Nissan Owners Are on Their Own After NHTSA Kills Transmission Failure Petition

Nissan owners hoping for relief on a coolant issue that has been causing transmission failures on 2005-2010 Frontier, Pathfinder, and Xterra trucks will be disappointed to find out that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has closed a petition to issue a recall. The petition filed by the North Carolina Consumers Council claimed that failures were possible in over 857,000 vehicles.

The Associated Press (via CNBC) reports that the NHTSA declined to investigate further, stating that the majority of the complaints didn’t describe a safety hazard and that further investigation is not warranted, given its “limited resources.”

That means over three-quarters of a million vehicles have ticking transmission time bombs, and the manufacturer’s half-hearted solution seems designed to help very few owners.

Most of the 2,505 submitted complaints referred to the cost of the repair and did not mention any type of safety issue. Nissan was forced to acknowledge the problem when a class action lawsuit was settled in 2012 and offered some relief to owners, but it came with many strings attached.

The transmission cooler on these trucks is a common design used in many vehicles with automatic transmissions. It circulates coolant around the transmission cooler in order to keep transmission temperatures down. The tanks of the transmission cooler are sealed but bathe in the coolant. The issue with the affected vehicles is that the tank will crack, allowing the coolant and transmission fluid to mix and sending coolant into the transmission, which then destroys the clutches.

While this usually doesn’t cause an immediate failure, it will cause the transmission to start slipping before failing altogether. The NHTSA may have noticed this failure path in its investigation and decided not to classify it as a safety defect for that reason.

Nissan worked out an agreement with some owners via the settlement, offering a limited reimbursement period for consumers who had previously repaired the issue. There were many strings attached, including a deadline of June 7, 2013 to submit the claims and a deductible of $2,500 to $3,000 depending on vehicle mileage.

The automaker also offered an extended warranty for trucks that could see the failure in the future. Full coverage under the extended warranty is set for eight years or 80,000 miles, though most of the trucks are out of that range and even the newest ones with the issue will be past it in a couple of years. Once that mark passes, owners will be covered until nine years or 90,000 miles but will have to pay $2,500 out of pocket before the warranty coverage kicks in. The last part of the coverage goes to ten years or 100,000 miles, covering everything after the owners pays $3,000 out of pocket.

This leaves many owners in the dark, as most owners won’t experience the issue during the extended warranty period. According to owner reports to CarComplaints.com, the average failure occurs at around 106,000 miles and costs $3,592.

The only solution right now is for owners to do some preemptive maintenance or to modify the cooling system, either by replacing the radiator before it fails or re-routing the coolant and adding another transmission cooler.

Independent transmission re-builders are well aware of the problem and many have gone as far as designing their own custom radiators in order to ensure the transmission they install doesn’t fail. Since the issue has not caused any injuries, Nissan has stated that it is not a safety problem, so we’re unlikely to see any further assistance from the manufacturer.