Catastrophic Transmission Failure In A 2900km Stock Gt-r

[Sammy-qld]

Wow that sucks to hear about your friends car. Fortunately its under warranty which is great news.

I had a Transmission failure on my R35 at the start of the year. It was a JDM and had some silly clutch seal pop at 6000km's that made the transmission slip gears.

Fortunately the experts Martin & the boys at Willall Racing fixed it better than new within 6-8 weeks. The new Willall oil's are alot smoother in the tranmission & diff too. The car drivers better than new now. Plus Martin was nice enough to upgrade a few other parts inside that were vulnerable to weaknesses. (thanks again for that Martin) ;-)

Unfortunately no warranty for me as it was a JDM but it was a very professional repair job and your friend won't have any issues with Nissan pulling out & putting in his new Transmission, my local garage took out my transmission to ship it to Adelaide so I'm sure they won't have any issues putting in a brand new box and hitting go on the consult 3.

[dezz]

If they were 160k supercars you might...

I'd be pissed too but nothing's perfect. As long as it is all backed by Nissan then they've done right by the customer.

They're not $160k supercars, which means they have more right to failure.

The point was that people wouldn't be so forgiving with posts like 'As long as they fix it it's fine' etc, if it was a Ford/Holden. The posts would be more along the lines of slamming ford and holden for their poor quality.

[Birds]

They're not $160k supercars, which means they have more right to failure.

The point was that people wouldn't be so forgiving with posts like 'As long as they fix it it's fine' etc, if it was a Ford/Holden. The posts would be more along the lines of slamming ford and holden for their poor quality.

Oh ok sorry, I didn't see where you were coming from before. I'm of much the same opinion...but there are tons of ignorant folk who wouldn't see the volume of production or price vs. number of quality control issues argument anyway. In the end it's a Nissan forum and we'd probably find the reverse effect on a Holden/Ford forum.

[Kujotk]

It's all very nice, but the only problem with that is that if the "strengthened" transmission has any other issues with it, no matter how trivial, Nissan Aust/Nissan Jap will not send you a thank you note for fixing what wasn't broken (yet), but will void these guys' warranties for unauthorised work on their trannys.

So, legally, it is better to let the thing break first and have it replaced under warranty, than to modify it to prevent it from breaking in the first place...

yup i was thinking the exact same thing..... a $160k super car shouldn't really need any upgrades so soon, even if it was driven soft or hard (launch control is a different issue), i'm looking into the R35 in the next couple of months and i'd sure as hell expect the issue to be fixed under warantee if it ever arose.

And if these guys are replacing parts on their ADM R35's and still expecting to get the same after sales support and free replacement of broken parts, then they have another thing comming, we all know the R35 trnsmission has already had a few issues, whos to say no other gremlins will come out from hiding in the future...

[GUNR35]

GT-Ricer my condolences to your friend. Id be mighty pissed off, but also relieved the problem will be rectified.

Certainly i would imagine all of us with these cars who havent had any issues would be getting pretty nervous about the possibility of failure.

Mines only just done over 3000 ks so i can definately see how frustrating and annoying that would be.

In saying that as a general rule, cars that are going to have problems generally do earlier rather than later.

I wonder if anyone knows in real numbers how common this is.

Certainly the transmission failure in the us seemed to be blown out of proportion and from what i could tell was largely related to excessive LC on the series I.

The other thing im thinking is if this is a Martin says, a matter of time when it fails, then should't sorry let me rephrase that, doesnt Nissan have a responsibility to recall all GTR's to correct a design flaw?

[Birds]

Like Holden did with the oil troubled LS engines? Never

[_Ryan_]

It's all very nice, but the only problem with that is that if the "strengthened" transmission has any other issues with it, no matter how trivial, Nissan Aust/Nissan Jap will not send you a thank you note for fixing what wasn't broken (yet), but will void these guys' warranties for unauthorised work on their trannys.

So, legally, it is better to let the thing break first and have it replaced under warranty, than to modify it to prevent it from breaking in the first place...

But it sounds like a great preventive step for the JDM cars now in Aus...

[Birds]

Didn't think about the other side of that, i.e. any transmission problems are probably a blessing in disguise for Nissan Australia given the new car warranty is serving a purposeful advantage over the JDM models.

[GUNR35]

Didn't think about the other side of that, i.e. any transmission problems are probably a blessing in disguise for Nissan Australia given the new car warranty is serving a purposeful advantage over the JDM models.

Yeah i can see where you guys are coming from but i would have thought if this was a recall issue it'll be coming from nissan japan. Id like to think that nissan gives a shit about their reputation globally, especially regarding their golden child.

I guess time will tell.

