Transmission on my wife's Titan

[muddocktor]

Today I've been tied up helping fix the transmission on my wife's 04 Titan. We've had it since it was new and it hasn't given any major problem until shortly before I came back from work in Midland, TX last week. The tranny went into "limp home mode" and was only running 3rd gear, which made it real hard to take off from a stop. Anyways, I got with my youngest brother last weekend who worked as a mechanic for Nissan for 25 years. My daughter had gone by Auto Zone and got a readout from the computer that said it had a "P1757 A/T FR/B Solenoid Valve Circuit Malfunction" that triggered limp home mode. So he said that one or more of the solenoids in the valve body was screwed up and we needed to order the valve body. Anyways, he got with the local Nissan dealer he used to work for and ordered a new valve body yesterday.

This morning I went to his house and we dropped the tranny pan and removed the old valve body while waiting for the new one to come in. Or rather, he dropped the valve body while I acted as a general gofer. About the time the valve body was out, the dealer called and said the order was delivered, so we went over to get the new valve body, 6 quarts of the special Nissan ATF needed and a pan gasket for the tranny for an out the door price of $1074 and change. Dayum, these parts be expensive I think to myself, but a rebuilt tranny would have been much more. And while there, my brother checks and finds that we need to program the darn tranny into the ECU on the darn truck too! So we would need to either bring the truck over and hook the computer up to the truck to program the ECU or if it wouldn't drive without programming he would have to borrow the computer to program the truck at his house. So we go an back to his house and he installed the new valve body in the tranny, put the oil back in and fired her up and the tranny went back into limp home mode, which would let us drive it to the dealership. So we waited around at his house unti 5:00 PM and drove over to the dealership to program the darn tranny. Once there, he got with his good buddy (that he trained, BTW) and hooked up the Nissan diagnostic and programming computer to the ECU and programmed the valve body into the ECU, tranny now fixed.

So I learned quite a few things about the newer trucks:
Transmissions on newer cars and trucks are pretty expensive to work on.

It seems like every darn thing on newer vehicles is tied into the computer on the car nowadays.

It sure is great to have a relative who knows how to work on this new stuff. And has connections at the dealership to let him use their computer.

After all this, the old truck drives and shifts like it used to. My wife is happy, since she cannot drive my car, which has a standard tranny. And I am happy in that I don't have to act like a chauffeur and drive her around.

 

[rwsmith]

Man, you are right....

Not having a knowledgeable friend who also had connections to a dealer, that job would have cost me $5000 easy. I'd better not say too much more because I feel my blood pressure is rising.

 

[muddocktor]

Yeah, I know what you mean, rw! I was lucky to have a brother who worked on the darned things for years and years and still has connections at the dealership. That would have easily cost $2500+, because that $1074 was his cost there and no labor charges. All I have to do is give him a working, up to date computer. And since I actually used to build computers and hotrod them, I have plenty of extra components laying around the house so I can put him one together. He didn't insist, but his old computer is something I put together 10 years ago and is a bit out of date. It still runs Windows XP.

 

[Rangerpat]

May I ask how many miles were on the '04 Titan before the tranny went out?

Just curious because I own one also... thanks.

 

[muddocktor]

A little over 140,000 miles. According to my brother, the oil pan looked pretty clean when we dropped it to change the valve body out, so mechanically it's probably good to go for a long, long time. The actual part or parts that failed internally were electrical or electronic in nature. It was either a solenoid or the circuitry controlling the solenoid that failed inside the valve body. I didn't know they used all those electrics and electronics inside the transmission, just bathed in the transmission oil.

 

[Zipdog]

So how do you know the valve body was bad? You were really just guessing. Probably could have reprogrammed the old one with the same results. Wish you would have given that money to the homeless.

 

[Farmer17]

I bought a Titan Crew cab new in 2004 and sold it in 2014 and it had 265K miles on it. Never spent a dime on it until it had about 180,000 miles then the repairs were minor and not very expensive. I sold it to my bricklayer friend and it still runs great and never had a transmission problem, but it did limp home a couple times the last year I owned it and that was some kind of computer problem.

 

[Farmer17]

I'll give you a tip on the 04 Titan. That was the first year Nissan made it and it has a couple of weakness you should know about. Sometimes the rear axle seals will go out and if you loose all the fluid and don't know it you have to buy a new axle so replace those seals early. Also the catalytic converter and exhaust manifolds are one piece and if they get too hot the converters burn out and the manifolds crack. Thats about a $2500 dealer repair, but my guy just cut the guts out of the converters and welded up the manifolds for 400 bucks. He said he had done that to about 30 Titans and never had one complaint. The power window motors go out after 6 or 7 years and the dealer charges about $450 bucks to replace one. I bought a window motor on-line for about $120 and paid a body shop 40 bucks to install it.

 

[muddocktor]

So how do you know the valve body was bad? You were really just guessing. Probably could have reprogrammed the old one with the same results. Wish you would have given that money to the homeless.

@Zipdog - Sir, do you have a problem with reading comprehension perhaps? My first post clearly states that we had an OBDII readout specifying the solenoid malfunction. And it was reset at Auto Zone with their computer and the the OBDII computer on the truck again reset the code and the transmission went back into limp home mode. And my brother was the lead mechanic with the Nissan dealership for over 25 years until around 3 years ago. He had quit to go to work where he had better pay and benefits and a much better working environment because of a British dolt they had brought in to run the service and parts end of the dealership. Who ended up getting canned for fraud about a year later, I might add. So, I do think he is qualified to say what the problem is and where the problem lies. And finally, you do whatever you want with your money and keep your opinions to yourself on what I do with my money. I earn it, not you so put that in your pipe and smoke it and and go worship at the alter of your nearest bleeding heart liberal temple! If you haven't guessed already, I take high offense to your post as you are basically accusing me of being stupid; don't look in the mirror bud.

 

[muddocktor]

@Farmer17, Most all that stuff was taken care of by my brother years ago. Like I stated, he used to be the lead mechanic at the Nissan dealership and he kept us fixed up on any problems the Titans ran into for the 04 models, especially since that was the first year of manufacture. I don't know when you had gotten yours, but there was a recall before the 05 models came out and they changed out the entire front brake setup with larger rotors and calipers too, as the originals were warping real badly and overheating. And the axle seals and the catalytic converters were changed also. I've never had any problems with the window motors on it though, but those aren't hard to change out.

 

[Zipdog]

@Zipdog - Sir, do you have a problem with reading comprehension perhaps? My first post clearly states that we had an OBDII readout specifying the solenoid malfunction. And it was reset at Auto Zone with their computer and the the OBDII computer on the truck again reset the code and the transmission went back into limp home mode. And my brother was the lead mechanic with the Nissan dealership for over 25 years until around 3 years ago. He had quit to go to work where he had better pay and benefits and a much better working environment because of a British dolt they had brought in to run the service and parts end of the dealership. Who ended up getting canned for fraud about a year later, I might add. So, I do think he is qualified to say what the problem is and where the problem lies. And finally, you do whatever you want with your money and keep your opinions to yourself on what I do with my money. I earn it, not you so put that in your pipe and smoke it and and go worship at the alter of your nearest bleeding heart liberal temple! If you haven't guessed already, I take high offense to your post as you are basically accusing me of being stupid; don't look in the mirror bud.

You don't know anything about my worship practices. At this you are guessing. I never accused you of being stupid.