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Comments
I was driving to the city to work today, all of sudden, the brake light and the battery light went on. (??!!) But I had to go to work to finish up my project, so I kind of put the problem aside and parked my Murano in a parking lot.
But when I was going home after work, the brake light and battery light were still on. I continued driving thinking it was maybe some electronic problem. But, all of sudden, my car was losing power (in local street, near my house fortunately) and finally stopped. Then I realize that I have the infamous Murano Alternator Problem, the battery was getting drained and not charging. So I called my wife to jump the car and finally arrived home. (We had to jump the car several time, because each jump only lasted like 10 blocks or so and the car died again).
Now I fell my luck with Murano went south, the Murano has been good, but if the alternator is a major problem, Nissan should recall the cars. I will bring the car to the dealer on Tuesday, and hopefully they will change the alternator and fix the problem.
Yes, I am frustrated.....
1. The gas mileage is nowhere near the 20/25 on the sticker. I am averaging about 15.3 mpg using premium Hess or Mobil. My wife drives the car, and it is almost entirely city driving, but this is ridiculous. I rented a 4-Runner down in Ft. Lauderdale and averaged almost 18 mpg. Quite frankly I think that the mpg ratings are inflated to make the sticker look better.
2. My Murano has now stalled on my wife four times while driving down the road. She will be cruising along in the city and suddenly the car shuts off. We noticed that it seems to happen when it is snowing out. I live in Buffalo, so that is about 90% of the time! The dealership can't find anything wrong. I found a posting on the Nissan website about a faulty transmission sensor, but they refused to check it since "it only effected 30 or so units". Seemed like replacing this $5 sensor would have been worth a try to me! Anyone have any ideas what the problem could be??? We are taking Nissan to court for the Lemon Law if we can't find a solution in the next few days. The car has been in the shop three times already with no solution, and Nissan corporate flat out refuses to do anything about it.
Other than that, I actually love the car. Lots of space, great stereo, nice ride, etc. Too bad it is unreliable and hazardous to drive:)
To golfanatic, try this and report back to us...I though my 16.3MPG was bad but your 15.3MPG is even worse.
If you're going to get some fuel system cleaner, my best experience has been the Chevron with Techron stuff. I can't supply the engineering specifics of why but... a number of friends in the local Porsche club, fellow Miata enthusiasts and, generally speaking, my gearhead friends swear by it. If you've a Costco membership and one nearby, they sell a four-pack for like... $9.99. Usually a single at Pep Boys will run you $6.99. I buy a pack once or twice a year and use one in each car. The lawnmower, snow-blower, Kubota, etc. all split the last bottle. It works out well.
I think the carbon build up is just a dealer excuse to avoid delaing with the problem or better yet to sell you their fuel injector cleaning service for $99.
I agree with the bottle of fuel injector cleaner and use one in each vehicle when I get the oild changed. For me every 5,000 miles.
Or try using engine cleaner on your gas. If one of the service manager that I spoke with recentlyt is correct, it could also be the carbon build-up in your engne...I will try STP that I got from Costco after my next oil change and let everyone know if there's any improvement in my MPG.
Honestly, if 20/25MPG is the rating for our Murano, anything below 17MPG should not be acceptable because 20MPG is supposed to be based on city driving, We are talking about Nissan here and no excuse for a new car to get 12MPG like yours.
I've just had my 05 SL FWD for a month now, with 1700 miles on it. I've started to notice that whenever I hit the brakes from above 30 mph, I can feel a strong shuddering sensation, as if the brakes were misaligned or worn out. When I let me hands go of the steering wheel and brake from 30 mph, I can see the wheel rythmically shuddering quite pronouncedly.
Does anyone else have the same experience? I didn't really notice this in the first 3 weeks of driving.
I'm debating whether to take it into the dealer to have it looked at.
Yeah, I guess with Safety being important, I'll just get the dealer to handle it under warranty. I wasn't sure if any other 05 Murano owners were seeing the same issue. I haven't seen any TSBs out, but the 05 is still relatively new anyhow.
Thanks for the feedback!
