Under the hood: Headlamps on Altima have a familiar problem
I own a 2014 Altima SV, and the low beam headlights are increasingly dim. My husband replaced the bulbs, but there was no change. Upon further inspection, it appears to us that the magnifier lens is cloudy. I’ve resorted to using high beams when driving at night. This is obviously a safety issue. I did some online searches & find that other Altima owners are experiencing the same problem. I had a case with Nissan North America, but they just refer me back to the local dealerships. The two dealerships I’ve contacted said they couldn’t find any problem. Neither bothered to drive the car at night; instead, they offered to replace the bulbs for a cost of approximately $150! Can you offer any assistance?
This is a common beef with 2013-2015 Altima owners! Apparently the projector units within the headlamp housings do a lousy job that gets worse with time to the point of being a safety complaint. Projector headlamps use a combination of optical tricks and a lens to more accurately focus either conventional halogen, LED or HID illumination than larger oldschool reflector type headlamp housings. At least, in theory they do.
I believe you have two options. The first is to turn up the heat with fellow Altima owners via various car complaint websites, connect with a law firm investigating a related class action lawsuit, and file a safety complaint with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Hopefully Nissan will step up and do the right thing! Option two is take a $200 to $300 gamble with a pair of aftermarket headlamp projector housings or retro-fit projectors. One projector brand that looks promising is Morimoto, sold through “The Retrofit Source.”
I am experiencing a problem with my 2002 Chevy Avalanche (5.3 liter engine). The oil pressure gauge recently began sticking at 40 psi when I turn the engine off. If I restart the engine, it then goes to 0 psi and then to its normal range of 40 to 60 psi depending on engine rpm. I took it to the local Chevy dealer and they replaced the oil pressure sensor, but this did not help. Then the dealer replaced the instrument cluster. This also did not help — the oil pressure still did not return to 0 psi. They finally opened up a tac case for assistance. The results of the tac case was “that this is a rare but normal occurrence for this year, make and model.” The dealer said that there was not anything else they could do and I would just have to live with the issue.
Iran your symptoms past Mike Kincer, a GM instrument panel rebuilding expert (Kincer’s Service, Mt. Vernon, Ky.), and the consensus is your dealer and GM are straight shooting on this. 2002 was the final year of the almost bulletproof air core instrument gauges, which were followed by much more problematic stepper motor gauges (a large part of his business involves fixing instrument clusters containing these). Air core gauges tend to float at shutoff. As long as the gauge snaps to zero at startup and reads properly while driving, there isn’t anything to fix! My Chevy Tahoe does the exact same thing.