Hey,

Just wondering if anyone in Canada has heard about this. Apparently a guy in North Vancouver, BC has launched a class action lawsuit against Nissan. He claims that the odometers are set to read a higher mileage so the warranties run out quicker.

If anyone has any information on this please post on here or PM me.I would like to get my vehicle checked out and if need be get on board with this.

....is it you? (guy in North Van.)

In all seriousness though, I wouldn't doubt it if Nissan, and other auto makers have been doing this for years. It seems not a week goes by where I don't hear about some major company getting caught for poor business dealings, or just flat out scamming the public....keep your eyes on your fries kids!

There's no way a big company like Nissan would intentionally design them to be off to cash in on a warranty...

They might err on the side of having the speedo reading a hair too fast (which would have the same effect) to make sure you they don't have problems with people getting caught in speed traps (i.e. you'd design it so that the vehicles that come in on the edges of "in-spec" would still not get speeding tickets) tho.

I put bigger tires on mine and made the warranty last longer! Sorry, that sounds like someone trying to make a few bucks. I guess he couldn't think of a new way to sue McDonalds so he's going after Nissan.

BTW, I'm guessing that even if it is a legit claim, you would have to return your X to stock and show that it has an error that is excessive. I would guess that the manufacturers are allowed an error of a certain percentage. The way you are set up now, you are increasing your warranty time by probably 9% and I'm not sure I would want to bring that to anyone's attention while you are sueing over a warranty decrease.

It's hogwash. I'm not positive about the '04's (I imagine it's the same though) but the speedo's in the '03's are adjusted to work accurately with 15" tires - the ones stock on base models and XE's. Mine's an SE and came with 16" tires. I've verified this with a GPS. Since mine has 16" wheels, the speedo has always been off by about 2-3%, which just happens to be the difference you'd expect with the larger diameter tires. I just got new tires that are even bigger and it's now off by about 5.2%. That is, the speedo reads one thing when I am actually going faster/farther. Point being, this will EXTEND the warranty, not shorten it.

-G

It looks too easy to file class action in Canada.

Here is your info....

http://www.canada.com/northshorenews/news/story.html?id=ffc457a0-8c57-4c46-9ad5-15 18787fe11f

Contact this lawyer.....

http://www.poynerbaxter.com/Nissan.htm

I thought I read somewhere that Honda got caught doing this. I am too ill with a vicious cold (not to mention too lazy) to bother searching though.

Edited to add: Whaddya know. Guess I should have checked Madman's links before posting.

Thanks for the info Madman.

Mine is within 0.1% of my GPS ... may be Nissan is tweaking the GPS satellites too!

My GPS has a "trip odometer" which records distance traveled, max speed , average speed, time stopped - all kinds of stuff. I've "bounced" it off my Xterra's internal odometer on SCCX runs and found the internal one fast (!) by about 0.1% - likely due to me spinning my wheels off road.

my 02 is off by 5 percent per my GPS. My outside temp reads off by 5 percent too. My glove box moves around on the latch, Nissan said it is within specs. I messured the height of the glove box and the distance the box moves is 5 percent of the height... looks like Nissan has 5 percent allowance on everything.

The only way the odometer will be able to read with zero error is for the tire circumference to be perfectly constant over the life of the warranty.

Since tire wear can easily affect the circumference, then there's no way for an odometer to have zero error.

In the Honda case, they have odometers that meet the DOT spec for odometer accuracy, and someone still sued them.

If this case is similar (and I don't claim to know the particulars), then it's frivolous.

ed

I'm sure you know this, but I gotta correct you for the sake of the noobs...the wheel size doesn't mean a damn thing when calibrating a speedo, just diameter of the tire. Hell you could run a 29" wheel with a .5" sidewall and it'll still show the same speed as a 15" wheel with 7.5" sidewalls.

Disclaimer: the actual diameter of a given tire is almost never the size given on the sidewall...many 35" tires are actually ~34.5" in diameter

My Acura has a similar situation, and ACura has extended my mileage on the warranty. They sent me a card with the extended mileage.
The general reasoning for this, is not the warranty, but to show better gas mileage then indicated.

Stay safe

Thanks for correcting me and yeah, I knew that. But, given stock tires, the 15" wheels are smaller in diameter than the 16" wheels (tried to make it easier for noobs too ). They are, oddly enough, the same size tire in both cases (265/70R), it's just that one is a 15" (265/70R15) and the other is a 16" (265/70R16), so the actual diameter is also larger on the 16" wheels (which is standard on the SE's, optional on the XE's) with everything else being the same. Which in turn throws the speedo off by about 2-3%, straight from the factory. That was my point.

Now with my 31.7" tires (BFG AT/KO, 265/75R16's), mine is now off an additional 3% or so and I end up now being off by a total of about 5.2%.

-G