2005 NISSAN XTERRA — Complaint #941713
Open-data reference.
NHTSA Complaint about POWER TRAIN:AUTOMATIC TRANSMISSION:COOLING UNIT AND LINES filed September 28, 2012
NHTSA complaint #941713 (ODI reference 10477446) concerns a 2005 NISSAN XTERRA and was filed on September 28, 2012. The owner reports the failure occurred on September 16, 2012. The vehicle had 100,000 miles on the odometer at the time of the incident. The report was geocoded to Alaska based on the filer's self-reported location. The affected component is categorized as power train:automatic transmission:cooling unit and lines, one of NHTSA's standardized taxonomy codes used to group defect patterns across make, model, and year.
The filer flagged the following severity indicators: crash: no, fire: no, injuries: 0, fatalities: 0. No crash, fire, or fatality was associated with this report, which places it in the early-warning stream rather than the priority-review stream. Because a VIN was supplied, this complaint is tied to a specific vehicle and not just a model-year cohort.
Individual complaints are consumer-submitted and unverified by NHTSA engineers — the agency's role at this stage is to collect, index, and make them searchable. What matters for federal action is the pattern: when many owners of the same NISSAN XTERRA cohort independently describe similar power train:automatic transmission:cooling unit and lines failures, defect investigators have grounds to open a PE and request manufacturer data. Related filings for the same vehicle and component appear below, and the detail page for the full 2005 NISSAN XTERRA shows the complete component-level complaint distribution alongside any active investigations or recalls.
Complaint Description
OUR DAUGHTER WAS DRIVING HOME, LATE AT NIGHT, WHEN THE ENGINE BEGAN MAKING STRANGE SOUNDS AND LURCHING AT ABOUT 50 MPH. SHE WAS ONLY A FEW BLOCKS FROM HOME, SO DROVE HOME VERY SLOWLY. ON LATER INSPECTION, MY HUSBAND FOUND THE RADIATOR/TRANSMISSION ISSUE AND LOOKED ON THE INTERNET TO SEE IF OTHERS HAD THIS PROBLEM. WE WERE HORRIFIED TO DISCOVER THAT MANY, MANY, MANY NISSAN OWNERS HAVE THE SAME EXACT PROBLEM OF COOLANT IN THE TRANSMISSION. (OUR XTERRA HAS JUST OVER 100,000 MILES.) THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A WELL KNOWN ISSUE WITH NISSAN, BUT NOTHING HAS BEEN DONE. WE SPOKE WITH A REGIONAL MANAGER WITH NISSAN WHO LISTENED POLITELY, SAID SHE'D LOOK INTO IT, AND HAD HER ASSISTANT FINALLY CALL US OVER A WEEK LATER (SHE PROMISED FOUR DAYS) TO SAY NOTHING COULD BE DONE. SOMETHING CAN BE DONE! I ENCOURAGE ANYONE WITH THIS SAME PROBLEM TO WRITE TO NISSAN, SEND A CC TO YOUR BETTER BUSINESS BUREAU, AND SUBMIT COMPLAINTS TO CONSUMER AWARENESS GROUPS TO DOCUMENT THIS PROBLEM AND GET NISSAN TO ACT RES
Complaint Details
| NHTSA Complaint ID | 941713 |
| ODI Number | 10477446 |
| Date Filed | September 28, 2012 |
| Failure Date | September 16, 2012 |
| VIN | 5N1AN08W05C |
Source: NHTSA Vehicle Complaints Database. Component taxonomy and severity codes are standardized by NHTSA Office of Defects Investigation.
Read our methodology — how this data is sourced, computed, and verified.