Control arm, ball joint or bushing failure on the 2013 Nissan Altima
1 crash 1 of the 246 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 control arm, ball joint or bushing failure gets reported
Owners of the 2013 Nissan Altima report control arm, ball joint or bushing failure at a median of 103,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 84,000 miles and a quarter after 125,000 miles, from 199 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 108,000 miles. It is the 3rd most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 69,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 149,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 80,400 miles across the middle 80% of reports.
A spread this wide points at use rather than design. Towing, climate, service history and city mileage all move a failure like this, so the median is a weak guide to any individual car.
3% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 68,600 miles | 83,648 miles | 103,000 miles | 125,000 miles | 149,000 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 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 $400–$2,200 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 10 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2008, at a median of 60,000 miles, and latest on the 2001 at 170,000 miles.
By volume the 2013 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.
The control arm on my 2013 nissan altima broke while entering the freeway on (7/20) during rush hour, causing me to lose steering in the rear of my vehicle. The equipment failure caused me to be stranded on the highway, forcing me to have my car towed to the nearest auto repair shop, costing me $2,220 in repairs. My vehicle only had 72,720 miles when the malfunction occurred. In reaching out to I-90 nissan in sheffield ohio, which is where I purchased my vehicle, the staff was friendly but deferred me to nissan corporate to file a claim with consumer affairs. Consumer affairs denied my claim because I did not take my vehicle to an 'authorized dealer'. While stranded on the highway, the last place I was thinking about taking me vehicle was to the dealer (15+ miles away) that sold me a car that had a major equipment failure in less than 5 years of owning it. I needed to have my broken control arm replaced, the driver side control arm replaced because it was about to break due to rust and stress fractures. In addition, I needed my stabilizer arms replaced. Attached is a photo of the broken control arm. You can see on the broken…
While driving down the road the rear control arm broke off. The car only has 46,000 miles and is 5 year old yet rusted so badly from the inside out that the arm completely broke off..
While backing my car out of a parking space, I heard a pop and rear of the car dropped. I got out and saw the left rear of the car was lower, top of tire not visible. The dealership where I purchased my car new (sept. 12, 2012) was only 3 miles away on secondary roads, so I took my car there to be looked at. The dealer called me back the next day and told me the left rear lower control arm had broken and right rear lower control arm was cracking in the same place and needed to be replaced. The service advisor and service manager both said they have never seen anything like this happen before on a six year old car.*dt consumer stated failure of suspension on both rear passenger side. Updated 12/12/18*jb
Also reported on the 2013 Nissan Altima
Headlight failure or clouding
Airbag warning light or occupant sensor fault
Other powertrain problem
CVT failure
Other body or interior problem
Other lighting problem
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 246 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 control arm, ball joint or bushing failure happen on the 2013 Nissan Altima?
Across 199 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 103,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 84,000 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 control arm, ball joint or bushing failure on the 2013 Nissan Altima?
246 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 0.8 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