So I was driving on the freeway when the engine just stopped. I threw the car into neutral So I could coast to the side but I would put it back into 6th gear to try and press the gas, but I wouldn't get any response. Now it just cranks, I've already checked for spark and fuel, it has both. I'm going to check compression tomorrow but I'm pretty stumped on this one. Anyone got any ideas?

 

Instant shutoff probably isnt a compression issue. Is it throwing any codes?

 

How did you check for spark?
How did you check for fuel?
Did you perform a fuel pressure test?
How much fuel is in your tank?

 

Add 1 gallon of fresh fuel, it's fairly common for the gas gauge to show 1/2 tank when you're actually empty due to a failure of either the sending unit or the instrument cluster.

 

ok so you guys were right....the sending unit was saying that i had half a tank when it was empty... that solves the question of why it stopped.... but now i cant figure out why it wont start again i put a couple gallons of gas and it just cranks

 

Can you hear the fuel pump prime when you turn the key to ON, if you lift up the rear seat it's very easy to hear but as long as you are in a quiet environment you should still hear it in the cabin with the seat in place.

After running dry on fuel it can take quite a few attempts to start the vehicle, unfortunately we don't have a fuel return style system so you have to crank for a while. Crank for 5 seconds, wait 5 seconds, crank, wait, repeat. By about the 5'th-6'th time it should start.

 

Yea I can hear the pump, and I just tried to crank in how you said and it didn't start

 

Any codes?

 

Nope

 

How about the NATS indicator light, solid red while cranking?

After cranking a few times pull the plugs and see if they're wet with gas. If they're DRY then something is preventing the injectors from opening (or no fuel pressure), a cam/crank sensor failure can cause this.

If NATS sends the OK signal during cranking then the ECM looks firstly for the crank position sensor (CKP) sending data, if it gets data then it next looks for both (or all 4 if a rev-up motor) cam sensors (CMP), once it sees the CKP and the CMP it knows exactly when to start injector and spark timing. Basically it needs one complete signal from each (takes about 1/4 second of cranking to get a signal from them all) and then it opens injectors and fires the coil packs.

If ANY OF THOSE COMPONENTS FAILS then it will not open injectors or fire coil packs, if you have dry spark plugs after trying to start the engine then something is wrong.

If you DO have wet spark plugs then something else is wrong, possibly vacuum, bad plugs, bad coil pack.

I'm guessing you will have dry plugs, how long did the car sit once it stalled before you added fuel? There's also a chance that fuel could have dried up (forms a hard coat of lacquer-like material on stuff) somewhere in the system and is blocking fuel flow. Typically this isn't an issue because the remnant fuel vapor keeps things from drying out but I've seen it before on rare occasion. Testing for fuel pressure with a fuel damper sandwich adapter would verify that you are getting fuel pressure to the rails. Z1 Motorsports sells a good VQ fuel sandwich adapter to hook a gauge to. One of the major failures of this platform was the absence of a fuel pressure test port, I hope that engineer no longer works for Nissan...

 

So I can hear the pump when I turn the key on but it doesn't sound the same as it used to and the plugs were kinda wet but it's a little windy right meow so I feel like it dried up pretty quickly after i pulled it out.

 

It was like 2 weeks or so before I added more fuel

 

I have the exact same problem. I had a crank shaft code. I replaced it with a cheap O'Reilly's one and erased the codes. Still stuck with a crank and no start. Would a cheap Crankshaft position sensor prevent the car from starting but not throw any codes?

Fuel pump is good, and NATS is good.

 

Yes, these engines don't play nice with aftermarket sensors. Use only a Genuine Nissan Parts OEM, or a Hitachi (manufacturer of the OEM) sensor.

 

So even with the cheap sensors the car wouldn't throw a code, but still prevent everything from performing correctly?