Well as much as I hate to admit it, because its true, Nissan does have good cars, but, there are exceptions or loop holes. One is definitely the intolerable shaking and embarrassing look people give me when they see my car act like it will turn off.

The car is good, it drives good, it has put up with my careless mind but there is only so much. The car, lately its been really bad, shakes so uncontrollable when I am at a stop light that I came up with some small solutions for the less embarrassing looks. While you are at a stop light, keep the AC running, hold the accelerator and brake at the same time, since you don't want to drive off, and the last thing is to let the car heat up before leaving the parking lot.

There are set backs though, you will definitely spend more money on gas because its more expensive and you have to keep it running longer and you have to be careful that you don't speed off and hit the car in front of you. I took it to my mechanic for a whole day but they couldn't figure out what was wrong. He told me to take it to the Nissan dealer but I haven't because I found some very interesting points here. I am going to try to write to Nissan and change the part that almost everyone is saying that works. I always sort of thought it had something to do with the muffler. Sometimes I let it run while I am outside the car and I notice that the muffler sounds like its chocking, I'm going to tell my mechanic and see what he says. One more thing, when I took it to the mechanic, he was messing around with a part that makes the RPM accelerate or just makes it accelerate in general. I believe that if he can make the RPM stay at the 1 or 1.5 then it wont scuffle because when I hold the brake and accelerator and leave it at 1 it doesn't scuffle so I am going to try to get him to mess with that again and if it works, I will definitely post that on here! Sorry to write so much, I'm just happy I found some help on that embarrassing problem!

OK - so first the check engine light comes and then it starts to jerk and shake when my car idles. Since my car had about 100K miles I think a good tune up is in order. I have it looked over and get everything taken car of - cost $800. My cars still shakes when I idle. I think the mechanic is a SCHMUCK. I spend a couple of days having him look over the car and he still can't find anything wrong. So finally, I rent a car and leave my car with him for three days. OK so he calls me and finally finds something. Intake Manifold Gasket - cheap part, but expensive to replace. $645 + tax, plus rental. Is this going to keep happening????

I am a certified mechanic, a friend tried to get this car passed for emissions in CT. The emission service center said that she had a problem and that it was going to cost 1-2K to fix. After she left to get another quote the check engine light turned on and the car started to have a rough idle. She had it quoted at another more reputable place and they tested it and said it was a vacuum leak and would cost around 1K. She asked me for advice. I checked the computer OBD-II and the code was 0170 Bank 1 lean. I used the smoke pro diagnostic tester and there was a vacuum leak at the intake gasket at cylinder 4. Searching the net, this looks like it was a design flaw, but I don't see any recall. The last mechanic told her it would cost over 1K due to the extra time need to remove extra parts to get to the problem. Looking at the engine, it probably would take me 4-5 hours at an average of 80/hour (for a cheap mechanic)- the lowest would probably be around 400. It fits with everyones quotes. I was going to check the book to see what the factory listed hours is for this procedure, but I think 400-800 dollars is reasonable. I don't work on cars for money, so I will tell her how much would be reasonable and have reputable mechanic fix it. I usually recommend the dealer since they usually are more reputable, but this is not always the case. It helps to have a non-biased person to verify the problem.

My God folks, Where have y'all been. I've so far replaced the plugs, plug wires, distributor coil, knock sensor, number 4 fuel injector, now it's telling me that i may have a faulty catalytic converter. I tell you no one has been able to tell me definitively anything that could be the "actual" problem. How does one go about checking this by yourself. is this difficult to fix yourself. and ultimately as i'm trying to not shell out enough money to buy a new engine. I'll also keep an eye out for this as a recall item. I am not encouraged by the multi replacements of this part due to the multiple failures of the same thing. grrrrr. I'm going to try to get this fixed this week i'll report back on the impending success, where professionals have failed.

Thanks to all of you who have suffered through this and reported so that i won't have to kill the vehicle in question.

The car was vibrating at idle so severe it had everything rattling even the trunck lid. After changing the normal tuneup components to no avail I found this site. I sprayed some carb. cleaner in the area of the #4 intake port and lo and behold I could have killed the car if I had kept spraying. Definitely an intake gasket issue in this area. After reading the posts about the costs of repair I will do this one myself. My first foreign car bought for dependability and my last. Nissan apparently doesn't back it's products when it's an obvious design flaw due to the amount of failures reported.

