# '96 Altima Jerking...



## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

Hi, I've read some good information on this site so I decided to ask the experts!
My altima died on me 3 weeks ago. I had oil in the distributor. Changed the distributor, dist cap and rotor, spark plugs and wires, and the engine coolant temp sensor(the dealership said it was bad). I had the dealership diagnose and then my dad and brother help fix the car. It ran fine for a day but now it has a rough idle again and also jerks sometimes when I'm driving it. Like it's missing or something. Any suggestions?


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

eolew said:


> Hi, I've read some good information on this site so I decided to ask the experts!
> My altima died on me 3 weeks ago. I had oil in the distributor. Changed the distributor, dist cap and rotor, spark plugs and wires, and the engine coolant temp sensor(the dealership said it was bad). I had the dealership diagnose and then my dad and brother help fix the car. It ran fine for a day but now it has a rough idle again and also jerks sometimes when I'm driving it. Like it's missing or something. Any suggestions?



You might have a bad distributor, esp. if its a rebuilt one. Does the engine light come on? You might want to have the car's ECU scanned for any stored codes.


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## DRUNKHORSE (Mar 6, 2005)

LONDONDERRY said:


> You might have a bad distributor, esp. if its a rebuilt one. Does the engine light come on? You might want to have the car's ECU scanned for any stored codes.


what makes you think that the distributor is bad, when he just said that he changed it?... It sounds like you have a bad throttle position sensor. Have you checked the air filter, fuel filter, pcv valve? who changed the distributor? maybe they didnt put the correct timing.


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## DRUNKHORSE (Mar 6, 2005)

Im guessing that by the jerks you feel while driving, you have a bad fuel filter.


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## jserrano (Oct 27, 2004)

Rebuild parts are known to go bad prematurely. Ask the thousands of people who has experience this with alternators, distributors, and starters. I myself replaced my OEM starter when it was coming up for 10 years and the stupid Advanced Auto one only lasted two years exactly. Luckily, it had a lifetime warranty, but them f**kers says ONLY the first one has the lifetime warranty. The other one only carries a 90 days guarantee. I'll smash their store window with the bit*h if it dies soon. (Sorry, I'm venting because I didn't enjoy replacing the starter during cool and wet weather.)

Now, back to the original post. I once had a rough idle and high speed engine surge that was caused by a bad fuel injector. Rough idling indicates an engine misfiring. Engine jerks are usually fuel or distributor related. 

But do the troubleshooting on the rough idle since it is easier to work with. 

Try this,

1. Disconnect the fuel injector electrical harness from the #1 injector while the engine is warm and idling.
2. If the engine idles worst and shakes hard then replace the #1 fuel injector harness back on the injector.
3. Repeat the same test as describe on step 1 with the #2, #3, and #4 fuel injectors, one injector at a time.
4. The one that doesn't cause the engine to idle worst is the problem cylinder.

Rough idling can also be caused by a vacuum leak or MAF problem. Get a vacuum guage teed off the fuel pressure regulator. If the reading is around 16 in. Hg then you have a vacuum leak. It could be coming from the EGR or intake manifold.

The MAF can cause rough idling too. You can try tapping on the housing next to the electrical connector and see if this causes idle changes. Also, spray down the hot film sensor of the MAF with carb cleaner.

Let us know what you find.


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

It may be a remanufactured dist cap but it's only a day old so i think it should be ok. I will try all of your suggestions. my brother put the distributor on...we didn't check any timing though. we just made sure we put it in the same exact position as the old one. I'll ask him about checking the timing. he has a 240SX that he's worked on for a while so i felt pretty comfy since it's the same engine. I will try everything this weekend and let you guys know. Thanks a lot!


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

eolew said:


> It may be a remanufactured dist cap but it's only a day old so i think it should be ok. I will try all of your suggestions. my brother put the distributor on...we didn't check any timing though. we just made sure we put it in the same exact position as the old one. I'll ask him about checking the timing. he has a 240SX that he's worked on for a while so i felt pretty comfy since it's the same engine. I will try everything this weekend and let you guys know. Thanks a lot!



eolew-
Altima's are know to have some of the common problems: 
Distributor issues, mostly oil getting past the oring.
Intake manifold gasket leaks,
EGR valve

To reiterate, what jserrano mentioned about rebuilt parts. Last year my OEM distributor died, so I had a rebuilt one put in, the next day the car jecked and died out on the highway during 5pm traffic. So I had it replaced a second time and still the same issue. The third time I installed a brand new distributor, no rebuit, and since then the car runs fine. The distributor you have might be fine, but from my experience and others on this forum, sometime rebuilts esp. electrical components are not worth purchasing. Just make sure you know the warrenty on your distrbutor. I would suggest retiming the car and going through the punch list jserrano mentioned

Frank


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

Ok, will do. Thanks a lot and I will let you guys know what ends up being the problem.


