I have just joined after watching this site and getting good information, which I appreciate.

Today, after driving about 5 minutes, I stopped, turned off the car and left it for 2 minutes. When I restarted and backed out I heard a clunk from the rear. The car then had limited, or slipping acceleration (in regular AT mode-I did not try shifting), and the AT light was on. A few minutes later I turned it off and restarted it and it seemed fine, with no lights and full power. I'm about to bring it to the dealer (Douglas in NJ, which has beeen good with my previous I30 and G20) for the 3500 mile service, anyway.

Any idea what happened? The car has been fine otherwise, although it may be pulling to the right a little.

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Sounds like the tranny went into a safety mode whereby only very limited power and mobility is available.
This can happen after spirited driving where the tranny oil gets too hot.
Like the engine ECU, The TCU will store Malfunction codes that can be dowloaded and read to indicate the problem.

Time to get the dealer to check it out with his Consult II scan tool.

The pulling to the right could be a suspension component that needs replacing. Nissan/Infiniti should know about this issue and be able to help.

 

Thank you. I have an appointment with the dealer tomorrow. Your description of limited power sounds like what happened, but I don't know why, as I had only been driving a few minutes on this errand and never went above 25 MPH with no rapid acceleration, etc. I'll let you know what the dealer says about that and the possible pull.

Thanks again.

 

The dealer reported that they found "no self diag or freeze frame data" so it remains a mystery. It has not happened again and I hope it does not. They felt the steering was fine also.

 

Andy, any problems since? I had something similar happen to me tonight but mine was going forward not in reverse but like you never got above 25mph and probably barely above 15mph. I didn't have a clunk and no AT light came on, but had limited power. I shifted to N and then back to D and everything was back to normal. I made absolutely sure i was in D at the time i felt i had limited power.

 

It happened one other time a while ago, but cleared immediately when I restarted the car. I did not go to the dealer with that one. None since.