Sometimes the cheapest upgrade is the higher cost one the first time around.

Guys, fyi, in case anyone missed it - Alan is serious... he's leaving his 370z behind... we'll miss you on the board, be sure to update occasionally on how your cayman treats you... if anything like my old boxster s, you'll def have a blast!

Shame we are losing people already, but I totally understand.

Well, let me chime in:

Today:

Left West L.A. for Agoura at 3:15 p.m. (i.e., normal 405/101 traffic).
Driving mode: normal to very occasional 4K RPM to pass slow drivers
A/C on set at 76 degrees (auto)
Outside temp per the computer: 100 degrees

My oil temp: 260 degrees :eek::eek:

I will be calling the dealer tomorrow.



If this car turns into a lemon, I just want my money back. I would definitely not recommend this car for spirited driving, especially for track purposes (though I do not do track). Thank God I did not sell the Porsches.

At this rate, I will see many 370z stalled on the road in TX. I seriously think I may have to look for another car as alternative.....

Well, we'll have to see how this all plays out. There are a lot of factors that go into this, and it's hard for me to trust the exact conditions under which other cars are reaching the stated temps based on a post here (no offense to other oil temp reporters intended). I'm mostly basing my ever-evolving opinion of this issue on my own experiences.

It takes me a fair amount of effort to hit 250, I haven't even done so in a while. The kind of driving I do to reach 250-ish on a public road, while it can be done without technically violating any laws, is well outside the usual casual driving experience. When I blend in with traffic and drive reasonably normally, depending on the weather I tend to stabilize somewhere around 210-225, with 10-15 degree spikes up in temp if I mess around a bit like any person driving a sporty car occasionally would.

Then again, I still haven't gotten a good week of truly hotter temps to test in around here, the weather has been pretty mild relatively speaking. I still want a cooler regardless because I'm not a normal driver, and even if this issue turns out as best as it possibly can, I know it's going to affect me regularly in the summer. I'm not, however, yet convinced that the sky is falling and that this is a critical design flaw worthy of a recall.

GG nissan. I will make sure to let them know that I was supposed to have made the purchase 4 months ago but held off due to this oil problem and now most likely won't be purchasing AT ALL. I will tell ALL my friends, coworkers, family, etc about this car and tell them to STAY AWAY AT ALL COSTS. I have a LOT of people who turn to me for car advice too so this is def not good for nissan.

I really did want to upgrade from my s2k. But whenever i turn back, the s2k never fails to deliver. I drive the living PISS out of it every second, do massive track events, burnouts, auto x, and the thing laughs it off and wants more. Not a single plastic clip has broken and i park it under 100 degrees of direct sunlight everyday for the past 3 years. All i do is change my oil, which btw does not even burn a single drop of. I know the nissan is a much higher performing car and I was very excited....but wow nissan, first with the 350 and now this.....pathetic.

That's because you have an AT car. Most or all of the evidence points to the 7AT cars not having the overheating problem nearly as bad as the MT cars. My buddy here on base has a 7AT and he cruises at 200*F and rarely hits 220 even with hard driving. My bottom oil temp is 220 and I go up from there to 250 before I pull over for fear of melting the engine.

7ATs do not seem to have the overheating problem nearly as bad. So because you have a 7AT without an overheating problem does not invalidate the experiences of everyone else with MTs who are overheating.

What is the correlation between AT running cooler than MT?

Is it because on average, the shifts tend to be at a lower engine speed with AT vs. MT?

Or does the AT model have some additional cooling capabilities built in?

High oil temps with primarily the MT is a pretty significant data point.

Very concerned and will wait to buy as well
 

I have been on the fence between a 370 and a Vette. I have held off with this over heating issue for fear of getting a lemon. I am still in a holding pattern but if Nissan does not step up then I will not be purchasing the 370Z and will buy the Vette. I know the future of GM is in doubt however, the engine and tranny of the Vettes are sound and there will always be someone to work on the Vette. Again, I like the drive of the 370 but can't take the chance of a short lived engine or of my constant concern of what might happen. Will monitor the situation for a short while but if this is not resolved soon, I will not purchase the 370Z. For me, it is not about the money with this car or that but what is the most fun to drive.

