CarComplaints.com Notes: Here's a disturbing trend for the 2002 Nissan Altima: the engine starts burning oil like crazy, the catalytic converter goes bad, the head gasket blows and eventually the entire engine needs replacement. Sound familiar? Like a script from a horror film, these Altimas seem doomed to fail around 95k miles.
8.0
pretty bad
Typical Repair Cost:
No data
Average Mileage:
65,000 miles
Total Complaints:
1 complaints
Most Common Solutions:
an entire new ac dash assembly needs to be installed (1 reports)
2002 Nissan Altima- With the AC not working in the summer due to a leak in the compressor and the heat not working in the winter, who would ever want to own this car?
Taking it to a shop approximately 8 times for an attempt to repair the heater issue was about as much as I could handle. I just need to keep telling myself "it is just a car" so I don't go postal.
The knob inside the car that controls the flow from hot to cold stopped controlling anything and the fan just blew luke-warm constantly. We had trouble with the mechanic and this lead to several of the miscommunications and trips to their shop at no fault of the car, but the problem was never fixed. After replacing several parts the knob barely turns and it really feels like it is going to break. It will go to heat but not to AC. If it does get over to AC the internal flab just stays closed and nothing happens, as in NO heat will come out and just the fan blows. I live in Idaho and this last years winter was pretty brutal. These problems keep us from driving the car and did several times while causing severe inconvenience.
The solutions, remove the dash, again, replace the entire console and assembly that is controlled by these units and start over. So essentially rebuild the inside of the car�s dash at 60,000 miles. The cost to us just to go through this and have NO solution was about $800.00. The cost to replace everything would be several thousand dollars or about as much as car is worth.
A D V E R T I S E M E N T S
2002 Nissan Altima- With the AC not working in the summer due to a leak in the compressor and the heat not working in the winter, who would ever want to own this car?
Taking it to a shop approximately 8 times for an attempt to repair the heater issue was about as much as I could handle. I just need to keep telling myself "it is just a car" so I don't go postal.
The knob inside the car that controls the flow from hot to cold stopped controlling anything and the fan just blew luke-warm constantly. We had trouble with the mechanic and this lead to several of the miscommunications and trips to their shop at no fault of the car, but the problem was never fixed. After replacing several parts the knob barely turns and it really feels like it is going to break. It will go to heat but not to AC. If it does get over to AC the internal flab just stays closed and nothing happens, as in NO heat will come out and just the fan blows. I live in Idaho and this last years winter was pretty brutal. These problems keep us from driving the car and did several times while causing severe inconvenience.
The solutions, remove the dash, again, replace the entire console and assembly that is controlled by these units and start over. So essentially rebuild the inside of the car�s dash at 60,000 miles. The cost to us just to go through this and have NO solution was about $800.00. The cost to replace everything would be several thousand dollars or about as much as car is worth.
- kbar, Boise, ID, US