Nissan Sentra Extended Crank

Problem:

When you try to start the Nissan Sentra years 2002-06, it will take a long time to start and may not make any progress at all in 5-10 seconds.  So you release the ignition and try again and will usually get it by the 2nd or 3rd time.  If you have excess power draw in the car such as the AC on, you might as well just give up and turn it off first.

Solution:

Replace the check valve in the fuel pump assembly.  This is such a well-known issue that there is a service bulletin out for this issue.  NTB05-052A is the reference number and you can find on a Google search or just look down below.  I had this replaced and it starts like a champ, even with the AC on.

Musings:

The Start:

So you might find my lack of detail in Problem/Solution annoying.  I found it a little irritating to hold back from providing more details.  But this is on purpose because my goal for this site is to present problems and solutions clearly and concisely and not let them get too bogged down with musings.  If someone just wants the short and sweet, they should be able to find out about it without digging through a long, elaborate, and divergent discussion.

My knowledge on the subject comes from the fact thatI own a 2006 Nissan Sentra and this started happening after only a few years of ownership.  Being young and dumb (or just slightly younger and dumber), I ignored the issue because frankly it is a nuisance issue and didn't seem worth the trouble or money at the time.  The two very important facts I overlooked was that this jumpst from mild nuisance when you're happy and not in a hurry to seriously frustrating when you're stressed out and in a hurry.  Or in the case of thinking an axe murderer is chasing you in a parking lot could probably induce a heart attack.

The second fact I overlooked is that my car was still within it's 3 year warranty period at the time.  However, since I waited until outside that period, Nissan said screw you, good luck fixing it.  Being an engineer, I can totally understand why they would do this.  I probably would too if I was a large company.  But even so, it feels dishonest to tell someone that you won't fix their problem that you know you caused for them and that you know probably did break within the warranty period.

Setback!

Time for a Setback!  So I was getting to a point in my life where I had a steady job out of college and could consider expensive frivolities such as resolving outstanding issues on my car.  Weird huh?  I have had a decent paying job for about a year by the time I get to this point and while I'm not a miser, I'm certainly not as spendy as most people I knew in college.  So I have no idea how people do it, but that's beside the point.

So here I am, at Advance Auto Parts in the parking lot replacing something on my car and this guy a few parking spots over starts talking to me.  Now, parking spots aren't as personal as urinal stalls, but they do have their similarities which made this awkward at first.  But I got over it and had a chat with the guy, it turns out that he also owns a 2006 Nissan Sentra and wanted to ask me about issues.  He said he had the same extended crank issue, but had monitored his fuel line pressure and didn't think the check valve was bad.  So he had replaced many of the stock systems in the engine and upgraded them.  I was intrigued, but this was like showing a chimpanzee the finer points of a space shuttle: I didn't catch anything.

The only thing I understood was that a "person who know more about cars than me" thinks it's not the service bulletin problem.  This got me by for another year or two on apathy, but then I finally gave in.  My garage told me the check valve was bad (and they were right, when it was replaced the problem went away immediately).

Getting down to it:

So now you're realized that you have to pay for the new parts yourself and install them.  If you're a do-it-yourself-er, you can probably handle this yourself.  Just go out and buy the $283 part kit from Nissan and you're good.  But serious, they charge THAT for just a few parts!  Yep.  Sucks to be you.

But if you're in a hurry like me and don't feel like ripping your car apart, you can have a mechanic do it for you.  Just depends where you are on the time vs. money curve, or you can plot this in 3D by making the third axis the laziness factor.  When I brought this up to my mechanic, he suggested that once he ripped the car apart and then the fuel pump assembly, I might come out about the same to just buy the whole fuel pump assembly so he could just drop it in and not put so much work into labor.

Well in that case, it's even easier to replace yourself, but now you're back $600.  Well, that sucks too, but do you really think it's worth pulling it apart yourself?  It's really a preference thing.  I know cars aren't anywhere close to magic, they are just relatively simple mechanical devices.  However, I also know from engineering projects that experience does make a world of difference in reliability.  And I don't want my baby to cry if you know what I mean.  I want the world's least expensive, most boring, 100% reliable car.  Some people want antique project cards that are expensive, sporty, and only 80% reliable.  I say 80% because I imagine they would have to function at least 4 days out of 5 or it probably wouldn't leave the garage often.

So I took the least time intensive but most expensive route and had the garage do it for me.  Painless and now my car starts very reliably.  It's just a little thing and I got by with an extended crank for about 6 years, but every time I start my car now, I thank myself for replacing it.  But as a last note, Nissan you suck for making the replacement part so expensive!  Around $283 just for probably like $50 in parts is a rip-off!

The Procedure:

Here is the PDF of the procedure, I believe the Service Bulletin has been revved up to C by now, but I could only find A online for free.  I have included the "ugly" extra features on the pdf so you can download it from here.  I strongly dislike it when people put up pdf files, but don't allow you to keep them yourself.


[Edit 2016.09.25] My apologies, it appears that Google Drive has removed support for displaying the PDF here.  Try this link instead:

Service Bulletin NTB05-052a

Footnote: My headings look bad, it looks like even though Blogger thinks that H2 is bigger than H3 in composition mode, it actually shows up smaller because it is being defined by something else.  It's been a while since I've done HTML, I'll have to see if I can fix it.