[Birds]

They do care about their global reputation...but R35 GTR is a flagship vehicle; a marketing exercise more than a money maker for the manufacturer. It is Nissan's best engineering within the constraints of an affordable and road legal public offering. So to acknowledge and put out a recall on any part of this car is probably in their eyes more damaging to their engineering reputation...particularly as the transmission problems have had very sporadic appearance in terms of actual production numbers affected by it. Not to mention the costs involved in a recall. Were it a more widespread problem the balance would be in favour of a recall and shooting for the "look what we're doing, we stand behind our warranty" angle but right now they appear to be playing the same waiting game that most R35 owners are; replacing things here and there as they pop up instead of making it official.

[Kujotk]

It all comes down to image, Nissan will look like idiots recalling this model of their range, this is surposed to be their top of the range model. It is much better to keep things like this low key, and lets face it this issue isn't really going to make headlines unless someone is unlucky enough to die because of it failing (chances are pretty remote) so they will just replace it as they come across it.

[GUNR35]

you guys do make some valid points. Time will tell how extensive the problem is.

[Birds]

you guys do make some valid points. Time will tell how extensive the problem is.

True my friend, time reveals all...hopefully for you and Nissan it is just the sporadic production issue it appears to be.

[Max_ST-R]

Bit late on this one but seems to be a manufacturing fault or faulty part(s), rather than intrinsic design fault. With just about every car you are bound get a story like this. As long as the faulty part/component is replaced by the manufacturer, this is most important.

I remember a demonstrator Toyota Avalon at the Toyota dealer I worked at having an engine failure at about 3,000kms. It was the fleet managers car, an older fellow who drove the car very sedately, just a freak occurance. Generally speaking IMZ-FE is a very reliable engine.

Obviously being a GT-R with such high profile, these things tend to be a big deal. Anecdotely I've heard a few stories of Ferrari's, Maserati's, BMW's, Mercs, Alfa's etc having catestrophic component failure (engine/tranny)- for no apparent reason. Not typical, but does happen.

[R33_NICK]

engines and transmitions these days somehow love breaking down for no reason eventhough we thought they were meant to be more reliable due to technology advancements<-guess not. more computers normally mean more troubles linking from the faulty component to the other and another.

[Birds]

You said it in a nutshell; the more complicated something is the higher the chances of things turning to shit and also the harder it is to resolve an issue when something comes about.

[SS8_Gohan]

don't think the price of the car really has much, if any connection, with it's reliability... hello ferrari reputation?

case in point, currrent gen M5... guarantee you has had MANY more gearbox failures over the same period as the GTR (ie, first 2-3 years of product life) and this car is what... $180-200K? notorious for gearbox problems... not to mention the $1k sparkplugs

[John D]

My friend, who has only had his GT-R for less than 3 months and managed to do 2900km has just

experienced a catastrophic transmission failure. He's had his car taken on a flat bed truck back to Brookvale

and the verdict is a complete new tranny from Japan. Who knows how long this will take and then the boys

from Brookvale will have a baptism of fire getting "on the job" training, pulling the whole car apart for the very first time in Australia!

Luckily, his car is bone stock, with no VDC-OFF launches, so there were no arguments about factory warranty.

It would be a different story, I bet, if he had a COBB tune or any other mods installed.

This can happen to any one of us and Nissan Aus will use whatever means it has at it's disposal to void the warranty if the engine has been tampered with.

I wonder how many tranny failures they "budget for" out of 200 cars sold here so far?

I, for one, would give them back this almost new car and ask for another, one which is not broken....

All qualified GTR techs have removed engines and gearbox as part of their training so I'm sure they'll manage , at the end of the day it's still a car held together with nuts and bolts.

[iplen]

I love this whole engine and gearbox being life long mating partners thing, do you think they put them all out in a paddock and just wait to see which gearbox shoves it's shaft in the back of which motor??? Serioulsy they all have the same ratios etc, and if there is that much variation in the build process that they need to to be mated up there is a problem...

Hypothesis begins:

Nissan are aware of potential problems with gearboxes (How could they not be?) so during development they go "hey if there was a pissy little fuse in the gearbox, that were you an upgrading kind of person you would swap for something stronger, would that be a really good way of ensuring we don't cop warranty claims for cars that have been played with?"..... Just putting it out there, Surely if you had a tune and your car was going in for a warranty gearbox you would be resetting back to stock, but you are not going to be able to pull the gearbox apart and remove said clip before Nissan pulls the box apart.....

[Kujotk]

don't think the price of the car really has much, if any connection, with it's reliability... hello ferrari reputation?

case in point, currrent gen M5... guarantee you has had MANY more gearbox failures over the same period as the GTR (ie, first 2-3 years of product life) and this car is what... $180-200K? notorious for gearbox problems... not to mention the $1k sparkplugs

ya but we are talking about nissan, not ferrari.... the people who buy nissans are more likely to want reliability out of their cars more so than the ferrari guys.... I know what your getting at but nissans are generally pretty good and one would expect them (especially one of their top of the line models) to be reliable, thats all...