[Navara-D40]

I have a 8 years old Nissan Navara D40 with YD25 engine. I can honestly say it's been always serviced on time and we used the best oil and filters. A month ago when we started the engine it started to give a really bad rattiling noise.
125000KM on the clock and the engine went bang few days ago. My mechanic opened it up which took several hours and he called me saying the timing chain has snapped. It is really frustrating as I wouldn't expect this from a Japanase made Nissan.
We tried to check what may have caused this problem and we noticed that the timing gear and the crankshaft sprocket are worn off.
I've attached few pics of it below:

Does anyone know how often the timing chain is due to be changed? I thought these chains last 180K km at least.

 

[deckman80]

From my experience timing chains should last the life of the motor. Timing belts need changed every 100,000 miles.




Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

[Navara-D40]

Hi Deckman80,

It is certainly not the case with Navara. Although I don't know what might be the difference regarding engine between Nissan Frontier and Navara but after reading a lot in the past two days I found that many owners had similar timing chain issues to mine.

Timing chain is prone to stretch and snap in 40-60K miles. We tried to investigate what could have happened to my engine before the chain snapped and we concluded that the top timing chain tensioner failed which allowed the chain to slap and caused a sugnificant amount of wear on the top timing chain guide. I think this all resulted the chain to snap.
Mine is a 8 years old YD25 engine and I've been courious if other newer Navara D40 YD25 have the same problem.
I could find a lot info online especially in the UK and in Australia.
Nissan has failed to do a recall nor upgrade their weak lower timing chain and newer Euro 5 models suffer from the same problem.
I found a topic where the timing chain snapped in a Navara produced in 2013. Just after 40K miles. So I don't think the statement is true that the timing chain should last the life of the motor. Maybe Nissan fitted different type of timing chain in Frontier I dont know.

Here I found a lot info: https://shop.zedperformance.co.uk/nissan-navara-2.5-yd25ddti-timing-chain-kit

In Autralia and in the UK they sell some duplex timing chain upgrade. They say the lower simplex timing chain in Navara D40 can be converted to a stronger duplex chain.
Im not sure if I keep this car long but since my engine is stripped we go for this duplex chain upgrade. We still try to establish what other things we have to change in the engine but this YD25 will definitely not be a success story in Nissan's history. Very disappointing.

 

[deckman80]

Navara-D40,

That is definitely not a normal lifespan for a timing chain.

We had a timing chain issue with the VQ40 that's in my truck.
The timing chain guides were made from an inferior material.
They would wear till the chain rubbed metal to metal.

After many complaints to Nissan they eventually extended the warranty for repair.

Your issue seems much worse.

The bright side is once your engine is repaired properly. It should last a long time!













Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[smj999smj]

Your Navara has the diesel engine, so it's not the same issue as the Frontier in the US, which only comes with gas engines. The issue with the Frontier VQ40DE engine was not because of an inferior material used in the guides, but because of poor stamping of the links of the upper timing chains, which were made by Borg-Warner. As the stamping dies wore, the produced sharp edges on the links, which cut through the plastic timing chain tensioner faces. Because the quality of the link stamping depended on how many stampings were on the die is the reason why some Frontiers have no issues and those that do can become an issue at low miles, or well over 100,000 miles. Eventually, they corrected the issue.