Jared

I can't believe how much misinformation there is in the post(and others like it floating around), and especially all the flaming by people who really don't know ****.

First, if you have had multiple transmissions replaced in any auto you've owned, then learn to ****ing drive and leave this one alone.

This has nothing to do with "first model year" stuff that some are claiming. The car has been out for 8 months in Japan before here and is totally solid from bumper to bumper.
Onward...


Launch control is not really a feature. It happens to be something the car does with the VDC off in that scenario. VDC off is only to be used when the vehicle is stuck. Using it off all the time and launching the **** out of the car is not warrantable for repair. Have any of you been in a GTR that launched in this mode? You can't expect it to be able to do that over and over with no issues. The VDC in this car is so good that almost every driver out there is faster around the course with it on. You have one incredible ego if you think you can put the car in manual mode with no vdc and be faster.

Next, does anyone know the mileage of this failure? Forgetting the vdc abuse totally, if the trans temp has been at race temp 25% or more, then the fluid service goes to every 1800 miles or after each race. Had this car been just totally abused and not serviced? This isn't a Sentra, it's a supercar and must be serviced as such.

Finally, on all those bitching about abuse not being warrantable. I can't understand that mindset. The black box is as much for diagnostic purposes as determining source of failure. Would you expect to drive a Sentra through a lake and have the resulting damage warrantied? Of course not, then why would you expect to abuse the GTR and expect the same? Nissan knows this car is going to be driven hard, raced, and be wot as much as possible. That's why they have very good information on what to do, what not to do, and how to service the vehicle to maintain top performance at all times.

That is all. Ill try to stay civil on this and just the facts because I'm a huge Nissan and GTR fan and don't like to see misinformation and rumors spread. If I were to buy any car on the market right now, regardless of price, I would buy a GTR with no reservations or remorse.

BTW, to those who mentioned about wiping the data recorder. That won't work either. Having a history of totally nothing throws a red flag as well.

jinsei888

iTrader: (14)

^^ EPIC WIN! FAIL ALL OTHERS

jinsei888

iTrader: (14)

doubtful. the GT-R will still continue to sell in the same volumes--it may ward off many forum buyers, but that market is minuscule in the sales projected scheme. potential forum buyers is all talk.

j.arnaldo

Traditionally, MTs in Zeds have been clunky & flawed, while ATs have a spotless record.
Could it be that Nissan's dragging along the same old problem??? Their engineers need to
go back to the drawing board & redesign the Manual trannies in ALL three, 350's, 370's
& on the GT-R's!!!

graider

^^+1000000. Most of the haters are just porsche/bmw fanboy who wants to bring the gtr down. This is the most fair comment I have read. All manufactures will void warranty if you abuse the car, period.

Vivid Racing

iTrader: (67)

+1 for Nissan putting the ingenious "Black Box" in the car to stop people from saying "I didn't do it" or the famous "It wasnt me i swear". Figure they can save 20K everytime the pull that black box out.

HATED1

iTrader: (2)

I like the GTR, i post info that i come across that should be of discussion, i assume your "response" wasn't directed to me.

Manjot

iTrader: (2)

The black box is scaring away many people from buying it...lol

nismology1

I don't care to read through this whole thread but in case no one else has mentioned it.....



The culprit is the severe wheel hop the GT-R is plagued by off the line, not the tranny being "weak". I'd like to see almost any other gearbox survive 30+ wheel-hoppy launches with > 450 lb-ft of torque running through it.

j.arnaldo

Still, when was the last time you heard of a 911, a Miata or an S2OOO suffering from a
similar thingy? The MTs in Zeds/37Os & GT-Rs have got to get a significant improvement!
The ATs are a totally different ball game, they're g-r-e-a-t!
____________________________________________________________ ______________
'O4 Touring Coupe. FLAWLESS AT! NO feathering! NO oil-consumption issues! NO PRO-
BLEMO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

nismology1

Which one of those cars exhibit the tendency to wheel-hop so severely, though? Like I said, wheel-hop with that much torque running through it will kill almost any tranny if done often enough.