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

*Hey, mine's doing the same thing!*

Hello everyone. Saw your posts and just had to register. I have a '95 Altima that is (sort of) displaying the same symptoms. It idles fine in park or neutral but when I try to drive it it jerks badly and then eventually stalls. Thought I got bad gas at first but that didn't turn out to be the case. My understanding is these cars have several known issues that can cause this: 1. oil in the distributer
2. cracked solder joints in the mass airflow sensor
3. Clogged in-tank fuel strainer
4. Bad tps solenoid
5. cracked hose from mass airflow sensor (crack opens when engine under load)

Questions: is anyone's check engine light on? Mine's not, but it does have a stored knock sensor code. My understanding is that a knock sensor will not cause these problems. All the fixes are so expensive and I'm stumped, trying to narrow it down as much as I can by specific symptom. There IS oil in my distributor and the 0-rings are shot.

Further suggestions? 
Sally in Portland


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

my engine light is on because it has a knock sensor code, engine coolant temp sensor, and random engine misfire i believe. these are all before we fixed it. we replaced the coolant temp but the light is still on and i'm assuming because of the knock sensor. i replaced the distributor but not the o-ring...(where is the o-ring anyways)...i guess changing the distributor won't solve the problem if oil is leaking from the o-ring into the distributor. i won't get a chance to mess with the car until saturday but i drove it this morning and it didn't jerk once. it was cold and muggy outside...it wants to rain out here in Sacramento...the first mechanic I took the car to thought it was the MAF and replaced it and it was the same so he put the old one back in. I wonder if he could have broken it taking it out if the solder connections are so touchy anyways. Good luck solving your problem and I will post when I find out mine. It has a rough idle and is jerking occasionally. I wonder if they are 2 separate issues.


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

Well, the 0-rings are inside the distributor and where it mounts also, if your distributor was replaced those would have been part of it. The oil gets in the distributor through these if they're broken and gets all over a sensor inside, which then sends incorrect signals to the engine. See, I've learned all this stuff about what could be wrong, but I still have no idea whatsoever what actually is wrong. That's what I get for being so stingy, I guess. Hopefully this weekend I will know and I'll post my solution as well.


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

SallyKate said:


> Well, the 0-rings are inside the distributor and where it mounts also, if your distributor was replaced those would have been part of it. The oil gets in the distributor through these if they're broken and gets all over a sensor inside, which then sends incorrect signals to the engine. See, I've learned all this stuff about what could be wrong, but I still have no idea whatsoever what actually is wrong. That's what I get for being so stingy, I guess. Hopefully this weekend I will know and I'll post my solution as well.



If there's oil in the distributor, replace it witha new one, not a rebuilt, they are known to crap out over time. A new on will run about $500, but its worth it for safty.



Frank


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

Yeah, I've heard that. The good news is that I work in the auto industry (unfortunately it's a body shop so our techs are clueless) and can get parts at wholesale prices. I know Nissan has taken to remanufacturing the distributors, has this corrected the issue?


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

SallyKate said:


> Yeah, I've heard that. The good news is that I work in the auto industry (unfortunately it's a body shop so our techs are clueless) and can get parts at wholesale prices. I know Nissan has taken to remanufacturing the distributors, has this corrected the issue?


I reccomend not going with a rebuilt distributor or if you have no choice but rebuilt make sure you know the warrenty first. For myself, I have to replace my OEM distributor with two rebuilts over a course of one month, the third time I went new and haven't had any problmes in 9 months with it.

Frank


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

LONDONDERRY said:


> I reccomend not going with a rebuilt distributor or if you have no choice but rebuilt make sure you know the warrenty first. For myself, I have to replace my OEM distributor with two rebuilts over a course of one month, the third time I went new and haven't had any problmes in 9 months with it.
> 
> Frank


I know Autozone sells them with a lifetime warranty but I'm a little skeptical of getting one from them.


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

SallyKate said:


> I know Autozone sells them with a lifetime warranty but I'm a little skeptical of getting one from them.


