Its not a 350Z issue, its your dealership that has the issue..Its called the "They dont know what they are doing issue"

 

i have 14,000 miles and was refused new tires. The service manager had no idea there was a TSB. what can i do to get new tires?

 

In this case the Dealers can only make repairs based upon the guidance provided by Nissan. And that guidance thus far, at least as far as we know, is limited to the Technical Service Bulletin pertaining to the tire issue which neither corrects the cause or addresses the symptoms. Thus many dealers, with or without Nissan's prior consent, are replacing tires instead of simply rotating them.

It is obvious at this point that the TSB, and in particular, a toe adjustment, does not correct the problem. It is also becoming clear that Nissan had not addressed the problem prior to releasing the '04 models. It is Nissan's failure to communicate with its' Dealers and its' customers that constitutes the biggest problem in my opinion. Nissan may be trying to protect future sales or just trying to avoid making expensive modifications on existing vehicles. I certainly can't speak for them but I can say they are alienating a good portion of their most loyal customer base by not acting or providing any information and will ultimately face a great deal more bad publicity as a result of their continued silince.

How many of you on this board would have reached the point of total frustration that we now see if Nissan simply issued a statement to the effect that "we know there is a problem, we are working on the cure, we will implement the solution on your vehicle as soon as it is available and we will keep you in tires until that happens"? I know my outlook would be very different.
I certainly wouldn't be faxing letters all over the world and preparing to initiate lemon law litigation. By the way, the silence is deafening. Anyone heard anything in response to the fax assualt?

MWeber
'03 SS Touring 6mt
3 sets of tires and counting

 

Kawataworks, Ian, the organizer of the fax assault, has heard from Nissan's Gardena office and been told all of the names on the list have the fax. If they followup this outburst, they should become aware of all the complaints, tradeouts and lemon law cases being filed. Many of those buyers, including myself, have vowed to never buy another Nissan again if Nissan doesn't respond. I, and many others have had numerous models over the years. I own or have owned 5 Nissans, I also have a 99 Maxima presently. I planned to buy a G35 soon.

I won't if Nissan doesn't respond to us. Maybe Nissan will respond to long time loyal fans, if not they risk losing their multi-car buying base customers. That would be very stupid.

 

I dont think it will hurt Nissan, if you dont buy another car from them.

 

Not just me, many others feel the same way. Where have you been hiding while all this anti-Nissan sentiment has been articulated, under a rock? How about thousands of would-be buyers feeling the same way? Would that hurt Nissan?

 

Often wondered the same, since more rubber on the road usually changes things. You're talking 225 vs. 245 up front, and 235 vs. 275 read compared to the stock 17" sizes.

One obvious difference is all things the same other than changing tires and rims, you're spreading the wear over a larger tire and at the least it should take longer to show up.

More complex issues are what you've done to the unsprung weight by swapping wheels and tires, plus the possible geometry change if you've done things like change springs, etc.

Again, the bottom line is this should not happen even in the Base model with 17 inch stock rims and smaller footprint, and yet it appears to happen with all kinds of different driving patters, etc.

If you swap nothing at all and leave the wheels, tires, and suspension totally stock - you should be able to not deal with this issue. Sadly, that's not the case.

 

its not only about the current owners of nissan vehicles
its about reputation + service + customer satisfaction , plus most of people shop around before they buy a new car so guess what it does hurt nissan when an owner is saying he will never buy another nissan product

 

Tires began feathering at 4500 miles. Tires replaced with Michelins and realigned at 12000(free). Now 32000 miles and I am having to put another set of tires on. Same issues- feather, noise, vibration--NO TREAD LEFT. I expected to put tires on every 35000 miles or so but this is crazy.

I decided to do my own investigation. With the help of a racing alignment machine. I loaded the suspension front, rear, left accel,right accel, left decel, right decel. Found that only no load centered gives acceptable alignment specs. Any sort of turning moment or weight shift cause tires to point offline.

Diagnosis- steering geometry for this car is faulty. Major problem, obviously.

Also high speed spin balance done on car-- diagnosis- stock spring rate/damping incapable of controlling my 18 inch tires. I am coming close to replacement mileage on those tho and will be upgrading to progressive units.

By the way, NNA was very helpful and even instrumental in getting my tires changed the first time-- This time they won't return my calls.

If I get no response from Nissan1 today, I plan on calling the Gardena office and attempt to speak to Mr. Bosley, head of customer relations/service. I plan to tell him that I don't intend to send out faxes, file lemon law suits or mail strongly worded letters to Nissan dealers and corporate execs. I plan to take it public. I will contact Consumer Reports, Wall Street Journal, New York Times Etc and give them a copy of all my correspondence here and with Nissan because this is just wrong. They are neglecting an obvious, known issue with their cars. Perhaps the DOT will have to step in and force Nissan's hand (like they did with the faulty van door handles on Chrysler minivans).

Nissan can handle this however they want- but they will kill the 350Z if they ignore it. I guess the Renault in them is showing.

