Both front catalytic converters were completely empty when they were removed from the car. The mechanic asked if I was burning a lot of oil. I said no. He said you will soon. And guess what, I am now putting 2 quarts of oil in every week. The mechanic said that the mesh that held in the catalytic converter material disintegrated. But when the engine was turned off, there was a slight vacuum. He said that this mesh material would then be sucked back into the cylinders. The mesh then would etch the cylinder walls and oil would be allowed through these little spaces.

At first I did not believe him. But 2 months after getting later, I started noticing oil burning. The mechanic said that he called another mechanic at a Nissan dealership and confirmed what was happening and that Nissan was aware of this problem.

Check engine light came on, took Xterra in for diagnostics and resulted on catalytic converter problems both banks.

recommendation was to change the converters (both of them) for $1800.00

this problem came up soon after my ECM was replaced by NISSAN in National City, Ca. due to a recall.

that problem caused me to have this vehicle towed 2 times. I had all kind of emission tests done and everything is fine, just keeps trowing those codes that refer to the catalytic converters.

NISSAN only cover those up to 80,000 miles.

NISSAN SHOULD LOOK INTO THIS PROBLEM THAT CLEARLY CAME UP AS A RESULT OF THE ECM CHANGE. (as this same situations has happened to many other Xterra owners 2006 and up)

I will start this off with my story (sorry for the length) and the reason I started this page, so here it is. I recently started having problems with my 2006 Nissan Xterras engine shutting off without warning, while driving, and then ultimately refusing to start or when it did start it was misfiring and running rough. I did some on-line research and found a few sites where other Nissan owners had posted similar issues, one thing led to another and I found out that there was a recall (that I did not receive) of the ECM (Engine Control Module) causing this very issue. I made the appointment and had my local Nissan dealer fix the recall, perfect problem solved, well not really, here is where the real issue starts. The very next day, after getting my Xterra back, the “service engine” light came on. Being the handy “shadetree” mechanic that I am, I plugged in my OBD II engine code scanner and found a P0430 code saying that the Catalyst efficiency was below threshold on bank 2 (a problem with one my catalytic converters). I called the dealer again to report my issue and to tell them what trouble code I had found and to ask them if the ECM failure was related. He said he would look into and call me back later on that day. Well, during that time, I did some more on-line research and again found sites where people had discussed having the same issue after the failure of the recalled ECM. Hmmmm, it does appear that the failure of the ECM caused the failure of that catalytic converter, good info.. When the dealer called me back I told him what I had found, it was at this time, he told me (off the record) that it was a common issue and that he was glad that I had done my research and that he would look into trying to get it covered under warranty even though my mileage was 2000 miles over the 80,000 mile limit. The next day, when he called me back, he mentioned that he was getting resistance from his end and that he suggested that I contact Nissan directly, so I did. I called them, told them my story, and then waited another few days for them to get back to me with their decision whether they were going to cover the issue or not. When they called they said that they were happy to inform me that they would cover $300 of the $1300 cost to replace the catalytic converter. I said, “only $300?? I feel that Nissan should be covering 100% of the repair costs because it was the failure of the ECM that had caused the catalytic converter to fail”. Well, Nissan said, “Our engineers have not determined that the failure of the ECM can cause the failure of the catalytic converters, but if at some point they do determine that, we will refund all of your repair costs”. I don’t think it is mere coincidence that my “cat” failed directly after the failure of the ECM, I call BS on this. I am certain the Nissan engineers know much more about these failures than I do and are keeping it hush so that they don’t have to cough up millions of more dollars to fix their faulty engineering. What happened to the days when companies stood behind their products and did the right thing because it was the right thing to do. There seems to be a growing epidemic in this country (or planet) where big businesses (Banks, Automobile Co’s., ect..) have their hand out accepting millions of dollars from the government but are giving nothing back and are not standing behind a product that we are ultimately footing the bill for. This is wrong and we need to stand up for our rights and stand up for the values this country was founded upon. Like I said, “A single squeak may be difficult to hear but many squeaks are difficult to ignore.”