Hey guys - quick question:

Have any of you had your coupe or sedan die on you while you are driving?

Background of my car (lazy man read): 2003.5 Coupe - 36,576 miles (weekend warrior). Absolutely no troubles with coupe (knock on wood!).

I just installed a STILLEN High-Flow intake w/ Z-Tube. I went by the directions word for word and making sure I disconnected the negative battery terminal before even taking a screw driver/wrench to my baby. Once everything was installed, I checked over all my work (bolts tight,etc) three times starting from beginning to end and then all over again.

Once I was satisfied that all work was done by specs provided and properly, I got in the car and hit the brake pedal (held down for 30 seconds) to hopefully drain the ECU power.

I then got out of the car and re-connected the neg battery terminal and made sure it was tightened down.

I cranked up the car - NO check engine light and the idle was perfect.

I backed out of the drive way and put her into 1st gear and noticed the nice new (louder) noise from the engine bay.

Anyways, I gave her a few hard runs with no issues, but on the way back to the house, I gave her one last run by kicking her down into second gear and stomping on the pedal while going about 35mph or so. The car took off and there was a SHARP turn about 100 yards away or so, ***and then all of a sudden my steering got hard and my brakes (as I was braking to slow for the turn). I quickly looked at the gauge cluster and noticed the car had died.

I started to wonder if somehow I might have KNEE'D the key from ON into ACC or something like that, b/c I vaguely remember quickly turning the key to turn her back on and taking the corner (thank GOD I didn't loose my steering and brake power while going into that sharp corner - I HATE to wonder what would have happened to the car and more importantly ME!!)

I'm also wondering if I hit the REV LIMITER and it shut the car down - but I thought it wouldn't do that, that the ECU would take control and take the RPM's down???

So................

Has anyone had the Engine die while driving?

Could I have killed the car by miss-shifting or something too?? I have no clue...

I'm worried now that I might be driving and the engine will die on me.

The coupe is resting in the garage right now and wondering if by the morning drive to work - the ECU might balance out and I might never have this issue again? (again - knock on wood).

Any advice or suggestions of what might have happened would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks as always Guys!
-WoW

 

I can tell you the reason the car turned off is because of the stillen intake. Search on the boards, there are tons of threads like this. I don't know if there is a fix, but I can tell you that the intake is the cause of the problem.

 

I haven't ever heard of this happening. I am running the Stillen airbox with a jwt filter instead of the stillen. Never had any problems at all.

 

make sure the Filter is installed the correct way and has not poped off cause its known that if an intake filter pops off the air comes inn without a being measured and so causes the throttle body to clse and stalls the car or make sure you have thightened on every single screw etc.. cause if there is an air leak it will uneven the throttle body and cause it to clse make sure its all thight and filter is on the right way with no leaks and or hasn't poped off and run it again hope fully it won't stall on you.
I had a filter installed on my Cold Air intake for my coupe while the original filter dried out cause it was reusable the replacement filter some how poped off and caused my car to drop the RPM all the way down while i was on speeds above 35 during neutral ot lowering my gears.. its all within the filter bro thats how it measures the amount of air that goes inn the engine and cause it to run and gain power. hope this helps..

 

Hey Guys - thanks for the posts!!!

I think I know what might have happened (although, I plain on taking the Z-Tube and Stillen High Flow intake out this weekend to ensure it's all "locked down" properly.)

When I first put everything on (even though I checked my work three times over), I took her out for some pretty hard runs and this is what I now believe happened.

When I was running her hard and hitting some very high rpm's - there was a couple times that I need to slow down (b/c I was going like 80mph on some local streets) and I kicked the MT into netural from a very high rpm range. I think going from say four gear with some high rpm's to all of a sudden going into netural (my foot totally off the gas pedal) after resetting the ECU, caused my rpm's to literally dive down all the way to ZERO and kill the engine.

