# Transmission problem, or was it?



## kklyc (Dec 22, 2011)

Hey everyone, just wanna give back my inputs on some infos about the A33 Maximas. I have looked on this forum for help before as my Maxima is having all those "slipping", " no gear change", "stuck in gear" issues and for me the fix was actually changing one of the faulty engine mounts. When my A33 Maxima has done past around the 150000km mileage all these "transmission-like" issues started to appear.. cant change beyond 1st or 2nd gear, losing gears suddenly, these all appeared to be common with age among the Maximas or VQ engined Nissans from 2000 onwards. My mechanic has really gone the extra trip to the moon and back, plugging in the diagnostic computer and drive the car until the actual problem comes up. So when that happened the computer error code pointed to the engine mount sensors where apparently Nissan has used this as a safety method along with the ECU to limit the transmission's gear changes so that you wont be able to speed up and damage your engine mounts or cause safety risks further. This was a good intention but the Nissan engineers back then probably forgot to also make the engine lamp lit up when that happened or note it down elsewhere, so in the end most people thought it was a tranny problem and decided to rebuild or replace the transmission. Also most mechanics or tranny experts would probably run a diagnostic test on the transmission or ECU but since its not the cause and most diagnostics are always done in the garage but not on the road it would show up that everything with the transmission is alright, because it mostly is! I'm not saying that the transmission is 100% innocent but with this engine mount knowledge it would perhaps save people lots of money before other avenues of getting our beloved Maximas running as smoothly as they can be for the long term. 
Even though there could be dirt or wear with the transmission but for me the problem was solved by just changing one of the four engine mounts. Total cost charged by the mechanic was AUD$800 parts and labour so that's heaps better than asking others to rebuild the transmission. Dont forget there are four engine mounts altogether so if you want to completely eradicate the problem then the costs would go up further but at least thats way better than touching the transmission unnecessarily. Final note, the mechanic strongly suggests that for critical parts like the engine mount its best to use genuine Nissan new parts. the original ones are made by Bridgestone (Wasn't expecting that!) and with an original new Nissan engine mount by Bridgestone it would be good again for the next ten years to come!


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