Hey guys, I recently picked up an 02 Infiniti I35, for a beater, and am in need of service recommendation. Car was driven on normal bases till june 08, that is when the owner left the country due to his job and handed the car to his son who drove it 10 or so miles a week till now. Prior to him leaving the country he had the car serviced at the local infiniti dealer. Last major service was 60k service, dealer recommends the 105k service and after going over the details of the service I thought it would be best if I get them done by my trusted mechanic. I am thinking of the following, chime in if you may

-- Coolant flush.
-- Engine Oil flush.
-- Transmission flush.
-- New Denso Iridium spark plugs.
-- New cabin air filters.
-- K&N air filter.
-- New AC and power steering belts.

The only issue that I have noted so far is cracking noise from the rear passenger side strut, is that a common issue?

Here are a few pictures.

 

THats a pretty sweet "beater"!!!

 

that car is still in good condition. What items are in the Factory Service Manual for ~105,000 miles?

 

Not much, called the dealer to go over the details and they said they'll change the plugs, air filter, cabin filter, go over the belts to see if they need to be replaced, change oil and a few other safety checks. I can change the plugs and belts myself and am having coolant flush, tranny flush and engine oil change tomorrow as some people have advised not to get engine oil flush.

I love the fact that the VQs have driving chains rather than belts

My mechanic is going to look at the noise from the strut to see if its an easy fix, tomorrow.

 

Strut or motor mount

 

Very nice. Looks very clean.

My I35 is up to 135 K or so. Do what you have listed and you should be fine.

The only recommendation I have is to just replace the spark plugs with the factory ones. Do not upgrade them to the Denso Iridium. They are unnecessary and I have read some not so good reviews on them with this car. A lot of people recommended just sticking with the ones that came with the car. Replacing them is a PITA. You will have to change a gasket at the time you have them replaced. I also recommend that whoever does it NOT mess with the throttle body or else you will have to retrain the car's idle.

I just had my belt changes. Pretty basic.

The noise is not a common problem I know off. Maybe you have a strut issue. Should be easy enough.

I would recommend you have them check out your exhaust system while you have it in. Nissan has an issue with rust. I had mine rust off at the flange 2 years ago and it's a 2004. I also had the same problem with my 03 Pathfinder, fixed it and now some other spot is rattling.

The I35 is one of the more bullet proof cars that I have owned. You should love it. I am considering selling the Pathfinder and getting a second one.

PM me if you have any issues replacing the plugs. It is pretty involved.

 

Ravi, where the hell were you a couple of days ago mang .

I have a friend that has a BG dealership and he performed the tranny and coolant flush and also did the oil change. I swapped the air filter and also the cabin air filter, engine air filter was fine but the CAF was completely devastated, I doubt that it had ever been changed. Here is what it looked like.



Now here comes my ordeal with the plugs. I am pretty good when it comes to performing minor tune ups etc so using a DIY I was able to change the plugs without any issue. While the upper intake was off I made the mistake, which you just mentioned, of cleaning the throttle body and the intake manifold , had the issue that you mentioned of bad idle, it was around 900 rather than the usual 650. At the end of the day I had to replace the throttle body as that minor cleaning ruined it, I guess you live and learn. The belts had to be changed as they were pretty crusty along with the belt-tensioner.

BTW the OEM plugs were toasted, I think the OEM gap is suppose to be 0.44 mm and the ones I pulled out had almost no tips and had a gap of close to 1 mm.

I have had good luck with Maximas in the past, my last one had 257K miles on the odo before it got totaled and I am hoping to clock at least another 100k on the I35, hassle free .

 

BTW the last owner did have the exhaust system fixed recently as he was having the same issue that you just mentioned.

Can you link me to a thread/review/issue with the Denso plugs that you mentioned?

 

You should not have had to replace it unless you damaged it while cleaning.

I cleaned mine as well. It did the same thing. All you have to do is to retrain it. It takes some time, but the steps to do it are all available online. I went through the processes and it was fine.

I did the ECU Reset Procedure, Accelerator Pedal Release Position Procedure, Throttle Valve Closed Position Procedure, IAVL Procedure. It worked great.

 

Yup, performed all those procedures but to no avail, replaced the throttle body and performed them again and everything was fine. I guess I was not gentle when cleaning the damn thing

 

http://forums.maxima.org/5th-generat...um-copper.html

http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothrea...postid=2302557

http://forums.nicoclub.com/zerothread/200231

There are a few more. What I got from a lot of researching is that a lot of people recommended sticking with the OEM plugs. The Denso plugs seemed to have a much shorter life for no advantage. And I don't want to have to change them again. There were a lot of complaints about Bosch.

When I did mine, they were still in OK shape.

You didn't see any oil on any of your plugs....did you? That seems to be a problem I read about.

 

That sucks. I had to do it a couple times before I got it right.

 

http://x.infinitihelp.com/forum/loca....php?catid=138

You should join this forum so you can down load the service manual.

 

Great I guess I'll have to change plugs again in 50k miles or so as that seem to be the disadvantage by going with denso rather than OEM NGKs. I have used denso in the past hence I opted to go with them for the Infiniti.

Didnt notice the oil on the plugs but the tips were completely gone.


BTW I got the service manuals from the following link

http://www.nicoclub.com/FSM

 

I used Denso in the past and they do seem to work well, but I always hated the life on them.

What type of oil are you using? Oil changes are really easy on the I35 if you do them yourself. It takes me about 2 beers to get one done.