Hello everybody, Good day to you! Welcome back! This thing is a 2004 I think Nissan Altima 2.5 liter. It's the S model with approximately 265 161 miles on the odometer. Customer: States check engine light is on, vehicle is shaking, misfiring, rattling, and uh, I could confirm just from pulling it into the parking space that yeah, we have a serious misfire. let us pop in England and uh, take a look at what's going on down there.

How much wind? Yeah, sand Dawson Oh yeah, she's angry. A little bit of light on the subject. Yeah, we've got an angry L Let's see. Yeah, let's go.

Uh, let's go pull the scan tool out, check trouble codes, and uh, we'll go from there. So stay tuned because this is gonna be a very good video opening Z Hoods okay I stand corrected. the uh the VIN says it's an O5 Ultima 2.5 Let's go ahead and pull up the codes here and see what our ECU has stored interesting p300 times. Two random misfire detected catalyst efficiency below threshold bank one that's p420.

Okay, so we've got some misfires going on here. Just calmed out a little bit. It was really shaky, shaky, shaky. Let's go.

Uh, let's check Power Balance Maybe that'll tell us something. Key on engine running. Copy that collecting data initializing communication satellites linking up in outer space. There we go.

Disable injectors? All right. Yeah, let's uh. let's check our uh, well, the misfire is gone I Want the misfire to come back so I can disable injectors? Let's give it some throttling aggravate the thing a little bit. See what it? See what it does.

see. we smoothed out. I'm interesting. Yeah, the misfire is gone right now.

Okay, it's not what I really wanted. Interesting. It won't let me disable injectors. Okay, we'll just do this the manual way.

I'll wait for the misfire to show up and we'll go back and disconnect the ignition coils. see I can feel the misfire if I give it some throttle comes in but then offload, it goes away. You know what? Let's go ahead and just pull some coils out. Maybe we'll find some spark plugs that are covered in engine oil.

Tiring down. That's unfortunate that it started or stopped misbehaving right when we, uh, attempted to diagnose. It happens every time you bring your car to the mechanic and it's doing it and doing the problems. and then it gets there and everything's just fine.

Nobody can find it. It's very frustrating that phenomenon happens to all of us. Has that ever happened to you? Because it's happening to us right now. Let's see what we've got in these holes here.

Yeah, I'll come out. Come out. Nope. No oil.

I Was hoping to find oil soaked spark plug tubes. Okay, let's pull one of the plugs out and take a look at them. You never know what you're gonna find it. 200 000.

let's pull number three out. Why not unclick? Um, it's kind of tight. Holy Smokes. look at that plug.

Hang on a second. We need to get a close-up on this one. This is crazy. Okay, let's pull this thing out and uh, take a peek see what we've got to uh to work with here.

Holy Smokes, Look at that. There's almost no, uh, no anode left over. This thing is worn. It's incredibly worn.

What do we have here? We've got an Ngkr I wonder if that's original? This looks like 200 and something thousand. I've got a uh, a gapping tool here. We've got a scale from 20 thou to 80 thou. We're going to measure measure our gap on this.

that what? and we are over 80 thousandths of an inch spark plug gap. These are. These are some of the most severely worn plugs I've seen in a long, long time. Look at that.

There's nothing left. All right. Well, first things first. before: I do any other kind of diagnostic work.

Uh, we're gonna throw some spark plugs in this this year. These are. You're horrible. It's the worst Ever.

Alright, so I didn't even call my guy yet to get authorization I'm ordering some spark plugs and I'm gonna put these plugs in right now and then we're gonna check this thing and see if we still have that uh, horrendous misfire. It was pretty bad. that one's not too horrible. It's not like that number three cylinder some oil on it.

Okay, that's what I was afraid of was oil. Down in the Hole Not much, but it's there. another NGK let's pull the other two out on kick. Yeah, these are real tight on the threads.

These things have been here for a while. Okay, that's pretty typical. even though it's it's very high mileage. You know what happened I think I Think that the uh, the Iridium or the Platinum tip that's on the electrode side begin to wear away.

hot, that wore away and then the spark just eroded the metal right there as it was trying to make contact. Yeah, these these plugs are gone. Oh, disconnect, unclick, remove, and another excessively worn plug. the uh, the electrode on this one's worn out pretty bad.

