2003 Nissan Altima S from North America - Comments

I have a 05 2.5 Altima. This morning I left church, I had the cruise on at 75mph and it lost power for just a second. When I got home I put it in the garage and killed it. 10min later I start it and it would not. After cranking and cranking, it finally started with a engine light. Is this the same problem of 03? jetskiblack@yahoo.com.

I have a 2006 Nissan Altima. My husband moved it yesterday to clean out the garage. Then he moved it back in. This morning it would not start. The car has 38,000 miles on it. I have seen a few posts that mention that the car didn't start after moving it (brief running time) and then one person mentions that doing so is hard on ALL cars. I'm curious about this. Does anyone else know that to be true?

Going out to TRY to start it again. It has rested for a half hour while I read all of this enlightening information.

I also have the weird sounds in the trunk. The tire wear doesn't seem right and the brake system isn't good.

It's a 2006! Shouldn't they have improved on the earlier models?

I have a 2003 Altima 3.5SE, 75K miles, bad cam position sensor like everyone else. Got it diagnosed for free at AutoZone...don't pay someone $85-90 when they'll do it for free!

My question: where is the cam position sensor (this is the "bank 1" sensor)? Can I replace it myself or will I need to buy the sensor and get my mechanic to put it on?

All of these Altima problems sound all too familiar. I have a 2002 2.5 and it uses 1 quart of oil and 1 quart of coolant every 350 miles. At 81K, the dealership told me the catalytic converter was bad and they tried to charge me $800 to replace. I replaced it myself finding a used one on the internet. When I took the old one off, the catalyst inside the manifold was gone! I would say ask Nissan if you want to know where it went, but they denied that it was a defect when I took it in a second time. Clearly this is a common problem that Nissan has decided not to address. The car will not start now. I may try the cam sensor, but it will ultimately need a new engine. Do NOT buy a Nissan with a 2.5 - any year. If you have one, sell it now!

Hi, I own a 2003 Nissan Altima, I feel others pain. I chose the Altima over the Accord and Camry for a number of reasons and now I'm really disappointed.

My car Has the high RPM and because of that when I switch between P, R,N and D I have a big kick due to high power of engine (1500 RPM) and therefore my engine front mount was broken and also the ignition coil was damaged, I took the car to several mechanic not the dealer some of them advised me they had faced so many nissan with similar problem and that might come from IDLE valve control. I checked nissan dealer to have the possibility of any recall, but no!

I have a 2002 altima 3.5 SE,and I love this car,she had 128 000km and the only problem I have is the cam position sensor to be replaced! I saw 2.5 oil consuming,blowing motors,precat problems and recall they have,it's a real big problem.If you want to buy a nissan again,don't make the same mistake,sacrifice gas mileage and exchange your altima 2.5 to a V6,one of my friend got the 2003 SE V6 manual tranny,and he is over 245 000km with this beauty,good luck with Nissan dealers.

Buy the V6 :)

I have a Nissan Altima 2003... my car one day just turn off completely on me (that happened around 6 or 9 times)... I took it to the mechanic. They changed the Crank Sensor Position... and the car didn't turn off anymore...

But now every time I turn the engine on, it cranks for 3 seconds and then turns on... good thing it always turns on...

Any suggestions how to get rid of the cranking??? please.. reply... I am thinking replacing the CAM sensor will help?? HELP!!! E-mail me to salvador312@yahoo.com

I have a 2002 Nissan Altima 2.5S and it has had nothing but problems. It ran really nice and smooth for about the first 6 months I had the car then it started to have problems and would not start I took it to the dealer numerous times left it there and refused to pick it up until they found out what the problem was and they could never find out what it was. In 2005 the car started to die on a regular basis as I was driving down the road at that time I had about 36k miles (just outta warranty) on it, so I took it back to Nissan where they said oh it has a recall we'll go ahead and fix that so I left they called and said the engine would have to be replaced and at first they wanted me to pay for it. Thanks to one of the nice service managers he spoke to nissan consumer affairs and got them to pay for the replacement of the engine since I had not been notified of the recall. So they fixed the car and I was not having any problems except for the fact that it runs terrible (rough) like the alignment is off on it which a tire company said something is bent like its been in a severe accident which it hasn't so they can't get that fixed for me. Now at 69k miles it's dying driving down the road again and they say its not any recall yeah right there is something wrong with all these Nissans. What can we do as consumers to see that Nissan Co. takes care of this problem. They have obviously sold a product that is not fit to sell to anyone (At this point I'd rather be riding a bike than putting my family in danger everytime I get in this car) Any suggestions???

Wow, reading all these comments sounded all too familiar to me, I have a 2003 altima 3.5 and my car suddenly shut off on me, it blinked a "tcs off" light and brake light. luckily I did as one of the person above mentioned and took it to autozone, over there my cousin rented a machine that would read the code and also shut off the code. it happened to be my crank positioning sensor. I had that fixed by a local mechanic and it costs me about 80 bucks. but then about 2 weeks later, my car shut down on me again. I was lucky twice and I didn't want to risk it again, so this time I towed it all the way to nissan. they told me now it was the camp sensors that needed replacement and that would "take care" of my dying out problem, but that I also needed my catalytic converter replaced too! that's about $1500. does anyone know of a cheaper option?