Nobody knows what percentage of the engines fail. Nissan would never tell that to consumers. All of our info on failure frequency is purely anecdotal. Mileage is typically around 60K or more from the many cases of failure that I researched. Some less, and some many more than that. With a failure of this kind it will obviously be more likely to happen once a car has more mileage than on a new engine. Ours was a little under 77K when first noted.

 

The rear timing covers are just junk. My 2012 (48k miles) needed the rear timing cover removed and reinstalled because it was leaking everywhere. The header heat shields, alternator, and everything else was covered in oil. Not the same issue, but still.

 

Well, I got a look inside and I might not be an ideal sample. As diligent as I am about maintenence, it appears the original lessee treated it like a long term rental. Not anywhere close to the worst I have seen, but there was definitely a some sludge present on some of the less washed surfaces despite the regular oil changes with premium synthetics for the 30k miles i have owned it. Just goes to show that can't see everything just by peaking under the oil cap.

Speaking of used car inspections, I reminded the dealership when I first got the car and had a faulty PCV valve issue, I told them to go over everything with a fine tooth comb specifically to make sure the car wasn't abused and they reported everything was in tip top shape. As such, the delearship is not challenging me about covering the repair under warranty and they're even keeping it a bit longer to thoroughly inspect things while the engine is open.

Not happy about the whole situation, but it certainly could be worse.

 

Were you able to determine if the gasket was paper or metal lined?

 

Just ask them to remove the covers over the gaskets. They're going to scrap the entire cover anyway.

 

I have been reading into this issue more and more. I read on a couple websites that another reason is those screws were not torqued properly from the factory resulting in failure. Has anyone heard this?

 

That may explain why some are fine w/ lots of miles & driven hard vs. some that were driven to church on Sundays w/ lower miles. It's pretty much anyone's guess at this point and Infiniti sure won't be coming clean on it, that's the only certainty I'm afraid

 

They sent me some pics. I'll be inspecting thebcover when i go pick the car up. Never buying another used car without borescoping the engine. Gross.

 

Wow looks neglected.

 

The cleanliness or lack thereof of the engine is not what causes this unfortunately. Yours is sludgy. Mine was clean enough to eat of of.

 

It's hard to tell but I don't see any broken gasket on his.

 

They are hard to see, but it looks like there are 2 cracks in the main galley gasket. Looks like one running kinda vertical off the leg that goes down, and the other running up on the right side from the first lower bolt.

 

Victory, ask them if they can remove those gaskets and show you them

 

The lessee just wanted to keep it in original condition. Factory fill and all.

 

The pictures weren't annotated, but i believe that's a chunk of gasket hanging out right there. I'll get a closer look when i pick up the car tomorrow