Back in January 2023, I was on the hunt for a winter beater. My wife's former boss happened to have just bought a brand new car, leaving her with a 2008 Nissan Xterra that she now had no use for:
When my wife mentioned to her boss that I was wanting a winter beater, she offered to sell me/us her Xterra for a song. She just wanted to get rid of it, so she pretty much gave it away- I almost felt bad about buying it so cheap.
My wife's former boss bought this thing brand new and it had been her daily driver for the past ~15 years, so it was a 1 owner vehicle. It was garage kept, clean Carfax, etc. She just wanted a nicer new car. It had 147k miles on it.
When asked about maintenance, it seemed like she just had regular oil changes and brakes done- or whatever the lube shop she took it to suggested. No mechanical issues, seemingly ever. The only issue it has is the tachometer is intermittently faulty/reads low. Being an automatic, I didn't really care (still don't). It drove great and everything else worked as designed.
Being that the former owner didn't know much about what maintenance was done over the years (again, she just brought it to a shop regularly and trusted them), I figured I would tackle all the preventative maintenance items, just in case.
Now, to anyone that isn't aware, these vehicles have a reputation for problems with SMOD (strawberry milkshake of death). Which is partially why I think they depreciate so hard. Essentially, in the automatic versions, the bottom portion of the radiator is a transmission cooler. In the earlier years (2005-2010), there was a manufacturing defect in which the radiator would develop an internal leak, leading to coolant and transmission fluid mixing, creating a lovely strawberry colored fluid that would run into the transmission. Expensive hilarity would ensue.
The first thing I did when I bought it was look for signs of SMOD- to which none existed, thankfully. I figured that radiators were cheap, so I picked myself a quality Denso unit to replace the stocker, in order to SMOD-proof my new-to-me winter rig:
^^^^Dear Nissan: berkeley you for deciding to install a belt-driven fan, rather than an electic fan like every other modern engine on earth. When I got done, my hands looked like they had gotten into a fight with a pack of feral cats in an enclosed space, just because of the 4 nuts for the belt/crank-driven fan. To anyone doing this job in the future, do yourself a favor and buy the longest ratcheting wrench you can find to avoid fighting this accursed fan.
I also did all the other maintenance items: spark plugs (Nissan recommends changing them every 105k miles), flushed the transmission fluid, front/rear diff fluids, filters, etc.
In order to get to the spark plugs, Nissan requires you to remove the upper intake plenum, which, it's not a tough job, just time consuming:
So, I buttoned everything up, drove it around and all seemed well.
Fast forward to the summer [2023]. To be clear, I rarely ever drive the Xterra. I usually only drive it when it's snowing, or when I need to go pickup a large item that won't fit in my other vehicles. I'm sitting in a parking lot with the A/C on and I notice there's a fairly rough vibration at idle (nothing crazy, my wife didn't notice anything out of the ordinary). All of the sudden it throws a CEL. I clear the CEL and continue driving- outside of a rough idle under very limited circumstances, the Xterra otherwise drove great.
The CEL(s) came back 1 more time, a few months later, again, while idling for a long period of time... I Googled the codes (I think there were 3?) and it led me down a few rabbit holes- one of which was for an exhaust manifold leak; which, didn't seem to exist on the Xterra. Then I thought maybe there was a leak from the plemum- thinking maybe the new gasket didn't seal properly? I looked over the manifold closely, searching for a leak- couldn't find one... then I found a post about someone saying they did a fueling reset procedure and the problem never came back... so, I did the fuel reset, which involved letting the Xterra idle for about 10 minutes. The CEL never came back. I noted the idle was just a smidge grumbly, but never had another issue. Although it stayed in the back of my mind.
Fast forward to here recently. I went to drive the Xterra and noticed just a bit of a squeak from the serpentine belt. I figured I probably should have changed it previously to avoid being stranded on the side of the road. So, I ordered a new belt, along with new tensioner and idler pulleys:
^^^Since the belt is behind that wretched fan, this time I learned my lesson and bought the longest ratcheting wrench I could find. The result? I managed to get the belt and both pulleys swapped out in under ~20 minutes without removing the hellish fan- easy peasy!
In order to get to the belt, you have to remove the airbox intake tube... I can't believe I'm such an idiot. When I was removing the airbox tube, I noticed this giant vacuum hose that I completely forgot to reconnect almost a year ago, when I was doing all of the rest of the maintenance on the car:
^^^Yes, I'm aware the oil filler cap is off in that photo, I was doing an oil change at the same time. I've barely driven it over the past year, but the last time I did an oil change was in fact a year ago, so I figured it needed one based on time alone.
That hose took me ~3 seconds to reconnect. The result? The Xterra now idles as smooth as a brand new truck lol. I can't believe I've been driving around like this for a year... and I also can't believe I've looked under the hood 2-3 times since then, trying to find a leak and completely missed this giant, disconnected hose. I couldn't help but laugh out loud when I saw it.
I figured I would share my tale of automotive stupidity. Feel free to share your car-related blunders!