New set of problems
 

I have to admit, the car was acting alright for a while, and I was relatively pleased with it.

Work done to this car so far:
Water crossover gaskets
Steering rack
Wheel hubs
Engine mount
Ignition coil assembly
Gauge cluster

All of these book for some pretty large bills at a Cadillac dealership. I paid $2400 for the Nissan Deluxe warranty, which covered all of these problems and billed at around $3500 combined over two visits to the dealer.

And just when I thought it had all been fixed,
My power steering completely fails at times when I'm in parking lots. I check the fluid and its overflowing. I never topped it off...
The blower motor siezes up every week. I turn on the car, put the fans on max, and nothing happens. I end up having to pull the cabin filter, and touch the blower motor blade ever so slightly, and it fires up instantly. Rather annoying. Its nice to know the warranty is covering all of this crap, but its still another $50 out of my pocket for the deductible. These are simple problems, not complex ones. The power steering pump and the blower motor on my 95 Regal are original with 216k miles on them, and function perfectly.


HP designed a laptop in recent years. It was the DV2000 with the AMD CPU and the Nvidia chipset. The DV6000 also came with the same chipset. The laptop was designed with inferior cooling, which caused the chips to overheat, and caused the lead-free solder to form fractures, which rendered your laptop useless as the screen would turn black and never come back on again. HP refuses to correct the problem out of warranty, but everyone who has filed a small claims court against them has not just won, but won a pretty settlement as well. There are even two discussion boards dedicated to this problem.

I wonder if I could do something similar to GM for their complete failure in sealing the trunk properly, designing the foglights properly, and so on and so forth...

I might just submit a small claims case against them in the next few weeks, as this is getting a little bit out of hand.

They couldn't find anything wrong with the steering, so the bill for replacing the blower motor came out to $556.10, $50 of which I paid as the deductible.

Interesting fact here that you guys should keep in mind. Apparently this is a known issue, so it might happen to you.

The notes on the service sheet say "check and replace failed blower motor/necessary to install revised bracket assembly"

The note about the revised bracket assembly is what got my attention.



In any case, here's a history of the repairs this car has gone through:

FIRST SERVICE VISIT
1. Inspection of shorted #7 Coil/Replace Coil Assembly and Harness with new design as necessary/clear codes and retest
Labor + Parts: $459.09

2. Check Temp Guage/ Check and replace failed cluster assembly
Labor + Parts: $420.40

3. Check clunking noise felt in steering. Check and replace failed steering shaft.
Labor + Parts: $297.75

So apparently they replaced the coil assembly with a new and improved one, and replaced the steering shaft with a new and improved one as well which won't have the same typical problem.

Total Labor: $464.40
Total Parts: $712.84
Total Tax: $49.90

TOTAL INVOICE: $1227.14

SECOND SERVICE VISIT
Front right and left wheel hubs. Diagnosed as excessive play in wheel bearings.
Hubs #88964168: $296.05 x 2 = $592
Labor: 2.5 hours = $312.23

Water Crossover Gaskets
Gaskets 1 #12583048: $11.02 x 2
Gaskets 2 #12583049: $10.82 x 2
Gasket 3: 12600020: $10.38
Labor: 5.7 hours (see combined below)

Heater Pipe Nipple
Nipple $25689629: $23.04
Coolant #12346290: $20.00
Labor: 0.5 hours (see combined below)

Labor from all cooling related issues: $774.32

Power Steering Gear
Fluid #1050017: $9.52
Steering Gear #19169235: $760.00
Labor for steering gear: 3.7 hours = $462.10
Adjust toe: .6 hrs labor = $74.94

Front Engine Mount
Mount #25759455: $104.16
Labor: 4.6 hours = $574.50

Grand Total: $3760


THIRD SERVICE VISIT

Blower Motor Aseembly
Part # 89018521 - $299.90
Labor: $235.20
Total: $556.10



Total of all 3 service visits: $5543.24

Subtract $150 ($50 x 3) for deductibles, and that's the amount Nissan had to reimburse for the warranty I paid $2400 for.

The warranty is good till 2012/94k, which means I have a little under 2 years and 17k left to go till it expires. Anyone else think its absolutely ridiculous that a 2005 Bonneville would need $5540 worth of repairs?

All I need now is for that half case gasket to go. That books a 40 hour job at a dealership. Imagine being the unlucky tech who gets to work on one single car for an entire week straight.

Yup!!!

shiit, that sucks man

god bless my warranty lol

It takes some real legal effort for a group of owners to force car maker to do a recall or acknowledge a common problem as its in there best interest to ignore a problem as long as possible. Safety recalls are different but much legal energy is used to avoid safety recalls as well. .

Unless your Toyota........

4.6 hrs to change a motor mount. Wow.

Alright, so the last update here was at $5,543. I have some wonderful news! More work!

Since then, I've taken it to a shop where they had to replace the front passenger and rear passenger wheel hubs for noise. That bill came out to $500 for both labor included. We're now up to $6000. But wait, we're not done.

The car was dropped off at the shop last week on Monday late afternoon. Work started on Tuesday, was expected to be done on Friday. Friday came, and they had to order more parts, and now the guy still isn't done today. Expected time to pick up is tomorrow early afternoon.

So what happened this time you ask?

1. steering pump massive leak
2. steering hoses leaking, both return and pressure lines
3. valve cover gaskets leaking
4. transmission pan gasket leaking

What's the bill? Well, you first have to understand that my warranty doesn't cover hoses, so those aren't getting done at the dealer. I'll do those myself. The service manager was kind enough to agree to leave the part numbers for the parts I need to order to do the job myself, which supposedly books 4 hours. How hard can it be to replace 2 hoses? I'll order them from gmpartsdirect.com.

The rest though, $1200 give or take a a few dozen.

Supposedly the valve cover gaskets book 3 hours. When the warranty inspector saw that, he laughed and said "your tech is getting f*ing screwed. That job takes way more than 3 hours). Sure enough, the tech is 5 hours into the job and its not done yet.

Total so far is $7,200 in repairs. But hey, look on the bright side. Whoever buys this car from me will buy it with the knowledge that half the engine bay is brand new, and that all the parts replaced were replaced with revised units that won't fail any time soon!

There is however some good news here. The oil cooler lines that we keep complaining about...well, apparently there are revised cooler lines available now that do not fail anymore. I'll be getting the part numbers for those as well so you guys can get yours replaced.

I guess I am really fortunate. My '05 GXP purchased new in April of '05 has had the passenger side front wheel bearing and the water pump replaced. It's at 64K miles right now and still performs as advertised. As the factory warranty was about to expire I figured there was no major repair on a N* that would be cheap. So I bought a no deductible third party warranty with all the extras offered and I have coverage to 100K miles or February '13.

I'm wondering if my GXP was built late in the model run. Is there any way to determine from the VIN when the vehicle was built?

mine been great till this pile happened. i guess im gonna need that part number from you.

and GXP for sale?!