Misfire or rough idle on the 2005 Nissan Altima
3 crashes 3 of the 8 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 2005 Nissan Altima report misfire or rough idle at a median of 110,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 90,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles, from 8 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 92,000 miles. It is the 29th most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 80,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 180,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 99,000 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.
0% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 80,300 miles | 89,000 miles | 111,111 miles | 122,833 miles | 179,300 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, 3 a crash is 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 carries the most reports, with 24; the 2005 has 8. A mode that appears across most years of a model is usually a design choice rather than a bad batch.
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.
When restarting my car when driving for a while. I restart my car and it hesitate to crank over the engine shakes like it misfiring. Engine service light turns on and engine crawls to a halt and turns off. I took it to meineke they said it was a bad cam sensor cost me 130 to replace and engine worked fine for 4 months. Same problem again took it's to nissan of manhattan they said the computer needed to be reprogrammed. Worked for about 4 more months now looks like I'm going to need the crank sensor replaced again. There a recall on my model car but not my VIN number. *tr
Rough idle. 3 years ago it did the same thing and I had the 0'2 sensors replaced and the crankshaft position sensor replaced. I drive it in town so in the 3 years I have put about 25,000 miles on it. The service engine soon light is on now and nissan told me that I need to take it to a dealership and pay them to check out the engine and send nissan the results and they "may" reimburse me for the cost of checking it out. I just replaced the spark plugs last week because I was told them needed replaced. It ran fine for a little while now back to same things. I have noticed that it leaks a little oil, about the size of a nickel over the course of 2-3 days. There is also oil round the crankcase. Wondering why might be. Thanks *tr
Rough idle. 3 years ago it did the same thing and I had the 0'2 sensors replaced and the crankshaft position sensor replaced. I drive it in town so in the 3 years I have put about 25,000 miles on it. The service engine soon light is on now and nissan told me that I need to take it to a dealership and pay them to check out the engine and send nissan the results and they "may" reimburse me for the cost of checking it out. I just replaced the spark plugs last week because I was told them needed replaced. It ran fine for a little while now back to same things. I have noticed that it leaks a little oil, about the size of a nickel over the course of 2-3 days. There is also oil round the crankcase. Wondering why might be. Thanks *tr
Also reported on the 2005 Nissan Altima
Other body or interior problem
Other engine problem
Rust or structural corrosion
Engine sensor failure
Control module (ECM/PCM/BCM) failure
Other powertrain problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 8 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 2005 Nissan Altima?
Across 8 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 110,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 90,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 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 2005 Nissan Altima?
8 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