350zsunshinefl

iTrader: (1)

funny you say that but most of the super cars out there already had blackboxes for years.

You act as if a blackbox is something new that nissan cooked up to screw over their loyal customers.
WRONG; bmw had blackboxes for quite a while now, Porsche has blackboxes on all models except the boxter and cayenne, Ferrari, Lamborghini, and other renown super cars all have "black boxes"

Now the difference between a porsche blackbox and a gt-r blackbox - If you purchase a brand new gt2/turbo- there is no paper that you have to sign that states that your warranty will be voided because you turn off or turn on a feature. The blackbox is there for the companies own statistics and info.
Take for example the 997's turbos sports chrono package, gives you an extra boost on the turbo's - no where does it says that the warranty will be voided because you activate the extra boost at every red light.

In the end it all comes down to the BUSINESS aspect of NISSAN, trade offs had to be made, they are selling a car that is 1/2 the price of a 911 turbo - yes they are making money off the car. But look at the demographics of the gt-r drivers - it's a completely different crowd than the porsche crowd. It's just facts and percentages ; your average gt-r is going to be raped a lot more then your average porsche.
Nissan knowing who is buying their cars decided to cover their ***** on the delicate trannys. It's a brilliant business movie in my opinion. Not so lucky for the gt-r owners though..........

Jergens

iTrader: (1)

Quite frankly I see nothing wrong with a black box. All it does it tell the truth (god forbid!).

I don't think Nissan is going to say since they can record everything that nothing will ever be fixed under warranty... Quite the opposite. Now it isn't a matter of guess work and crossed fingers, its a systematic examination of facts.

Slamming your car through the gears on the street is pretty ridiculous. Fine, get frisky every now and then at a light, but my god I watch people run cars up to red line every gear, every light from a dig. This mentality evolved in "hopped up" Honda Civics that even with "tons of mods" weren't pushing enough power to do any REAL damage. (Well, we've all seen the videos of certain EPIC fails)

This car is a technical and engineering masterpiece, and to claim it is a "cheap piece of crap" with a "weak transmission" can only be spoken by a true moron. As a frequent driver of an F-430 and a one time launcher of a GT-R, I think I can put out a pretty solid statement that NOTHING built for the street is as savage as a GT-R at full ***** launch. You can feel that it is "not healthy" for constant usage. Common sense folks.

As far as it being "unfair" to have an option you can't use. You can use it. I think that you can use it regularly in the sense of every now and then. Not every time you take off from a stop. When they acceleration test these cars, they tend to do 2-3 hot runs and then let the car COOL DOWN. And I mean all the way down. Then warm it up properly etc. Is it unfair if someone drops the clutch on a Z at 6,000 RPMs and power shifts it through a quarter mile, then watches the car spill its guts at the end of the run? The car CAN do it, doesn't mean it constantly should.

The fact that the GT-R survives just ONE of these all-wheel drive frog leaps of doom was enough to sell me hands down. I feel bad that people are having their dream car blow apart in the first month of ownership, but at the same time, if the first month is spent being driven like that, the car hasn't been broken in properly at all. It IS being abused. They should have to pay for the transmission. And the black box tells that story. No wonder a lawyer would cancel a car that tells the truth.

gatti-man

iTrader: (2)

Ok sure but what all the nissan apologists are missing is that if the street light racers are breaking the tranny in 2-4k then those who drive the car like a sports car should be driven occasionaly like you say will simply experience failure at 20k and still be screwed. This is an issue regardless of how many excuses people are posting. Saying the lc is there incase the car gets stuck is simply legal ease BS. Put a tow hook on it like the 350z has if your worried about a plague of stuck cars LOL.

