Well recently, i have been having trouble with my tranny (m6) when trying to do a quick shift into 2nd gear at higher speeds...the clutch just grinds and eventually i have to put it into 3rd. Well, yesterday i went to an appointment i had, put the car in 1st gear and pull the e-brake a couple times like normal and a few seconds after i shut the door, the car starts rolling back!!! i dropped everything and ran behind the car to stop it (try to stop it) before it hit the 04 grand am behind me and after putting everything i had into it it still bumped into the grand am... the grand am was perfect, nothing wrong but my Z wasnt so lucky...! its not bad at all, but the funky front fascia of the grand am stamped my rear bumper right below the right reverse light!!! no real paint damage just a little scuff but the impression of the pontiac is in my bumper...!

my questions are: do you think this is something that i should take up with my nissan dealership and will they do anything about it?

and second, is it at all possible to fix this plastic bumper without having to replace the whole thing?

please help!!!!


tia,
joe

 

cmon, no help??

 

Way to wait, expect an answer in less than 40 min

Highly doubt you did all you said you did. Putting it in 1st and the e-brake, the Z should not have rolled.

But thats beside the point. You can take it in and have it looked at and see what they tell you. Might replace the transmission if it is broken. Doubt they'll do anything about the damaged bumper, thats you'll have to go thru your insurance to get it fixed.

Are you new to manual driving? Just wondering, you might not have gotten the car in gear (hence the 2nd gear grinding)

 

my tranny doesn't have any grinding problems (knock on wood) but i do have trouble occasional getting it into 2nd when accelerating hard...

anyway about your car sliding back... i'm going to have to agree with alphared... if you pull the ebrake and put the car into 1st, there's no way your car should be moving... if you didn't put it into gear, and you only pull the ebrake, then that might be your problem... in my experience, the Z's ebrake doesn't really stick until the 5th or 6th click (i.e. pulling it as hard as possible)... i've had my car roll back on my driveway before because i didn't pull it up as far as I could

 

Technically speaking, you should be able to just put your car in gear and not use the e-brake and it shouldn't slide. There have been many times when I think I pulled up the e-brake but the car would still slightly roll (I don't leave my car in gear when I park because i rarely park on an incline and/or decline). You really have to yank up the e-brake on our cars for it to be effective.

Also wondering, how did your trunk get hit by the Grand-Am frontend if you said you got behind your car and put everything into it??? Wouldn't your body be between the back end of your Z and the front end of the Grand-Am??? So I gather you tried stopping it and realizing you couldn't, you jumped out of the way and therefore the hit was probably a lot harder than you described. Either way, the bumper is plastic and as we all know, plastic doesn't have the memory that metal does so you can't simply just pop it out. You can try to heat up the bumper and reshape it, or you most likely have to replace the bumper if the damage is really bad.

I doubt the dealership will do anything because you cant prove that the car was in gear and the ebrake was up (unless of course you take your car to an incline and recreate the situation to the dealership). If thats the case, then go after the dealership.

 

As for the scuff to the bumper, if it's to the the clear coat only, it may be able to be buffed out. If it's deeper than that, they will have to sand it down & repaint the bumper cover. That'll run in the $300 range for labor & paint.

Make sure they don't over charge you. Sounds like a .5 hour repair plus paint time.

 

Hard to imagine that the car rolled while in 1st and the ebrake applied unless you were parked on the side of a wall. The Z ebrake does have to be heavily muscled to engage it. If you're thinking that the shift grinding while driving and the rolling while parked problems are related - I doubt it. Are you certain you actually had it in 1st?

For the bumper scuff - body shop is your best source for fix opinions.

 

Hopefully its not deep and you can get it buffed out.

 

Glad i read this thread. I'm about to get a 6pd touring, and had no idea that i should put it in 1st when parking (the car i've been practicing on i just put in neutral and pull the e-brake). Also good to know that you have to pull the e-brake very hard on the Z. Thanks guys.

 

plastic bumper can be repaired easily if it's just a local damage. You'll need to repaint the whole thing though