See that right there? All right, You know what? Since that number three was as bad as it was I'm gonna throw a compression tester on there real quick just to just to make sure our numbers are good across all cylinders. I Think it's probably okay, but it 260 thou you really never know. So let's run this guy down here. So what we're gonna do I'm gonna screw this guy in.

It's going to make a seal at the spark plug hole with the O-ring that's on that adapter. We're going to connect the gauge to it and I'm going to crank the engine over for a couple seconds and as that cylinder produces pressure on its compression stroke, we're going to get a measurement of that pressure we're looking for. Uh, let's call it like 120 to 160 pounds. That's about average.

We require a minimum of 90 PSI just to achieve combustion. Okay, so what I'm gonna do I'm gonna come around right here and disconnect the harness for all the fuel injectors. That way the injectors aren't pumping in any fuel while I'm attempting to do this test. we don't just need to flood the cylinders with any fuel.

That's just silliness. Now, some vehicles are not this easy to disable, but this particular instance I I lucked out. Need a screwdriver? These Uh Nissan connectors are not as friendly as some others. The release clip is very strong and it's guarded with like little tabs and it's just hard to push Nissan the Chrysler of Japan Okay, so fuel system disabled.

Now the engine won't run. What we're going to do is head inside, crank the engine, and we're going to come back and check the gauge pressure. now. Gravity: Okay, what did we get? 150 psi? That's good compression.

No cause for concern. Let's check the other two other three words. Let's check the other three real quick and uh and see if we have a similar cylinder pressure and you day right there so we can see you don't fall beginning cranking. Not bad.

150 pounds just for fun. Let's check the uh, the other two. pretty sure they're good. But while we're here, while we're waiting and while we're testing, let's gather as much info as possible.

Get on there. please. Thank you. 150 good.

Last one connected. Okay, 150 I Think we're in good shape here. No cause for concern I Believe the uh, the base engine is in good shape, so let's pull these out, put my tester back away, and when the new plugs show up, we'll go ahead and get those things installed. Okay, so while we wait for those plugs to show up, what I want to do is we're going to go ahead and run this uh Wi-Fi boroscope down into these holes I Just want to take a look at the uh, the top of the cylinders here just to make sure up.

Get in there. please get in there I can't get it in the hole? Hang on. This isn't working out there. We go got her? I Couldn't see? Yeah, we just want to take a look at the top of the Pistons make sure nothing's like suffering through some total Destruction That one looks pretty good A Little bit of carbon in there, but nothing crazy.

typical for the almost three hundred thousand check Number three: Going in again, we see a bunch of carbon. What's that liquid there? Some oil? Interesting. Oh, that's fuel from the misfire because number three was that nasty cylinder. That's what that is.

That's fuel. Okay, let's check cylinder number two. see what that one's looking like? Come on. So I believe that cylinder three.

We saw that fuel in there. that was probably our primary offender for this misfire. and I Imagine that due to the worn condition of those other spark plugs is the reason that we had the P300 random multiple misfires. So we had a primary offender that was number three.

And then the rest of these were randoms. There's only this one right here that has the fuel in it, down and dirty. Yep, you can see a lot of fuel inside of that one. Okay, that's good enough for me.

Looks like the parts guys here. let's throw those plugs back in and uh, see how this thing runs afterwards. All right. Sparking plugs coming in.

We've got ourselves a set of Ngks here. These are the G Power Platinum alloy spark plugs. Looking pretty good. They seem to uh to match up to the ones I pulled out same dimensions and look at there, we can see this huge difference.

See the gap on this one versus the 44 thousands gap on the other one. It's quite substantial. Anyway, let's get these guys installed and then uh, put the coils back in, plug the injectors back in, fire this bad boy up and we'll see how she runs. Get that guy in I'm just threading them with the socket right now and then we'll come back with the electric ratchet, speed it up and we'll apply some actual pickages.

Come on now. I Doubt this is going to uh solve that P420 code. thanks. And I Don't know if you guys heard it earlier, but I did hear a bit of an exhaust leak I Think the manifold is leaking at the head.

That could be the issue with that P420. It might not be. it might. But first things first.

let's make this thing run properly and then we can go from there. Okay, let's get some torque on these guys crushing the crush washers. Six tool kicks there we go. Okay, let's get our coils back in.

