Hi everyone. I have had a Nissan Pathfinder now for a few months and have a few questions I would like to have answered from other owners of this model.

My vehicle is the DCI 2.5 Trek Pathfinder (manual transmission) registered in 2006. Since I have owned it, there has been a strong smell of gear oil in the cabin whilst driving. It is fairly high mileage (86000) but only a few years old and in good all round condition. I decided to change all of the transmission oils, transfer box, gearbox, front and rear diffs etc. The old oils that came out were in pretty good condition to be honest. The transfer box ATF fluid looked good to. So, I changed all the oils, and went for a test drive and the smell persists. I followed religiously the service manual CD stating that the new fluid levels in the gearbox/transfer must be just slightly below the outlet hole for topping up so I know its not overfilled.

The question is: Is there a breather pipe on these boxes to eliminate odours? I checked the condition of the gearstick gaitor to, and it had a slight split in it, but I replaced with new and still no joy. I am wondering if a breather (if fitted) is blocked.

My second query is that on changing the fuel filters, I bled the system as per instructions with the rubber bulb and it started fine. I ran it for maybe 40-50 miles and then all of a sudden it has started stalling. Its intermittent, and sometimes it will just stall whilst sat at a set of lights at idle.

Has anyone else had this problem?

And my third and final query is this:

Sometime under normal driving conditions I get a kind of high pitch chinking/rattle noise coming from the front right of bulkhead (viewed from driving seat). This rattle seems to go away on its own, but lately has become more frequent. I did have this exact engine fitted in a Shogun Sport that I used to own and it exhibited the same. Is it something generic with this model of engine? I had Mitsubishi nearly tear the car apart looking for this rattle and they could not find it. It seems to do it between 2000-3000 rpm under normal load or steady acceleration. Its driving me NUTS!!

Any help and advice as to how to resolve these problems would be well recieved as I am taking it to Poland before Christmas which is a long trip and the weather is likely to be crap. So I need it to be reliable.

Thanks in advance.

Chris in the UK.

I would suggest you to try on the australian Pathfinder site. There are more like 2,5 DCi's than here. Here is the link:

http://pcoa.org.au/forum/index.php