Simply put the transmission is flawed or the maintanence schedule needs to be explained better to buyers to prevent failure or both. This will fall to nissan and they will get dragged into court. 20k isnt small cheese. This is just beginning.

willow350

iTrader: (4)

So, like you said, did you just slap in gt35 turbo + supporting mods on a stock ej25 block. Better save some money for at least forged pistons, piston rods, and, if you want to be super safe, some bearings. Stock ej25 pistons and rods are @#$ at that level of whp. But I would have to say 6sp sti transmission is pretty darn strong, but not enough to launch it everyday - unless you want to step up to ppg gears.

As for GTR tran failure, I wonder if there will be less expensive route - like using stronger straight cut gears from ppg. Too new to say though.

Jergens

iTrader: (1)

I agree with you on a lot of points, such as saying LC is for getting "unstuck" is a bunch of *** covering BS. I also agree that a 20k transmission repair is pretty damn scary on a 70k car.

However I will say "I don't know" if the cars will experience failure at 20-30k miles of normal, spirited use. The fact is we haven't seen that yet. The only thing I've read about is people blowing their transmissions apart very very early and it always seems to be attached to overzealous drag racing situations. And I'm sure you'd agree that 30 launches over the course of 2 years is less stressful on a transmission than 30 launches in 2 hours. I haven't heard much news out of Japan about the cars but there doesn't seem to be an epidemic of failures at this point and they've had the car for almost a year now.

We don't know why this is happening yet is all I am saying. Is it transmission design flaws or driver error? I don't know although I lean toward the second option from what I've read. And I'll agree that the car will probably have some bugs somewhere. It just has SO much new equipment. I never buy a first year production car because of that. But lets wait and see if this becomes endemic or is just a bit of a fluke from people beating the crap out of a very technical car. I'm still excited about it.

krinkov

See this is very thoughtful and objective opinion, no reason to hop on the flame wagon over this one incident but also no reason to be an apologist. Lets be real here, the tranny has a problem, the same as the early 350s did, and ifyou look back far enough on this forum to the first year 350 trannys that were breaking youll find the same apologists instantly coming to the defense of Nisan and blaming the driver who was 'obviously' abusing the car. Guess what, the tranny was revised 3 times in the first year, so i dont want to hear anything about the tranny being 'solid' just because its been out for 8 months in Japan, c'mon.

lines like this are what really get me..

really? Is that how high you set your expectations? I know modded Z06s that run 'leap-frog' 1.4 sec 60' times and run in the 10s all day long and never bust a tranny. The point is, even if you DONT take your car to the drag races ever weekend or even once a year, or ever, the tranny and every part of the drivetrain should be engineered and OVER-engineered to what the motor is capable of, like they do in corvettes, like they do with porsches, and like the STI from above, I own an 04 STI too, I know of many 400-500hp STIs that run the Same times the GTR claims to get in 'launch-mode' and we never have a problem, so yes it is very possible to make a tranny that can hold up to this all day long, and thats what they should have designed, wether or not you ever use it that way.

StarcraftBW

iTrader: (10)

I like the GT-R....but I don't like AUTOMATIC......... black box to void warranty is so cheap.

bhk1004

iTrader: (6)

they are playing with fire right here... imagine... a couple of GTR owners band together, and sue the hell outa nissan, lets say 20 people. thats 400k in lawyer fee that they could pay to go nuts with nissan instead of paying for a tranny. i think they are incorrectly dealing with this..

Prosport Gauges

I more then disagree with you on your numbers. Cosworth as takin the stock EJ25 engine to 700whp. currently on 110 octane its dynoing at 506WHP with no knock what so ever. Like i said, it will be on meth soon

PPG's are nice if you like the WHINE lol. i had a set on my brother suby and sold it and got a 6 speed. I forgot who but the 6 speed has made 9's 1/4

And no i didnt just slap the turbo on and supporting mods, im not stupid!
My car was tune by doug at top speed.