California Lemon Law Lawyer Blog

The 2005-2010 Nissan Frontiers, Pathfinders and Xterras with five speed automatic transmissions may leak coolant into the transmission causing rough shifting. Last October, Nissan extended the warranty on these vehicles to 8 years or 80,000 miles. Nissan blames the problem on a cracked oil cooler tube.

In a NY Times story on its Wheels blog, an expert is quoted as saying, “This is a total failure of the cooler portion of the radiator that is responsible for the cooling of the transmission."

The federal safety agency has at least 200 complaints about transmissions on those vehicles and the Center for Auto Safety has almost 50.

The Center's director Clarence Ditlow states, “It is one of the bigger transmission problems that we see. It is costly and it can cause an immediate failure."

A letter from Nissan to owners notifying owners of the warranty extension talked about the coolant leak, but failed to mention that the leak may cause transmission problems. When challenged on this point, Nissan's spokesman said they did not want to "get too deep into details."

Over past years, thousands of owners have submitted reports of problems with their cars to www.carcomplaints.com, a site dedicated to exposing trouble spots in cars. The site has now created useful sites on each manufacturer's model cars that have the number of complaints, recalls, government investigations and technical bulletins issued. The data is presented in easily understood graphic form. Each site also has a useful listing of the latest problems reported by brand and model. You may go to www.carcomplaints.com to see the URLs for the sites covering each of the auto manufacturers. Anyone shopping for a new or used car will find these sites useful.