny. I just had a problem like that with my 280z when I had the tranny redone. The drive shaft was vibrating the shield below it.

My fix: I got a long flat tip scredriver, stuck it up between the metal shield and floorpanel and bent the shield everso slightly downward. Problem solved.