There is a long story behind this acquisition (AK knows it) but I have the best of wives, and believe me if this issue becomes a problem—this car is gone. Life is too short to jockey around with stopgap fixes when there are sooooo many other choices available.

There are always lot's of choices but I've had problems with cars with price points far above what the Z costs - different vehicles from different manufcturers and/or that cost tens of thousands more are no guarantee of perfection; either long or short-term.

The Porsche Boxster engine problems (requiring brand new engine after relatively low miles) comes to mind for one example; a current edition of which starts at around $47K for the base or $57K for the "S". I consider Porsche to be one of the best manufacturers in the world but even they "aint perfect". :)

I understand where you are coming from. We are simply at the stage in life where time is more important to us. This morning we had a serious discussion about the car, and the fact that she does not trust it where she was going to be driving it and the distance from home—it now has one strike against it. I guarantee if she were to take it and it defaults to the limp-home mode from overheating (and I know the stretch where it is most likely to happen) then she will never drive it again. Summer is coming and the last thing I want to do is listen to a Service Advisor/Manager feeding me crap if there is a factory issue. I will simply encourage everyone that encounters it to file a complaint with the NHTSA to push the issue into a government mandated recall, and sell our Z.

And Porsche replaced every one of those engines. No repairs they pulled the engine and replaced it. Engines were also 'good willed' for some of the out of warranty ones.

I've yet to see a Porsche that can't make 5 laps on a track. However, I have seen a 335i that can't make 5 either.

And that is something I plan to do as should everyone with an oil temp issue.<!-- / message --><!-- sig -->

The problem I think you're referring to with the boxster was limited to 99 and some 00 production runs when they switched factories, and even then only effected the engines where sleeving was done on the blocks... porsche continues to address those problems even beyond warranty... beyond that, they had well known problems with rear main seals but again porsche doesn't turn any of these away... nissan on the other hand, while it seems to have a normal amount of entry into service quality issues, seems less inclined to address those issues

It seems our Z's are overheating in normal use and conditions - not just for us track junkies - and nissan needs to fix it... period

I was driving home yesterday from center city Philadelphia and was lucky enough to sit in 3 hours worth of traffic going into south Jersey. The car was pretty much doing stop and go all the way home and never got the revs passed 3k. I finally reached the Walt Whitman bridge and I noticed my check engine light is on and I look at the oil temp gauge and its reading 270ish. I pulled over and turned the heater on and let it sit for 10 mins to cool and got the oil temp to drop below 260 and a min later the check engine light turned off.

Took it to the dealer today and they changed out the oil and checked the engine over and said the engine seems to be fine but were unsure why my temps jumped so high.

We all know why. :shakes head:

I've sent my email to Nissan and I'll be calling on Monday when they are open again. My local dealer was dumbfounded when I told them about the oil cooler absence and the overheating issue. Looks like we all need to speak up a lot more to get this out there. Tracking and overheating is unacceptable on it's own, but overheating while sitting in traffic means we'll all be enacting the Lemon Law in a month or two.

An oil cooler needs moving air to work, right? So, even with oil coolers, if we're stuck in heavy traffic, aren't we screwed?

From reading the Porsche forums (which I'd say are as reliable as this one :) ), Porsche seemed to do a "quite/unofficial"; at least early on (I'll admit I haven't kept up with it all for three or four years) recall in that they waited until an engine failure; refused to cover it under warranty then covered if the owner complained enough (EDIT: If you look at the forums, this problem seemed to continue as far as '02/'03).

What brought it to mind was that I was just talking about the Boxster with a prof of engineering at Georgia Tech a few weeks ago while I was in Atlanta and someone drove up in a new GT2.

If Porsche eventually covered (under warranty) all the engine failures then bravo for them but it still seems they loath to admit there was a problem for quite a long time.

Very disappointing to see this is affecting more people. Since it will be over 100 degrees in the next couple weeks here, I am very concerned about this.

Has anybody bothered to count exactly how many have claimed a problem and where (tracking or normal driving)?

It would be interesting to know don't you thnk?

Well not as bad, sitting in traffic the engine isn't working as hard and heating up the oil, and having the oil run outside the engine through the cooler, even if no air is being forced through it, will still lower the temps some.

john

Also, the cooler will increase the oil capacity thus increasing the amount of oil being heated and cooled....lower temps overall.

casual driving, 70 mph, 6MT Just a normal drive home from work.