Nissan Problems

I'd be ignoring the Nissan dealer in question and taking the car to an auto electrician. You might just find that the problem is something much simpler than all four windows needing replacement. Generic parts will probably not be an option, but wrecking yards are full of Tiidas with electric windows waiting to be fitted to other Tiidas.

Meantime, I'd be very suspicious of the Nissan dealer's quote. For a start, replacing the windows really shouldn't cost that much. Also, why do all four windows need replacing? Did they all fail together? If they did, it's far more likely the problem is with a fuse, relay, a switch or the body computer, rather than four individual assemblies failing in unison. If the dealer doesn't want to do the job (which is what the quote is telling me) they should just say so, and not come up with ridiculous quotes like this one.

My experience has generally been that Ssangyong is a brand with decent reliability. Many people think it’s a Chinese brand, but it’s actually a South Korean company. And when you look at the other South Korean car-makers we see here – Hyundai and Kia – you can see that the country makes some fine vehicles with great reliability and durability.

You’re right about that warranty, too; at seven years of factory cover, it’s one of the best (if not the best) in the business. You’re also right about the relative value-for-money equation. The Ssangyong seems like a lot of vehicle for the money.

Perhaps the only thing that might make you think twice would be the supply of spare and service parts. That said, in 2022, that problem is afflicting a lot of mainstream companies and volume sellers as well as the smaller brands. And from what I can gather, this problem is a bigger one for the Chinese brands than some of the others.

A Musso has a towing capacity of 3500kg (with a braked trailer) so a 1200kg caravan should not trouble it one bit. Take the Musso for a test drive and decide for yourself, but we reckon, after a D22 Navara, you’ll be amazed at how good a modern dual-cab ute can be at this price-point.

Mileage is a very important factor in the retained value of a car like this. The more kilometres it has covered, the less it will be worth. There’s also a sort of kilometre-cliff over which a car will plummet in residual-value terms once it breaches that distance-covered.

Even though you’ve cared for the car and serviced it properly, most buyers will be a bit leery of a car like a Pulsar with so many kilometres on board. Even in otherwise good condition, it would probably struggle to fetch more than about $3000 in the current market.

Honestly, this problem could be caused by anything from a transmission that is worn out to one that is simply low on fluid. It could even be caused by a bad earth somewhere on the car or something as simple as a blown fuse.

You need to take the vehicle to a workshop that can electronically scan the vehicle and hopefully turn up a fault code that will pin-point the problem. Without doing this, you're simply guessing at what the problem might be and will end up replacing parts you didn't need to.

If you still want to drive a proper off-road four-wheel-drive, then maybe fixing what you already have is the wise way to go. Supply crunches and high demand have seen the prices of second-hand four-wheel-drives skyrocket. You might be in for a shock when you check the prices of second-hand replacements.

Beyond that, it comes down to the overall condition of the rest of the vehicle. Off-roaders are big, heavy and sometimes complex machines and if the rest of the mechanical package isn’t in good condition, fitting a new engine will only attend to one of the vehicle’s ongoing cost-centres.

From what I can see in the owners’ manual, the X-Trail has the ability to display the vehicle’s current speed as part of the trip computer’s read-out. By scrolling through the various pages offered by the computer, you should be able to find one that gives a readout of current and average speed.

Later model X-Trails had a proper digital speedometer, but the trip computer version is the best you’ll get in this model.

Engines and transmissions need to operate across a wide range of temperatures, from zero (or lower) on a cold morning, to extremely hot (when towing a trailer across the Nullarbor in mid-summer). Sometimes these differing operating temperatures bring out different behaviours.

The problem of selecting gears is often caused by wear or a fault in the transmission’s valve body, or it could be something else within the gearbox such as a worn clutch-pack or band. On a simpler level, you could be looking at something as easy to fix as a mis-aligned or mal-adjusted selector cable. Another possibility is a low transmission fluid level. If this is the case, you need to find the source of the leak, not just top up the level, as a transmission is a sealed unit that shouldn’t need topping up.

Four-wheel-drives like the Patrol tend to do big mileages, so you often see them advertised with overhauled or reconditioned engines. That’s not a problem provided the work has been done properly and quality parts used.

But you also need to talk to the seller and determine exactly what they mean by `overhauled’. A true overhaul will have included reconditioning the cylinder head, boring the cylinders, new pistons, new bearings, rings and even things like a new water pump and fuel pump. The receipts form the rebuild will tell the full story.

Our bet would be on the car you’re looking at having had a piston failure (number three or four piston) which was too common on the ZD30 engine. At which point you need to find out whether the engine was completely rebuilt, or simply had a new set of pistons and a new turbocharger fitted.

I’ll assume you’re talking about what Nissan calls the Pulsar’s `Accent Lights’ which are fundamentally LED daylight running lamps. I have heard of these failing, and the cause was a poorly soldered connection which should be pretty easy for an auto electrician to put right.

Finding the fault will involve checking for power at the lights and then working backwards to the switch to see which component is not playing. Even though they’re LEDs, trouble-shotting is no different to any other electrical component that appears to have lost power. Again, a good auto sparkie should be able to figure it out.

The CVT transmission has haunted many a car-maker over the years and just when another car-makers thinks they’ve got the tech nailed, along comes another series of failures that makes consumers think again.

Late last year in the USA, Nissan paid out a US$277 million settlement for a class action brought by owners of its CVT-equipped cars, so there’s certainly a precedent for this. However, don’t assume that US and Australian consumer law are the same – they’re not. The lawsuit, meantime, accused Nissan of knowing about the fault for years and doing nothing. Nissan, while admitting no wrongdoing, agreed to pay the claims.

The viability or otherwise of a class action legal case is not the sort of advice Carsguide dispenses. You would need to talk with a law firm specialising in this type of litigation and then weigh up the costs and potential benefits, bearing in mind a win is no certainty in these cases.