Ya I don't blame you about Autozone. Your better off buying it from a parts dealer, the cost is about $500.00. I went down the hard road when my dist. crapped out. I bought a rebuilt one and it failed while out on the highway then I had it replaced with another rebuilt and they it failed out again the next time I installed a new one.


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## poolboy (Oct 12, 2005)

*simular problems*

My car is a '97 gxe and is doing exactly the same thing , I have no oil in the dist. cap or under the rotor button . Could this be an injector ? THe code say misfire #4 cyl. I replaced wires and plugs ,,,, Rotor - but, and cap, whatcha think?


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

Could be. That will definitely cause a random misfire code. Mine WAS the distributor. The seals were shot and it's running fine now.


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

My car runs fine now...when we changed the distributor a couple of weeks ago we put in fuel injector cleaner on only a 1/4 tank of gas even tho it recommends a full tank. I wonder if that caused the jerking because it doesn't jerk anymore. it still has a rough idle but i can get that figured out later. It runs good for now. I drove it from elk grove to fairfield on sunday and it didn't jerk once. I bought a pulley because the bearing in one of mine is bad but I got the wrong idler pulley. i got the AC one and I needed the power steering one. We did however change the belts. my brother works at Honda and we did the work there. He checked the engine code and it was knock sensor, and engine coolant temp sensor in continuous loop. He cleared the codes because they weren't cleared 2 weeks ago when we changed the engine coolant temp sensor. he also pressure washed the engine. I got about 2 miles down the road and my radiator cracked. I was driving and saw smoke. i shut the car off and called my brother and he said it was the water from the pressure was burning off. it looked too white to be steam...i drove it to my father in laws house all the while getting some crazy looks because i had smoke coming out from under my hood. The car started overheating. Turns out there's a big crack in my radiator now. i don't know what caused that to happen. we bought a new thermostat and radiator. my dad said maybe the thermostat must have closed. i wonder if by clearing the engine coolant temp sensor code that it somehow caused this to happen? what do you guys think? i've never had so much bad luck with a car as what i have right now.


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## jserrano (Oct 27, 2004)

If the crack is around the neck of the radiator then it could have been caused when the hood is slammed down. I stopped slamming the hood since my radiator cracked about a year ago.


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

Gee, imagine that, I've had to replace my radiator due to a crack near the top, also. Does anyone else see a pattern emerging here?


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

Well my dad replaced the radiator and thermostat and he said that it still has problems. he said he had to hurry and take the cap off because there was a gurgling sound in the new radiator. so now he suspects there is air getting into the system somehow. he thinks i could have blown a head gasket when it was overheating on Sunday. I don't know what to do with it. He said he's going to do a leakdown test or something like that to see if the system has a leak somewhere. then he'll let me know. It's crazy. all we did was change the belts, pressure wash the engine, and clear the check engine light codes and now my car is almost ready for the junkyard. It's a 96 with about 225G miles on it. if there is a problem with the head it's not really worth fixing at this point. Thanks so much for all of your input.


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## jserrano (Oct 27, 2004)

If it actually turns out to be a bad head gasket then it would probably be much better to just pick up a low-mileage used engine for about $500 and drop her in.


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## LONDONDERRY (May 19, 2004)

Next time don't pressure wash the engine. This could have been the root problem


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

Not sure about the rest of the country but in Portland it's almost impossible to find a used engine for one of these-we have several great u-pull-its and I've checked it out just for the sake of checking it out. Couldn't hurt to check Craigslist, sometimes people part out whole cars. You haven't flushed the engine, have you? This can be very damaging to higher mileage vehicles. How could steam cleaning the engine cause a blown head gasket, unless it was pretty close to being in pieces to begin with?


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

is there a way to put a belt on too tight? or to actually put it on wrong to where it fits on all the pulley's it's supposed to but might actually make one turn the wrong way? Is this possible?


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## SallyKate (Oct 27, 2005)

No. It's possible for a belt that's too tight or a pulley that's too loose to cause damage, but not in that way.


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## eolew (Oct 25, 2005)

*Belt on wrong*

It turns out my dad had the belt on wrong. it had the water pump going backwards!!! we fixed the belt and it runs great now!


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## Smack'snissan (Dec 10, 2005)

*MAF*

Hey EOLEW , 

My 240sx was jerking the way you speak .(if this is still a problem ) I changed my MAF sensor and she runs like a dream now . I am having the EGR engine light but no jerking whatsoever . You can test your MAF by using a multimeter to read the voltage . Theres a procedure but I can't remember where it is , I think I found it in a Chilton manual . Hope I helped ! Good luck


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