I'm not sure that constraining the temps to the MTs is an accurate assumption. My 6MT has only hit 245 once and that was after spirited driving followed by gridlock traffic for an hour on an 80F day. Otherwise, we've had 70F weather and my temp hasn't gone above 220 even with aggressive driving. As someone (semtex or wstar) said earlier, the temps seem to be settling down a bit as the engine is breaking in. Perhaps initial engine friction is gradually being reduced with the added engine hours. I also did my first oil change with Nissan Ester Oil at 1300 mi. I'm at 1500 now.

here's the data on 6mt v 7at oil overheating
http://www.the370z.com/nissan-370z-g...mp-survey.html

If there's any difference between 6MT and 7AT in this regard, it pretty much has to come down to one of a few things:

1) If the 7AT's fluid is cooled by the radiator (there are hard lines plumbed straight into the radiator from the transmission, IIRC, but I'll have to go look again or check the svc manual), this may have some sort of indirect effect on the overall cooling efficiency of the car, in some way that I can't imagine right now. Edit: confirmed this in the svc manual, TM.pdf Pg 295, we do have transmission fluid lines running to the radiator on the 7AT

2) It could be shifting behavior. Not user shifting behavior, but what Travis was describing earlier: the 7AT rarely if ever over-revs between gears on upshifts. You click and the revs snap down instantly. 6MT guys are seeing the revs spike a bit before dropping. Given that (as Travis noted, and I agree) the rise in oil temp seems to be affected exponentially by a rise in RPM, this extra time at higher RPMs near the top of the range could be having more effect than you'd expect.

3) User behavior, meaning that basically 7AT drivers drive like grandmas relative to how the 6MT guys drive. In the sense that almost all people who are tracking the car will buy 6MT this is definitely true on average. That aside, even on the street, most 7AT buyers are AT-type of people, and they just drive different, and will often use 'D', which keeps revs *way* down when you're light on the throttle, much lower than where I manual driver would usually hold them at light throttle. However, this isn't the case for me. I just came from spending 10 years behind a 6MT transmission, and I drive my 7AT as close to how you'd drive a manual as possible, and while I'll never approach full track conditions on the street (especially on the braking side of the equation), I'm running the car pretty aggressively.

Any chance that the extra gear in a 7AT is making a difference in temps? It is 7AT vs. 6MT, after all. I also agree with wstar that there may be differences in shifting behavior between the two. I know I sometimes have a tendency to leave it in a lower gear where I'm cruising with the rpms at 4k or higher, just because I want to have that instantaneous torque available. For example, maybe I'm anticipating that I'm about to open it up, so I opt to not bother with upshifting when I know I'll just need to shift back down a few seconds later. Or maybe I'm approaching a turn in 3rd gear. I'm going at a speed that warrants upshifting into 4th, but I leave it in 3rd with the engine wailing at 6000 rpms for a few seconds longer than seems natural because I know I'm about to nail the brakes and downshift into 2nd anyway. A 7AT isn't going to do that if it's left in D. In fact, even in manual mode, some drivers may not leave it in a lower gear like this, not when shifting back down is as easy as a flick on a paddle. (Plus they may actually enjoy flicking that paddle, right? So the more flicking that's necessary the better.) Well, over the time of a, say, 20-min spirited drive, my habit of leaving it in a lower gear in anticipation of an upcoming need for torque is probably going to translate into additional heat, and it'll add up quick, especially if I suddenly hit traffic and lose the cooling ability of free air flow to the radiator.

But having said all that, I have yet to see my temps go over 245. At the same time, however, I'm lucky enough that I have yet to run into heavy traffic at the tail end of a spirited drive. So take from this what you will.

I do the same thing you do in my 7AT (re holding onto lower gears to use the torque). In general, I control speed with the gears and gas pedal when at all possible, and I like have the revs up in a torque-happy area even in traffic so that I can use the engine to match speeds with the guy in front of me easier (whereas most native AT guys think of the gas as the go button and the brakes as the stop button, totally different way to drive).

I'm kinda stuck at home today waiting on Fedex with my gaskets so I can get them in tomorrow, so I won't get the chance for an extended drive during the day today. At some point this weekend after I get them installed, I'm going to put the camera back in my car for some sound clips anyways, I think I'll go out and try to push the oil temps up really hard and see how things are really doing lately with regards to the oil temps on my car, given my higher mileage and new synthetic oil, etc.