My 2008 g35 died today-as I was exiting the freeway, heard hissing noise, thought maybe I had tire problem, then sounded like there was road debris. Service engine light and all the idiot lights lit up. I turned off the car to check my wheels, all looked fine, went to restart car, could not get it to start. My son (my trusted mechanic) who has done my basic services, looked at it, spitting some oil, looks like it threw a rod. Motor is toast. Engine still has oil in it. I have 77,000 miles at 69 months, so it is out of warranty. I never expected a maintained vehicle to throw a rod. Will be towing to the Infiniti dealer this week, but curious if anyone else has seen this problem.

Thanks

 

Ouch, that really sucks. When you say "spitting some oil" do you know where it's coming from? It is dripping a little or a massive puddle? You said you were exiting the freeway, were you getting on it at all, downshifting, or just coming to a stop? Sorry to ambush you with questions, it's just scary for all of us to hear.

The thrown rods I've seen have resulted in some substantial noise, along with gaping holes in the block/oilpan and 5 quarts of oil on the ground. Hopefully it's not as bad as you're expecting. I haven't been around here all that long, but this certainly doesn't seem to be a common issue. Good luck with her, let us know what you find out.

 

Could it be a blown oil hose? A blown motor would be very expensive to replace, but you could probably get one from a junkyard used for cheap.

Did the engine ever overheat before? Did you ever drive through a deep puddle or a heavy rain storm? Were there any modifications to the car? Was the maintenance performed to manufacturer's specifications? I know some mechanics who would put in the wrong type of fluids or wrong viscosity.

 

I was hoping it was a hose or something, but there is a small hole in the block. No modifications to the vehicle. I used the grade of oil the manual recommended. No overheating.
I was actually was slowing down, it is an automatic, so I was not downshifting anything.

 

Are you the original owner?

 

I am the original owner. The Infiniti dealership told me that they can't do anything because I am out of warranty because of mileage, and the cost for a replacement engine is $15000.
They gave me the phone number for Infiniti Customer Care, I have a claim request that they will review and follow up with me on Monday. The service writer wanted to have me authorize teardown so they could verify there was no sludge or other indication that there had been a lack of maintenance ($1200 out of pocket), but unless I know whether Infiniti is going to work with me, I am not authorizing anything.
They called me back later, to let me know I do have some equity in the vehicle, would I like to consider replacing it? When I asked how much equity are we talking in a vehicle with no functioning engine, he told me he didn't know. If Infiniti has no interest in working with me on this why would I consider purchasing a replacement vehicle from them? I told him that until I know what Infiniti Customer Care has to say on Monday, I am making no decisions.

 

I don't want to sound like a jerk, but I've never heard of cases like this unless the car was poorly maintained, or the wrong fluids were in the engine, the engine was low on oil and it was driven with very low oil pressure, extremely bad oil or failed oil pump.

The engine could've been overheated previously driven through a flood, etc...

I doubt if the engine was well taken care of, with all the proper maintenance performed, that it would throw a rod like this. I've never seen or heard anything like this, and if it was common, there would be a recall from Infiniti and lots of threads detailing this on here.

You also wrote in your first post that he performed "basic" services. What do you mean by that? Sorry about all these questions, but it does seem suspicious that the engine would throw a rod.

 

You may want to look into having a low mileage used engine installed instead.

 

Very sorry to hear about this... Its to bad you didn't join on here sooner, if you were original owner....

 

Really? Is that the best you can say? I am Kay's husband and even though she may not have heard of something like this happening, I have. There are a great many things that can cause this type of catastrophic failure. Do you remember when the Honda 2000 first came out? Honda ended up replacing hundreds if not thousands of engines because of a cylinder issue. We will never know the total amount because they have tried to keep that as quite as possible. Then there is the Chrysler 300. They have a tendency to drop valves that has nothing to do with maintenance. You know, sometimes stuff just happens. In the case of our G35, it was professionally maintained following schedule 2. We have all of the service records, and the car never been abused. It is my wife's daily driver, with 80% highway driving, and the car is immaculate. Now I know the car is 7,000 miles out of warranty but for crying out loud. We purchased this car thinking it would last and last. That simply has not been the case, and frankly if Nissan/Infiniti does not step up to the plate even a little bit, I will respond in kind. It also galls me to no end that the first phone call we got after she dropped off the car was the dealership trying to sell us a new car.

Now if you have something constructive to say instead of being condescending we would appreciate any meaningful input..

 

ur son profsional mechianc? infinity verified???

 

I know the transmission has a 7 year warranty, but what about the engine? That sucks to hear and for me to be force induction gets me a little scared now.

 

You're inferring that the g35's engines are prone to throwing a rod, but so far, out of thousands of members on this forum AND on myG37, there are extremely rare cases of this happening, and usually it was due to the owner being negligent, red-lining their engines, or installing modifications.

You can be sure that if I did a search for Honda S2000 engines, there will be many forum members complaining of engine issues if what you say are true. I've been on G35driver forums for a while, and I have never come across a thread where a V36 engine threw a connecting rod with proper maintenance. I'm not saying the G35 is bulletproof, but as for the engine, it is pretty bulletproof.

If you had the car serviced by Infiniti dealership for all your services, they will more likely to replace your engine free of charge than not, because they tend to offer goodwill repairs on cars they service. I know some Honda dealers who offer LIFETIME powertrain warranty if you have your car continuously serviced by them. When you say professionally maintained according to service 2, that doesn't mean anything. Was your service done by an ASE certified technician? Is your son ASE certified? Is he also Infiniti certified? Were OEM fluids used? Has the car ever been in an accident?

How is Infiniti responsible for this? You are out of warranty, and you're unlucky to have one of the "bad" engines that gave out after the warranty period expired. However, there are many more forum members on here, myself included, that have MANY more miles than yours and also modded the engine and have NO issues with it. If you really want to know the cause, you should take it to a mechanic and have them find out what the actual problem is. So far, you can't conclude really anything. Your son could've messed up the service. Maybe the oil filter or oil drain plug wasn't screwed on tight and oil leaked out. Who knows?

Most likely, your engine failed because of the things I listed above- lack of maintenance, low oil pressure, low oil level, failed oil pump, overheated engine, or wrong fluids in engine. It is also possible someone could've driven the car through a deep puddle and damaged the piston rods and caused the rod to throw. If the oil pump failed, your engine temp gauge would have warned you of overheating. Did you check your engine temperature gauge while driving and make sure it was in normal operating temperature before this happened?

And I am NOT being condescending- just explaining to you the reality of the situation. The V36 engine in your car has been out since end of 2006- that's almost 8 years the engine has been on the roads and NO complaints of a thrown connecting rod on here.

 

The powertrain warranty is only 6 years/70,000 miles, whichever comes first.

 

bro.. i hate to say it, but sometimes **** just breaks. No matter how well you take care of your car, it breaks.. in the real world it is acceptable.. if 1 out of every 200 engines have some sort of defect.. that's "only" 99.5%.. Nissan or any other car company find that acceptable.. and AFAIK, not all G owners are on this site, or the internet..

OP... good luck.. while i doubt infiniti will do anything, sometimes I've seen dealerships make goodwill repairs happen if you've been maintaining the car at the dealership.. you probably had that 1 out of 200 engines that had an issue.