So I'm driving on I-285 and a plastic bag flys out of the window of a Audi in front of me. Considering the six lanes of traffic I try to weave within my lane enough to dodge it but alas, it gets sucked under my car. I think, "Eh no biggie. It's a f---ing plastic bag."

The next day I start hearing this odd sound from the left rear portion on the drivers side. It sounds like two metal plates lightly clapping against one another. So I think It might be due to some loose wiring from my custom sub-enclosure. So I break it down to localize the sound and find the sound emanating from within the metal suspension housing unit directly under the rear strut bar.

The sound eventually gets worse and I bring it to Capitol City Nissan off of Peachtree Industrial in Atlanta, GA. I get a call in the afternoon of them telling me a plastic bag has somehow caught itself within the LSD and is going to cost me $2000?

Can someone PLEASE elaborate on HOW this is possible? Am I getting ripped off? How come there is not a plastic protective manifold under the car to prevent normal day road hazards from destroying vital but more-so expensive internals? I would also like to vent my anger at the fact this car has a little over 17K miles on it and **** like this shouldn't be happening to me.

F--k. S--t.

I called my insurance (USAA) and of course they don't gaurantee s--t but they did send someone out to look at the supposed damage. Any professional advice would be greatly appreciated. ::sigh::

 

i have never heard of a plastic bag doing anything like that....i mean come on its a freaking bag. Hope everything turns out ok man, it seems alittle ridiculous though

 

WOW... that really sucks.

Good luck with everything buddy. Keep us posted.

 

The bag was empty?

 

Sorry to hear about your trouble, sounds bad. Did they elaborate as to how or what it actually damaged? Did the bag wrap around one of the stub axles and work it's way inside the diff?

Chris

 

Jeez --I thought it contained drugs and Cash

 

Sadly plastic bags attack me. I had one come at me on the highway and got caught in front of my radiator. I overheated in a matter of minutes. I also had one that had trash in it that got caught on the underside of my engine/transaxle. Caused the plastic milk jug in the bag to melt to my stuff and smelled like burning plastic for a couple months. This was on my '02 civic.

 

Sounds like that bag was full of **** and so is your dealer.

I would bring it home, Inspect if yourself, take pictures and post them here.

 

its okay. i put my exhuast on, and i drive down the highway and not even 20 minutes after getting the exhuast on, a bag gets stuck to it. now i have plastic all over my muffler

 

1) It's NOT possible

2) Yes, you're getting ripped off.

The LSD system is all encased in the differential housing. There is no way any kind of road trash, or any external contaminant can get in there.

bill

 

It was an empty plastic bag and somehow it got lodged right where the differential and the axle meet. This then caused the differential to somehow get dislodged from the axle. He also mentioned some fluid was leaking due to it.

Mind boggling none the less.

I did request that the insurance representative take lotsa pictures for me.

 

Well, crap. Hopefully someone as knowledgable as yourself is assigned as my insurance representative and can clarify their inept claims.

It's times like these when I wish I spent more time on cars than on computers.

 

Would the fact that they just recently fixed the rear axle clicking on both sides have any relevance to the current problem?

I do find it rather ironic 2.5 weeks after getting the rear axle TSB fixed I now have this problem to deal with.

 

The only thing I have ever seen is a situation where something --Weeds,Twine,Plastic Bags etc. gets rapped around the yoke area and wipes out the seal. But in almost all cases the seal can be replaced from the outside. And unless that happened and u lost all ur fluid, its sure not worth no 2000.00