I recently moved to South Florida and - for the first time - experienced torrential flash floods. Well, to make a long story short - last month I drove into a puddle that was more of a lake, and water went into my engine and it was deemed donzo. So insurance decided that I needed a new engine (well, used...but a different engine), and found a 3.5L engine (I don't have any other details of what kind of car the engine was on prior to them putting it in my car or anything like that...just that it only had 70k miles, when my original engine that was no longer had 81k.

So since the new engine was put in and i picked it up I've had plenty of issues with the car already. I picked my car up on Wednesday, 3 days ago. When I picked up the car I went to go see it in the lot at Autonation Nissan Service Deparment, in Pembroke Pines, Florida. For starters I could tell that my tire was flat, how did they not see this? So I got in the car and turned the engine on and IT WOULDN'T START! How could they say my car was ready, after replacing the engine, and it WOULDN'T start AND HAD A FLAT TIRE?!?!? DID THEY EVEN TEST IT?? So, they jumped my car and said it was probably just a bad battery from sitting in the lot for so long, and to go get a new battery tomorrow and everything will be perfect. So they fixed the puncture in my tire, jumped me, and I went home. The next day I got a new battery first thing in the morning, and the car starts fine now....but for some reason the horn sounds like it died and is not working properly....does anyone know why the horn wouldn't work after an engine swap or water damage?


SO TODAY (this is where it gets good, or bad...depending on who you are)...I was driving on the freeway for the first time since getting the car back with it's new engine.... and went from 4th, back to 3rd, then back to 4th (the Nismo is a 6 speed)...and when I went into 4th- the gears (it sounded like) grinded as if I didn't have the clutch pushed in, but I DID have the clutch pushed in! Then it started doing this with ALL THE GEARS! Sometimes it would go into gear OK, and sometimes it would grind and sound like I didn't know how to drive the car and it was A LOUD LONG GRIND - EVEN WHEN NOT IN GEAR!! WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED TO MY CAR??? Is there ANY REASON why my transmission would be acting like this if Nissan ONLY REPLACED MY ENGINE?? What could be wrong considering the symptoms I've listed? Did I get a bad engine???

Obviously I'm going to contact my insurance company on Monday morning and tell them what's going on. I really think I should have had a BRAND NEW 3.5 L engine put in my car, but I guess insurance has it's ways of deciding this. Anyways...anyone know what is going on with my engine/transmission? Did the have to remove my transmission to replace my engine???


HELP! I"M PISSED!

-J

 

Mechanic incompetence.

Notify your insurance company, take it back and have them fix it. Simple as that. And yes, the transmission must be disconnected from the engine to replace one or the other.

NOTE: Please do NOT post one message in one section and then 20 minutes later, re-post the same message in another section. Thanks.

 

Just to piggyback on Mic's comments, the Z's horns (there are two of them) were likely disconnected when the engine was replaced. If they weren't properly reconnected, it could make the horns sound weak. Be sure to mention that to your insurance company when you contact them.

 

Does the clutch pedal feel normal? The gears grinding is likely the clutch not disengaging due to air in the system. It's a ***** to bleed all the air out of the 07+ 350z with the concentric slave cylinder. Get it bled properly and all should be good.

As for the horn, if it sounds weak but still works, likely one of the two was not reconnected properly.

 

@patrickoneal the clutch does feel totally normal and has plenty of spring/tension on it. I had a new master slave cylinder put in last year, so everything seems fine on the clutch end of things.

It grinds badly sometimes when I am letting off the clutch and applying the gas - where it usually would engage...and sometimes it grinds at different points of the manual shifting process, but is much louder and a little different than when you don't push the clutch in all the way and it grinds. But it does sound like it's coming from under my car in the front end, where I believe the tranny is. So I didn't know if maybe when they put the new engine in they just didn't hook up the tranny properly. Or if there was some way that they over looked the tranny when they assessed the flood damage and decided I needed a new engine, but didn't look at the tranny and never realized that the tranny would need replacing too.

I don't know if water can damage the tranny (i drove through an 8-10 in puddle and flooded my engine)...I don't know a lot about the mechanics of cars. But can the tranny be damaged by running through a puddle? OR can it be installed to the new engine improperly and that be the problem? Or maybe something else that could potentially happen when replacing the engine after water damage?

 

If you were not experiencing the grinding noise before the engine replacement, I doubt it is damaged or worn out gear synchronizes since every gear wouldn’t be affected.

The clutch assembly along with the transmission is disassembled when replacing the engine. It’s possible that there is an easy fix to your grinding noise when shifting into a gear. It might be as simple as adjusting the clutch.

I would take the car back and ask the dealer to adjust the clutch.