Misfire or rough idle on the 2002 Nissan Altima
1 crash 1 fire 2 of the 24 reports for this failure mention a crash, a fire, an injury or a death. Those are the owner's words on the complaint form, not a verified finding, and one report can mention more than one.
When misfire or rough idle gets reported
Owners of the 2002 Nissan Altima report misfire or rough idle at a median of 90,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 70,000 miles and a quarter after 110,000 miles, from 23 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 10th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 55,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 190,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 134,132 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
When the reports scatter this far, the mileage is telling you about how these cars were driven more than about the part itself.
4% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 56,438 miles | 68,245 miles | 90,000 miles | 110,918 miles | 190,570 miles |
Read the 10th percentile as “one report in ten arrived this early”. Exact figures are shown in this table because it is the table of record; everywhere else on the site they are rounded to the precision the sample can carry.
What a percentile can and cannot tell you here
These five numbers describe the readings owners gave, in order. The median is the middle one: half the reports arrived below it. The 10th and 90th are the edges of the bulk of the distribution, and the distance between them is the part worth reading. A tight spread — say 70,000 to 95,000 miles — points at something that wears out on a schedule, and the schedule is knowable. A wide one, 20,000 to 190,000, points at a fault that hits some cars and never troubles others, which means the mileage on the listing in front of you tells you very little about your odds.
What these figures are not is a survival curve. Every reading here comes from a car whose owner filed a complaint, so the sample contains only failures: it cannot say what share of the fleet made it past 150,000 miles untouched, because those owners had nothing to report. Nor is the mileage the moment of failure — it is the odometer reading as recalled at the time of filing, which may be weeks later and is sometimes rounded to the nearest ten thousand by the person typing it.
Percentiles are shown at all only once 8 readings exist for the vehicle and mode. Below that the middle of a handful of numbers is noise wearing a decimal point, so the figures are withheld rather than dressed up.
What happens, and what it costs
Of these reports, 1 a crash and 1 a fire are mentioned. Owners write their own complaints and the agency does not verify them, so read this as what the reports say happened rather than as a confirmed count.
Putting it right typically runs $250–$1,600 at an independent US shop. That range is an editorial estimate held in this site's failure-mode catalogue, not a figure from NHTSA, and it is a repair cost rather than a diagnosis cost.
The same failure on other years
The same failure is reported on 11 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2012, at a median of 1 miles, and latest on the 2017 at 125,000 miles.
By volume the 2002 is the worst of them, which makes this a problem of this specific year rather than of the model as a whole.
If one year stands out to the left, that is the year to avoid; if the whole line sits at a similar mileage, this is wear rather than a defect in one production run.
Tick median reported mileage Solid middle half of reports Faint 10th to 90th percentile Colour how bad the failure is when it happens
What owners wrote
Verbatim from NHTSA complaint narratives, trimmed for length. The mileage is the one the owner gave.
While I was driving my car( 2002 nissan altima) the car stalled in traffic and a engine light came on I drove my car to the dealer mike shad nissan in jacksonville ,florida and they check my car and advice me that they found the number one spark plug closed the cause of the failure was due to a poorly manufacturer catalyst converter by nissan and advice me that my engine needed to be replaced this is the third engine on this car this car stalls at highway speeds it happen to me twice and resently at slow speeds while I was executing a turn these cars 2002 nissan altimas with the 2.5 4 cyl engines must be recall or have the dealers advice the owners to brign their cars in for check, before someones gest killed and to make matters worse nissan make me pay the dealer $498 to have my motor look at .why should I pay mike shad nissan $498 to take my engine apart to find a problem that the nissan corporation knows that is wrong with their cars the failure of my engine was cause by a faulty design part. The 2002 altimas are plague with problems.*ak
On march 27,05 my altima began to stutter while driving on the interstate very badly. I decided to return home to switch cars, and it began to stall while traveling at slower speeds (glad it did not stall while I was on the interstate). I took it to nissan the next morning and they said that both of the screws backed out of one of the butterfly valve plates in the intake manifold and the plate itself and the screws had fallen into the engine, thus causing severe misfiring and banging into the spark plugs and destroying them and also scoring all the walls of the engine. Nissan said I would need to buy a new engine but I refused and towed it another nissan dealer after talking to the service manager there and he said he might be able to help more. It has been sitting there ever since because I refuse to pay. The service tech said that all 8 of the screws holding the butterfly plates in were all loose. Many people have taken it upon themselves to apply the correct amount of loctite to the screws so they don't encounter the same problem. Nissan obviously takes the blame according to recall p5202 but it only applies to 04's and 05's…
1) on 4/15/06 my husband was driving my car and complained that it was not running right, and was missing. The check engine light came on. My husband drove the car directly to the nissan dealer in corona, ca. 2) the dealer service department checked out the car and stated cylinder #1 misfire, butterfly bolt fell into #1 cylinder broke spark plug. 3)removed intake manifold to replace butterfly bolt. Removed catalytic converter for inspection, minor hairline crack no codes. Customer decided to have old cat reinstalled. Reinstalled intake manifold and replaced related gaskets. 4) service representative stated this was a common problem and knew what it was right away. They charged me $727 to repair and I still have a cracked catalytic converter. I have checked out messaging forums and found that this is a known problem for nissan altima's. *jb
Also reported on the 2002 Nissan Altima
Other engine problem
Excessive oil consumption
Catalytic converter failure
Other body or interior problem
Head gasket failure
No-start or intermittent start failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 24 is a floor and not a count of affected cars. Mileages are typed in by owners and cluster on round numbers. And the mode itself is assigned by software reading the complaint text, which is reliable in bulk and fallible one report at a time.
Questions this page answers
At what mileage does misfire or rough idle happen on the 2002 Nissan Altima?
Across 23 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 90,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 70,000 miles and a quarter after 110,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is misfire or rough idle on the 2002 Nissan Altima?
24 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.1 per 1,000 vehicles. Complaints are voluntary, so this is a floor rather than a count of affected cars.
What this is and is not. These are the mileages at which owners chose to complain to a federal agency, which is not the same as the mileage at which the part fails on every car. It skews toward failures that happened outside warranty, cost real money, or frightened someone. It is still the only public dataset that carries failure mileage at all, and the shape of a few hundred readings is informative even when a single one is not. Methodology · JSON · this failure on other cars
Source Owner complaints and recall records published by the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, model years 1996–2027 Figures rebuilt Published by AtWhatMileage How every figure is computed