Nissan Almera Misfire

[tom13]

Hi Guys,

My 2000 (W) plate Nissan Almera is misfiring at around 1500rpm. I doubt it is the timing chain as it seems fine the rest of the time and it has a slight misfire at higher revs.

I suspected this was happenign due to a coilpack failing so I bought two from a breakers yard. I have tried both in every position and even tried them two at a time in case more than one was failing. However it still persists.

Do you guys have any idea what could be causing this. The code suggests its a random cylinder misfire. This misfire did cause the EML to come on a couple of weeks ago.

Cheers

Tom

[bortaf]

No idea what engioneyou have (cos you havn't told us ! ) but if it's one of the smaller capacity ones it's usually the timing chain, eventually the EML will throw up a "cam sensor out of phase" and you'll know for certain, does it rattle from cold and or the rev counter needle wobble a bit ?
Only real way to know is remove the rocker cover and measure the cam tensioner arm, if it's more than 10mm out it knackerd and so is the chain, pig of a job but 95% of the time it'e the chain stretching.

[tom13]

Thanks Bortaf, sorry it's a 1.5 litre petrol. I don't have any rattle from cold but when sitting on the motorway yes it does wobble a bit, that has only occurred recently.

I havn't seen the cam sensor code come up yet, however it was a basic code reader that was used, which just pulled up the random cylinder misfire.

I hope its not the chain I have also been told they are a pain to do. I was told that being a chain they don't go very often but I may have been misinformed.

[tom13]

Just to add the car is on 70,000 miles and I have no record of it being changed.

[bortaf]

Generaly speaking a chain is usually good for 100K+ , no belt will make that BUT miss a few oil changes and the tensioner will suffer as will the chain eventually

[theheap]

My mother had a fiat uno from new that went well over 100k before I changed the belt pump clutch and head gasket. All on the same day and cost less then £100 in parts.

I'm being an A hole I know.


You're right though. Belts aren't a fan of the 100k club

[ChasR]

Does it do it under load, or even when revving the car up in neutral gently? When my Mondeo was misfiring at 1.5k (sometimes even backfiring if the load was high enough) it was down to shot HT leads, and the plugs. On that car:

I changed:
Plugs: Misfiring stopped for around 2k and came back (the plugs were quite tired though (50k old Platinum plugs).
Coilpack: (The HT leads and coilpack I had knocking around from a previous Mondeo), this did very little to the running (maybe smoother)
HT leads: The misfiring went away .

So far so good (touchwood!).

[efe]

Hey tom ,

Was your car 3 door , blue ? And reg is starting with W665 N..

[taurus]

Just an off the wall thought - I don't know the Nissan 1.5 engine - but on a few other marques I've had a random misfire tracked back a sticking EGR. When it's happened I've never actually had an EGR code thrown but I have got a random misfire code.

The usual way I've tracked it down for sure is to disconnect the EGR with the engine off and then see how it runs. You get the EGR code then of course, but just wipe it afterwards.

Timing chains depend a lot on good oil changes. I've known them fail as low as 30k, then on the other hand, with frequent oil changes I've seen them do 150k.