Nissan Pickup and SUV Owners Reporting Transmission Failures

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, along with other safety organizations, have received an increased number of complaints, coming from Nissan owners saying that they have spent thousands of dollars for transmission repairs. Nissan’s most popular SUVs and pickup trucks are experiencing failures on their automatic transmissions given the fact that the radiator coolant is leaking into the systems.

Also, owners explain that Nissan should have notified them that the radiator problem went beyond the cooling system and could allow coolant to enter the transmissions and destroy them. In October, the manufacturer extended the warranty on the radiators for Pathfinders and Xterras from 3 years to 8 years. Thus, under the extended warranty, Nissan could reimburse owners who already had the radiator or transmission repaired.

It is worth mentioning that Nissan announced that only “a small percentage” of vehicles might experience the coolant-leak problem, which it blamed on “an internal crack on the oil cooler tube,” as related by The New York Times. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration receives at least 200 complains about transmission problems of the aforementioned vehicles.

“The issue here is that Nissan knew that they had a faulty radiator and instead of recalling the radiator they extended the warranty knowing that the majority of the cars would surpass 80,000 miles before they started having problems with the transmission,” Eva Saldivar of Porterville, California, as the aforementioned source cites. She complained to the Center for Auto Safety that her 2005 Pathfinder had 115,000 miles when she had to pay about $6,000 for repairs.