I noticed that after having the Z-tube and Stillen intake on her now for several days that this was a "FLUKE" and the system just needed to reset itself. The rpm's no matter how high I get them will not fall all the way to Zero any longer, no matter if I'm hitting it hard and then just quickly pop it into netural - I can watch the rpm's drop quickly and get down and then settle in (computer kicking the rpm's back up to normal idle with my foot OFF the pedal).

I hope this makes sense, and helps anyone else with these issues.

I guess it really was all a fluke, b/c now I'm LOVING the setup - the added 'grunt/growl' and the slight pickup in the pedal feel.

I don't believe this has anything to do with STILLEN or their intake, b/c so MANY others have had it for years and I haven't seen a thread like mine - for an issue like mine, b/c I tried my best to find one.

Thanks Guys!!
-WoW

 

A quick search found a bunch of threads on this issue. All after a CAI or just an intake was installed.

https://g35driver.com/forums/g-spot/...ting-down.html
https://g35driver.com/forums/intake-...high-flow.html
https://g35driver.com/forums/engine-...e-driving.html
https://g35driver.com/forums/intake-...-problems.html

 

Crap - sorry ^. I looked but am never good at this search engine on this thread. I'll look again. Ohh, cool, I just now realized you took the extra time and effort to post me some links - AWESOME Canadian!! Thanks!!!

**Update**
Well, I lied. I wrote the other post at work before leaving for home yesterday, and while on the road and really getting on it HARD, it died on me again.

It's weird - in that it's totally fine from soft driving to very harsh, but when you decide to FLOOR the sh&t out of her, and pull some hard shifts, it seems that it just up and kills the engine.

I'll search some more, but if anyone could give me a quick idea of how to resolve this, I would greatly appreciate.

I do plan on taking it all apart and triple checking everything for any leaks.

Any other suggestions guys?

Much thanks!

Thanks Guys!
-WoW

 

I got you started with the links..I just don't know how to fix it =\ Sorry man

 

best way to fix the problems is to just take it to infiniti or if you know any mechani's that work for infiniti he will hook you up and do the hole engine reset and ecu reprogram and your good to go man they will reset and reprogram everything for u and solve your problme and will let you know if you also did the reprograming wrong or so and another thing dude check your throttle body for heavy exces dirt cause that also cause your butterfly inside the throttle body to react wrong and kill your car while on neutral so check if you need thrtottle body cleaning cause that can also b the problem if you live in southern california i could hook you up with my friend that works for nissan he can do oil changes etc.. on your vcar and save you lots of money he would charge you halkf or ess than half of what it originally costs... were are you from????

 

P.s. Enigne check light doesn not need 2 b on ven if the throttle body is triping cause of excess dirt...

 

I think it might have to do with the MAF sensor and aftermarket intakes.

 

Yea that 2 the maf sensor v35fahad pointed out someting i missed out on thnx if anytthing take it 2 infiniti they will fix your trouble or to anyone you know as amechanix that works for nissan or infiniti..

 

Hey Guys!

Thanks for all the responses and help - what a great group!!

I think I might possible have a *leak* b/c I hear some WHISTLING when I get on the gas pretty hard.

I'm about to take her to Forged Performance in a couple weeks and I'll have those experts check for leaks etc.

I also think I *might* need a new throttle body, as the car will <Bump/jerk> some while at a stop intermittently - and I've heard that older models like mine (2003.5) have slight issues with the Throttle Bodies going back and not keeping a good idle after a few years.

I've cleaned the MAF sensor (do that about every three months) and I have now have a very new and clean air filter, and the engine/idle still bumps/jerks some while at a stop.

Let me know what you all think about that issue...

Thanks Guys!
-WoW

 

had the same issue on my g35 06 after installing STillen. although it was a problem at first all i did was clean the STILLEN filter w/ K&N cleaning kit and since then it went smooth. even when i hit it hard. when the filter gets dirty is usually when i car starts shutting off. had the stillen for a bit over a year now no problems. every time i clean it out though i put back the stock filter and drive like a normal human being=)