As far as 17mpg being acceptable or not, as I mentioned before, you will probably find that many vehicals owners cannot match their epa ratings. 17mph is actually not bad compared to other similarly sized vehicals (12 is on the low side though). I have yet to own (after having 5 cars) a car where I matched the epa ratings. The EPA tests are conducted in a lab using a standardized schedule of stops, starts, accelerations, etc.... This schedule is supposed to simulate real world driving but for the most part is outdated and inaccurately reflects the way we drive. The results were usually so far from reality that in the 80's the EPA decided to actually adjust their results by 10%. This means that the EPA actually gets 10% better fuel economy then they state (meaning they actually got about 22city/28highway for the Murano). They are also currently taking another look at revising their testing strategies because they realize their results are no longer accurate in many situations. Take a look at the EPA site to see how they test (actually the manufacturers do the testing and the EPA confirms a small number of the tests). If you take a good look at it you will see that during the tests acceleration is very slow and in the highway test average speed is 48mph. Not many of us actually drive that speed and on our highways we would probably get run over if we did. Some time when you get the chance take your Murano out on the highway and drive a steady 50mph. You may be surprised at your mileage.
In the past, I mentioned in one of my postings that I test drive my MPG average in one of our less busy highway with windows close, no passenger, no A/C, using only FWD, @100km/hr speed max and a very nice weather but never achieved beyond my target of 18MPG average.
I would like to believe that your 28MPG is achievable on the conditions you mentioned when you did your trip but I don't think that even an EPA test based on a near perfect condition can show that 28MPG is realistic based on your speed.
But, I could be wrong too!
Last night I had to go out of town for one of my kids hockey games. It was about 75km each way and just for fun I tried to keep my speed at 50mph. I didn't calculate my mileage by hand but reset the computer when I left and it said that I averaged 9.1l/100km (25.8mpg) over the trip.
Something funny that I noticed last night. The American Nissan site has the Murano's epa mileage at 20city/24highway (for awd). The Nissan Canada site has it at 8.8l/100km city and 12.0l/100km highway. This converts into 26.7mpg city and 19.6mpg highway. I guess that Transport Canada is even more generous in their estimates of highway mileage than the EPA.
In the end it is really difficult for you or I to compare our city mileage against anyone elses. We all drive differently with different amounts of stop and go traffic. Too many variables for our compairisons to be very accurate.
Nissan & Co. Just today I took my MO-2003 3.5 to the dealership for third time!
First, staff there was acting as they do not get what I was talking about:
Car uses 13 MPG in the city - or 250 miles on tank.. and that is not normal for the car with 13000 on it.Their attitude in general:
"...so what ? this is almost normal...bla bla bla.." First two times they told me - they check it, and everything is o.k. according to computer readings. Just FYI
there is a note that I gave them in writing:
Signs of defect :
- car used to go ~ 380 miles on a tank ( ~ 19MPG) in the city , now only 250 on a tank ( ~12.5 MPG)
- car used to go ~ 500 miles on a tank on the freeway, now only 400 with AC Off and while driving at 70 MPH.
- AVG (MPG) screen is “frozen” at 16.6 MPG and driving conditions can not make an impact for this number to change, whereas actual MPG IN THE CITY IS ~ 12.5 .
- car started to perform poorly at acceleration, in order to accelerate on the freeway , overdrive must be used all the time.
- once you take foot from the gas pedal, speed of the car decreases more rapidly comparing to as it used to be. It feels like parking brake is applied a bit.
We use Premium gas only all the time.
Of`course they did not the cause for third time as well...
But when I picked car from the dealership I told that I am aware of problem Nissan has with this cars and they actually admited it !
Unfortunately it did not solve the problem...
it looks like this particular dealership knows nothing abot reprogramming of
CVT.
I would be glad to hear what I can do about it?
Regarding the reprogramming of the CVT's, unless this it's a safety issue, I don't beleive that Nissan would be kind enough fixing it...many but not all dealerships will simply DENY,DENY,DENY and hope you go away...and it's true to any car company.
Wheather Nissan likes it or not, there is really a fuel mileage problem on many of it's Murano's or else we won't be talking about it.
Also based on some postings that I read, the 2005 seemed to have better fuel mileage than 03-04 models...or maybe, there's still not enough 2005 out there to compare...or maybe Nissan has done the tweaking on it's 2005 to improve MPG...or probably was able to refine some adjustments to avoid the previous faults....in any events, I hope Nissan listens...this was my first nissan for me and my family and it's up to them not to make it our last.
he has similar problem with gas mileage ~ 14 or in the city. He performed
freeway test ride ( as I did too) with no AC , windows closed and he averaged less than 19... we decided to think about class action case if odds are there,
with you there three of us already, if you decided to go for it.
Simply calculations will show that such a difference in MPG from what Nissan promised will cost us ~ $ 4000 on 100000 miles.
regarding dealership staff -you described their attitude toward this issue as you were there with me.
P.s. my mileage calculations I did with pencil, this is not what ia shown by comp.
