Radiator or coolant leak on the 2006 Nissan Pathfinder
4 crashes 3 injuries 7 of the 626 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 radiator or coolant leak gets reported
Owners of the 2006 Nissan Pathfinder report radiator or coolant leak at a median of 101,000 miles. A quarter of the reports come in before 87,000 miles and a quarter after 121,000 miles, from 573 reports that carried an odometer reading.
A part like this is normally expected to survive 98,000 miles. It is the 1st most-reported problem on this model year.
The mileage distribution
The reported range runs from 77,000 miles at the tenth percentile to 147,000 miles at the ninetieth, a spread of 70,265 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.
1% of the dated reports were filed under 36,000 miles.
The whole distribution
| 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 76,535 miles | 87,270 miles | 101,000 miles | 121,000 miles | 146,800 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, 4 a crash and 3 an injury 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 $350–$1,900 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 12 model years of this car. It shows up earliest on the 2013, at a median of 1,500 miles, and latest on the 2010 at 135,000 miles.
By volume the 2005 carries the most reports, with 803; the 2006 has 626. 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.
The transmission cooler is located in the radiator and cracked. This results in the mixture of anti-freeze and transmission fluid. So the ending result is anti-freeze in the transmission and transmission fluid in the radiator. The transmission starts slipping then fails.......there is a long list of problems with this at the edmunds car web site. Http://townhall-talk.edmunds.com/webx?ed_displaymakemodelrelateddiscussions@@.ef14c39!make=nissan&model=pathfinder. *tr
We have been having problems with our vehicle "shaking" at 40 MPH and again at 60 MPH. We have had it into the shop to be looked at but after replacing u-joints, some other items and putting new tires on our vehicle it didn't get better. My wife was driving our pathfinder home one night with our daughters in the vehicle and noticed that the vehicle was sputtering. She thought that possibly she was running out of gas although it was showing a 1/4 tank but we had been noticing that the gas gauge would fluctuate when we would fill the vehicle up (something that we noticed other nissan owners have mentioned as well). She stopped at the gas station and noticed that the vehicle was overheating. We had it towed to a nissan dealership where they told us that the radiator leaked into the transmission and we were going to need a new radiator and new transmission. We are over our miles and our warranty has run out. We have contacted nissan but were told that they are not obligated to fix anything or pay for anything since we drove our vehicle outside of our warranty and have put too many miles on our vehicle. We have been reading that this…
Nissan pathfinder, 2006 dealer states radiator coolant leaking into & mixing with transmission oil. Car would have a severe vibration above 40mph approx. When changing final gear. There is no heat from heater. Car temp would rise at speeds over 40mph. Dealer asked for $8000 for replacement of radiator and transmission. Car under power train warranty but they still won't cover defect radiator. Common problem found online with 2005 & 2006 models, they can catch on fire and the service engine light is not turning on. Nissan hq declined any help. *tr
Also reported on the 2006 Nissan Pathfinder
Fuel gauge or level sensor failure
Other powertrain problem
Other fuel system problem
Other engine problem
Timing chain, belt or tensioner failure
Complete transmission failure
How far this goes
Complaints are voluntary, so 626 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 radiator or coolant leak happen on the 2006 Nissan Pathfinder?
Across 573 owner reports that included an odometer reading, half were filed by 101,000 miles. A quarter were filed before 87,000 miles and a quarter after 121,000 miles. These are the mileages owners reported when they complained, not a prediction for any individual car.
How common is radiator or coolant leak on the 2006 Nissan Pathfinder?
626 reports have been filed with NHTSA, about 13 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