Our Pathfinder R51 started making some noise from the right side valve cover this summer.. I figured the injectors were gettig louder...

only 94K miles... shouldn't be anything major....

It progressively got louder and i realised it wasn't the Injectors... and started doing some research... came across all the chain issues..

Time to trade it in quick before it gets worse.....

THE DAY we went to trade it it.. when we started it up.. it changed from a tick to a growl... and a weird sound from more in the middle of the motor....

Rut Roe..

The Stealership would only give us 2K in trade on the car with the noise it was making... That aint gonna cut it....

Soooo I tore it apart....

It took the better part of two days fumbling around in the freezing cold to get everything torn off...

And this is what I found:

The right side secondary chain tensioner guide had worn through to the plunger... then the plunger wore to the point that it came out of the tensioner body and took a ride through the cam gear area... I found it below the secondary timing chain in the little void space before the primary chain gear...

ugh.... ]

now to wait for parts!!!


If i had just resigned myself to tear it apart a couple months ago.....

I don't recall if anyone on this forum has replaced the timing chain and tensioners but somebody has on the club frontier forums. Good luck with the repair!

deermjd wrote:I don't recall if anyone on this forum has replaced the timing chain and tensioners but somebody has on the club frontier forums. Good luck with the repair!

Well... Maybe I'm #1 then.. LOL..

no it was a issue with the chain being to sharp on the earlier models. nissan made changes to the later models to prevent this issue.

so are you still getting rid of the pathy?

disallow wrote:so are you still getting rid of the pathy?

Not.. we still owe $8000 on the thing...

it has to last several more years!!!

What year is yours? I had my timing chain replaced on my 05 three years ago at about 50k miles.

deermjd wrote:What year is yours? I had my timing chain replaced on my 05 three years ago at about 50k miles.

He stated in an earlier post that its an 06.

if the chains are too sharp and cutting through the tensioner shoes, why is there such a variance in mileages at which the failure occurs?
it sounds like it is a design flaw rather than a manufacturing defect.
chains are generally manufactured in bulk, on rolls, so it's not like the problem engines are due to defective chains.
has anyone determined what causes this problem on some but not others?
oil level?
oil quality?
driving habits?
etc.............?

There was a part number change for the intake cam gears in 5/2007

from 13025EA21

to 13025EA21A

the secondary chain went from

130287Y010

to

13028ZK00B

at the same time....