 

What can be done to repair a steering geometry problem? Would this explain why a number of owners have had to realign their cars several times because the alignment altered?

 

isn't 20k on a set of tires considered ok for performance cars?

 

I called NNA today to check on the status of my replacement tires.
The tires were ordered on 10/25 and came in on 10/31 only to find out the tires were the wrong type. It's now 11/18 and no word. So I called NNA and expressed my concern for my safety being the current status of my car. They informed me the tires were still back ordered and I will just have to wait... Any ideas or opinions??

Here's my dates:
1/25/03 - picked z up ;-)
5/03/03 - window kit ordered - 3,994 miles
6/26/03 - Alignment problems road noise, re-aligned 5,942 miles
7/22/03 - Alignment problems road noise, re-aligned 6,500 miles
8/13/03 - Drift/Compression Rod ordered - 8,052 miles
8/23/03 - Drift/Compression Rod installed - 8,398 miles
10/25/03 - bad road nose/2 front tires ordered - 10,559 miles
10/31/03 - 2 tires came in/wrong type reorder - 10,784 miles
11/18/03 - Bitched NNA out for taking too damn long. 11,200

So that's were I'm at today. I'm going to speak with a Attorney friend of mine this afternoon to see if we can force someone to do something.


HELP!!!!!!!!!!!

 

my car pulls to the right , and my tires are feathering ( checked with local tire place ) , dealer said he can do an alligment for it but i will be charged for it , he doesnt want to hear about feathering problem and for the second time is saying that tire wear is caused by me and my street racing , and alligment is messed up because I probably hit to much holes in the road... also advised me that I really made a mistake buying this car because it was meant for country roads , and the car is not reaching its full potential in the city ... off topic - my cd player ( 3rd one already ) stopped working again but my service advisor knows why - I was playing burned cds in my car im on my second dealership now and im really confused about the service Nissan is providing... what can i do about my tires though ? called NNA , was told that they cannot help me any longer ( hmm like they even did ) since i filed a claim with BBB , basically im F***ed for the time being.... Thank you Nissan !

 

Wow, 67 pgs later and we still have no solution for this problem.

 

I decided to do my own investigation. With the help of a racing alignment machine. I loaded the suspension front, rear, left accel,right accel, left decel, right decel. Found that only no load centered gives acceptable alignment specs. Any sort of turning moment or weight shift cause tires to point offline.

Grebmohr,

A member and I were just PM'ing and I wanted to reply to your post. One thing I have noticed on my car is that occasionally when I go over a bump in the road or a swale (sp?) my tires feel like they are going in different directions. I.E. the left feels like it is going the left and the right tire is straight or veering left with the steering wheel turning slightly right. Is this what your inspection found? Or what is it more specifically?

 

I agree with Grebmohr and ezchief. This does not seem to be an alignment issue but rather something very wrong with the suspension on the car.

If it were a simple alignment and toe problem Nissan would have found this a long time ago and fixed it on our cars and the 04's. Instead the new cars still have the problem which lends belief that the problem is complex and or not cheap to fix.

Also, there are now many people like myself that are on our second or third set of tires and still getting bad feathering. So alignment is not the answer IMHO.

Ja

 

Jelledge and others,

I agree. Alignment could have been figured out a long time ago.

Are any of you experiencing what I described in my previous post?

Grebmohr, pleae reply if you are here.

 

My NNA rep called back and informed me that if I feel my Z is unsafe to drive, I need to take it back to the dealer and we will look at other "options"...


WTF!!!!

Yes, I'm concerned my Z is unsafe to drive being that the car is jerking from left to right at low speeds. My question is what are the "options". She also offered for me to pay the difference between the RE04's and Pilots. However they would only cover the fronts, I would have to pick up the total cost for the rear tires (if I went with a 4 tire swap). So I would have RE04's on the rear and Pilots on the front - thanks, but no thanks...


I feel as if I'm getting bent over my own car with no K/Y.

So, I filled out my Lemon Law form provided by the state of Florida and sent it certified mail this afternoon to NNA. If they don't care about my personal safety - then F'em. I'll see Nissan in court. More or less, I want to push as hard as I can. With this form, they have 10 days to respond once they sign for the certified mail.

It's your move Nissan.... Do you feel lucky?

 

I would not consider it OK I would consider it great!!! Now 4-8K miles is a problem but if I get 20K miles out of a set of tires on my Z then I will be happy.

 

Is that with or without cupping? I have Michelin A/Ss with a UTOG of 400, paid for by me. I would be happy if I got 25,000 miles on the rears WITHOUT CUPPING, but I would NOT be happy if it starts CUPPING before 25,000 miles.

It is a sports car, but I expect to have some tread on tires w/a high wear rating. I expect that most of the wear to be on the inside of the rear tires because of the negative camber setting which is for better handling. I should get 40,000 miles out of the fronts just from daily driving, but 30-35,000 is ACCEPTABLE w/o cupping.

I now have 6300 miles on my tires and no cupping or any wear that I can see yet. Alignment is in spec, recently done again out of my pocket, hear that Nissan?