We need some some Dielectric Provenza moisture. Ingress It does not promote conductivity. folks. think that dielectric helps the electricity flow and it does not.

You'll often find electrical component boxes that are jam-packed with this stuff if they're located in, uh, like an explosive environment where there could be gases around. I Remember the shop I worked at Once Upon A Time I think it was an NTB All of the switchboards for the lifts had uh a Dielectric grease packed into the switches that way they wouldn't Arc and throw Sparks while the machines were running all right. Moment of truth: Let's head back into the cabin restarting the engine after. I Plug these injectors back in and uh and we'll see if this thing is gonna operate as designed.

Let's get some connector picks here and we'll slip this guy back in its little bracket. You hear me? Go in your bracket. There we go. Got it.

Okay, time to restarting the engine Kion Begin engine starting sequence Now live. But I Recall that the misfire was, uh, most severe when it was in drive. So we're now in drive. I'm not feeling it.

Let's give it some throttle. Feels pretty good. All right. let's go out and hit the road.

Take this thing on a test drive. Clear that exhaust leak. Sounds like it's right around here. Somewheres all right, Let's Stow our Hood prop here.

Get rid of that. Let's go out for a test drive and hit the road real quick. So we know we have a P420 catalytic converter inefficiency code and we knew we had misfire code. So what I'm going to do is go ahead and clear everything.

I'm sure that P420 code can come back, but what I'm interested in right now are the misfires on the on the P300. I Found it odd that we didn't even get like a P303 with all that fuel in the cylinder. I Would have expected the engine to have identified at least one cylinder, but it did not because it's using uh Nissan logic and Nissan logic. It's kind of like Ford logic when it comes to misfires.

They don't like to tell you which one it was. Anyway, backing out the auto carefully too because my truck is behind it. Tight squeeze. Oh look, wife unit's so sweet she grabbed the gate for me.

She's the best! All right, we're good to go, traffic's cleared, let's hit the road running. Well, no misfires, decent power, All right. We're better than it was. It's a thousand percent better than it was.

Rattly suspension feels really kind of Weebly wobbly on this but I bet it 265 161 miles. It could probably use some shocks and struts. or struts and struts. they don't always have shocks in the rear.

Well so far so good. Let's give it the uh, the power brake treatment again holding that load attack is nice and stable. No misfires. If the misfires are really bad, you'll see your attack jumping around.

No check engine light that's still off and while I'm here at this light, we'll go ahead and check the scanner for, uh, any kind of pending codes. Uncle Johnny please Satellites are re-linking up, no communication. pish posh green light. We'll just wait for this thing to do its thing.

But yeah, so far so good. This feels really, really nice. It's uh, much more improved. at least now it's drivable.

I Don't know if we're gonna do anything with that cat converter code I'm going to recommend I pull that heat shield off and uh and check for a leak at that manifold surface. The downside is on that is, if there's broken bolts, we have to extract them or if there's a crack in that manifold, it would have to be replaced and the catalytic converter is part of that manifold. So if if I need to seal that up where we're gonna have to put a converter on that. but that's uh, probably for a later.

Endeavor Personally I would recommend that we take care of some of the the high mileage mechanical issues that this thing has like the suspension before going after. uh after that little exhaust leak I think that's the direction. I'm going to suggest that we go all right guys. I'm gonna go ahead and call this one a confirmed kill so far I'm pretty certain I'm gonna do some more work on this car.

We want to get this thing fixed up and and good working reliable condition. So uh, I'm gonna have to save any of that for a possible future video. So that being said, I'm gonna go ahead and close this video out right now and I will do such things by thanking each and every one of you for watching this video. As always I Hope you enjoyed this video.

If you did enjoy this video, please feel free to let me know about that by tap that like button down below. If you did not enjoy this video then um let me know what you did not like about in the comments section also down below. and then I can use your feedback to uh to do a better job. So again and as always, thank you for watching and most importantly, do not forget to have yourselves a great day! See you guys later! End of Nissan Transmission time to hit the big road.

That guy lives by my house More Steam I think I hear a timing chain rattle. You know there's a slight rattle in there. The wheel balance is off. See that steering wheel vibe? Yeah, it could use some tires up front.

they, uh, they weren't looking too healthy. slight Pole to the right. Okay, no brake vibration. That's good, All right.

I've seen enough. Back to the shop with us.