I've got an 03 SE AWD that has 35,xxx on it. I use premium gas as the owners manual suggests for best performance and I run 37lbs of air cold pressure in the tires. I have averaged 19.8 MPG over the life of the vehicle, with about 50% highway and about 50% city driving. It's been my experience that the mileage will be below average if your driving is normally short trips, in town, lots of stop and go driving. There is a lot of energy expended in getting this ~4,000 lb vehicle moving, but once it's moving it gets good gas mileage for it's size. It also seems to me that the CVT needs time to warm up before it is really efficent.
I'm in the process of buying. My understanding is that the AWD drive system is like may on the road today that are front wheel drive biased, in that they are basically a front wheel drive car until there is slippage in the front tires and then they shift power to the rear wheels to compensate. Many cars do not have the feature that allow you to lock in AWD at low speeds. Having this is an advantage and allows for better traction in really hazardous road conditions where you need to drive very slowly.
The Murano does not have the same sort of AWD system that Audis and Subarus have which are fulltime AWD systems.
One area that Nissan surely have a problem is the wide discrepancy on MPG consumption as you've seen/read here on many postings..I don't believe that bad driving is all the cause of MPG loss but I would blame inconsistency on manufacturing this car or setting tolerances or could be, as one of the posting said...a software program on CVT...I am just guessing here but the fact remains...we have a problem.
Regarding the OBC on mileage, it will always be off most of the time due to many factors like warm-up and stops..
We can only hope that Nissan is paying attention to this problem...but then again, it would be easy for then to simply DENY,DENY,DENY.
I went to the dealer, who ran some tests, and told me the computer had received an unexpected signal from the transmission. It should be fine, they reset it and sent me on my merry way.
A week later, the same thing happened, but I was 300 miles from home. I called the dealer and asked if it was ok to drive all the way back, to which they replied yes, of course. I took it in again, and they ran some more tests. They had it for 2 days, and the tests came back inconclusive.
They took it back again a few weeks after that, to test some more, and after 2 days found that the TCM computer module thing (the computer that controls the transmission) wasn't working properly, and needed replacing. However, they told me that mine was apparently only the 3rd in the country to have a problem (should I feel special about that?!!) and so there weren't many spares lying around.
Apparently though, Nissan HQ were taking this seriously now, and so they took a TCM out of a demo model somewhere, Fed-Exed it over to my dealer, and my car went in for the 4th time. I was assured it should only be a quick job, so I wouldnt need the rental car they gave me for long. After the 3rd day, I called them back..."Oh, I was about to call you, Im afraid the TCM we put in made it worse, infact, your car became undriveable, it won't work with your engine serial number, so we've put your old one back in, and we've ordered a new one from Nissan HQ'
So, for the 5th time, a couple of months later, I take my beloved Murano in to be butchered...again. This time, apparently they fixed it, and all should be good....so they said.
However, although my car has remained driveable all this time, I'm not happy with it........and this is what I would like some feedback on, before I go back to the dealer.
About 80% of the time when I pull up to a traffic light, or stop sign or whatever, when I slow down, and i get to around 20mph, there is an ever so slight jerk, the tachometer (revs) suddenly drop by about 500 for half a second, then jump back up again. It feels and looks like a cross between the car shifting down a gear (which it doesnt have, so it cant be doing that) and the car stalling for half a second, before regaining its composure.
Like I said, the car is still driveable, but even now, after they supposedly fixed the TCM, my Murano is still doing what it did that first time the check engine light came on. And if its not supposed to do that, even though its driveable now, I dont want the transmission dying on me 500 miles out of the warranty.
So please, when you next slow down and coast up to a traffic light, just take a look at your tachometer, and tell me if yours does the same, or is it just mine. If thats the case, then Im going to take it back again, and threaten them with the Lemon Law, which I really don't want to have to do.
Thanks guys.
There are 2 tsb's on ECM ( The engine computer ECM calculates the proper amount of injected fuel ).
The tsb's shown on ALLDATA are 'ENGINE CONTROLS'-ECM replacement procedures and the other is ECM reprogramming.
I don't know if the tsb relates to FUEL CONSUMPTION so, I called the Nissan dealership where I got my Murano. The service manager advised me that the TSB got nothing to do with fuel consumption but I do suspect that I could be right.
For those of you who are having MPG problem...here are the tsb numbers: 00-052C issued April 2004 and 00-006C issued Oct 2003...
I hope someone can verify the meaning or what this tsb is all about.
I got it from this site..http://www.alldata.com/TSB/044256_en.html
Steve, Host