We experienced the same issue that others reported: car shaking and sputtering. We took it in to the dealer for a diagnostic and were informed that they would have to replace the intake manifold gasket. We were quoted $960 (10 hours labor) by the dealer. I called around to 4 other places and was told that it would take 5 to 5-1/2 hours. We went with another dealer who did the work for $430 (5 hours labor). So, shop around. We chose the dealer instead of one of the other shops (who was a few dollars cheaper) for the warrantee (12 months/12,000 miles from the dealer vs. 90 days).

We were told by all 3 dealers that this is a common problem with the Altima. ARGH!!!

As with other owners, I had the shaking and rough idling problem. My regular mechanic thought it was the idle control valve, but replacing it did nothing. My son found this site, and sure enough, the site described perfectly the problem (SES light coming on intermittently, idle fluctuating wildly, the whole thing). My regular mechanic was nice enough to recommend a Nissan dealer fix the problem, as he frankly said he didn't want to tackle it. Dealer fixed the problem for $600. A lot of money, but this is the first problem I've had with the Altima, and from reading other peoples' problems, I guess I am lucky I didn't experience it until 124,000 miles. Thanks for helping me.

Car shakes, shutters, and tries to stall at stop in drive,neutral, or park. RPM's bounce erratically. Turn a/c on, steadies out, then once compressor shuts off, RPM's bounce again and it stalls. Have to put car in P or N to keep giving gas, or keep foot and brake and give gas to keep RPM's up. Mechanic did fuel induction system using a 3 stage, chemical inspect injectors and seals for leaks, service throttle body and replaced gasket on idle air control valve. Problem still persists after $650.00. Lost original gas cap, and bought generic at Kragen's. It can't be the gas cap can it?

SES light comes on, but no code can be found,and is reset. SES light comes on again, and code reads misfire cylinder 4, reset. SES light on again. Will take back. Should I take it to my mechanic or Nissan so if a recall is announced for 2001 altima GXE, I can get refund?

Whenever I was at a stop light while idling the car would shake. I put up with this annoying condition when it started acting up about a year ago. Finally, my car stalled, the check light finally went on, and the code read multiple misfiring. My husband was convinced based on , his research on the internet 6 months ago, many diagnostic fixes pointed to the gasket being the actual problem.

We went to a Nissan Dealership to see if there was a recall on replacing the intake manifold gasket? Not convinced with the no answer, we went back and asked the Service Manager if he could punch in our serial number in the system to see? He did not do this because he knew there was no recall for the gasket. We showed him the 22 complaints of the same year and model that we printed from the internet and curiously asked him if he had any service work done for gasket replacement? He confessed that they had changed a few. He asked us the mileage on our car? When we told him, he thought it was too low for the gasket to give way.

Anyways, we knew this was going to cost us big bucks to fix. We asked our local Mechanic to put in the just new gasket we bought 4 months ago, and not to do any other work. He wanted to replace fuel pump and do a complete tune up. This would have added several hundreds of dollars of to our bill and we knew this wouldn't make much a difference from reading other complaints that went ahead changing plugs, wires, fuel pump etc with no improvement.

He did find the gasket was missing a bit that was several millimeters of a open sliver that was causing the air to be sucked into the intake manifold (near the air filter). The gasket broke into pieces once removed. Our bill came out to $760. labor only we supplied the gasket we bought for about $10

I believe Nissan knew this common defect would add up costing them much $ if a recall was acknowledged. I thank you for having this site which gave us some evidence to convince our mechanic our diagnostic find. Thus saving us several hundreds of dollars of unnecessary extra repair work.

SO It seems that we all are having the same issue and I finally got my car back after 5 weeks. No one could diagnose the issue and now that I have it back it is worse than before! We all don't have time to deal with this nor the time and money to deal with this! It took me 1 hour to get to work today and even the AC being turned on is not helping the idol anymore. Apparently Nissan is aware of this issue and has created 7 different gaskets to try and rectify the problem and it is NOT working. PEOPLE WE NEED TO DO SOMETHING! Any suggestions?