sgmax

My 98 Max w/ 48K miles occasionally makes a noise from the engine like a rattlesnake when the car is first started in the morning. The sound lasts about 2-3 sec., and sometimes the car shakes during that period. A couple of times, it had trouble starting and would rattle and shake, then stall and I would have trouble getting it to stay running. When you get it running, the exhaust blasts lots of stinky smoke. It only does this once in a long while, and seems to be impossible to predict, except that the longer the car sits beforehand, the worse it gets. Am I heading toward a major repair, or is this something I can live with? It doesn't do it all the time, and doesn't seem to be affected by temp. or anything.

sgmax

Anyone??

D1NOnly34

iTrader: (4)

That rattle coul dbe your starter, I have the same problem, when I start up, the starter makes this rattling/grinding noise, basically what it is, its the little gears inside that need to be greased up. Here is the site that shows hwo to fix that. Hope this helps:

http://www.motorvate.ca/

goldmax

I had a similar "problem" a month or so ago, or so I thought. Actually, I had the day off and didn't drive the car except to back it out of the garage for a while then pull it back in later in the day. It was a cold day that day. The next day when I started it up I thought the thing was torn up. It made a horrible noise, ran rough and belched out some smoke. I turned it off immediately and checked under the hood and nothing was obviously wrong. I restarted the car and it has run fine since. I think Maximas don't like to be started up for a minute and left for the next day. It must get loaded up with unburnt fuel that doesn't fire well the next day or something. That's the only thing I could attribute the problem to. The car runs great and doesn't burn oil. Did you do something similar to what I did? If so, you may be worrying about nothing.

sgmax

Yup, mine runs fine about 98% of the time, it has only happened like 3 times in the last year, but when it does happen it feels like the car is never going to keep running- constant shaking, rattling, stalling and smoke from the back. It takes probably 7 or 8 tries before it will keep running, then it runs perfectly. It only seems to happen when the car has been sitting for several days. More often, though, it it just the rattlesnake noise from the front for the first 3 seconds or so.