D40 Snapping in half

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The D40 chassis seems flawed, add a bit of corrosion and it snaps. Some say the corrosion comes from impurities within the metal.
The dates of Navaras affects by chassis problems seem to be getting later and later as newer vehicles show corrosion. Nissan initially blamed it on towbar issues and perhaps it was related. With FB etc I doubt if they can keep a lid on this much longer. "You are the only one with the problem", won't work anymore.
I have a Spanish built Navara manufactured Dec 2012. My mate also purchased one at the same time also. After 2 weeks I noticed corrosion underneath. Every nut and bolt had a crust on it like it had been under sea water for a few years. A certain amount happens and is accepted due to the trip over due to sea water exposure. With a bit of trouble it cleaned off.
I purchased a borescope from Tradetools and could see evidence of rust inside the chassis rails. Each service I asked about this rust but no comments or acknowledgement was ever printed on the Nissan receipts. The local Nissan service agent had his own ideas and wanted to use rust converter which I resisted as if can cause extreme rust later on.
Eventually the Nissan service agents did use Rust Converter against my wishes (and Nissans) and without notifying me. The initial result is no rust, looks nice. However it is starting to come back as you would expect.
After a year I became frustrated with Nissans rubbish and used Consumer Affairs in a case against Nissan. This is the only evidence I have that the vehicle was rusty on delivery. Taking this action means I have a better case against Nissan when the chassis breaks. After submitting the claim Nissan still would not use the word rust or corrosion and referred to the rust issue as Mr xxx's problem.

My mate ran some wires through the chassis of his D40 which unexpectedly forced out large amounts of rust, it was very bad. He had the vehicle for 3 months at the time. Nissan replaced his D40.
My guess is that all D40's are affected, but most people will think it's not going to happen to me and just sit back and watch - well best of luck and keep your seat belts done up tight.
 
JLA I will be having a close look under the car this weekend, mind is the same age / model as yours
 
If you have quick look with a snake camera/bore scope it is possible to miss the internal corrosion as it is not bad everywhere. But in spots worrying. Although there are many access holes in the chassis it is difficult to get the camera head into position to check it out. Allow a couple of hours.
You probably won't see much without a snake camera. Most have a long focal length lens and tend to go out of focus in the short distances for this job but still indicative.
Neither of ours had significant corrosion except within the chassis rails.

This is the kind of camera I use. Image quality is low but it shows what you want to see:
https://www.tradetools.com/product-...nspection-camera-w-colour-lcd-monitor-w-proof
 
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Mine's a 2009 model and it's been around the block a fair bit - across all sorts of terrain.

I have a "snake" camera - one of these from Jaycar - it's a good piece of kit and focuses nicely both short and long distance as long as there's enough light.

Will get to looking at mine as soon as I can. Plenty on the plate at the moment!
 
D40 manufactured Dec 2012 A couple of files attached.
All are images inside the chassis rails. Notice no corrosion on the bolt at all. This suggests to me that the chassis were left unprotected outside for a good while before being used. The other possibility is that the steel used in the chassis is inferior.
These images were taken early in the piece but disregard the dates on the image.
The rust is not so bad but you can see it eating away and you can predict what is going to happen. Soon the "later" D40's will be unsafe as well.
There should be ZERO rust inside the chassis rails. A couple of dollars worth of paint when constructed, problem solved.

Where does it leave us now. If we attempt to rust proof does that then relieve Nissan of responsibility? Do we then own the problem?
 

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I know this is a thread about the D40's but has anyone seen this happen with the older Jap built D22's ?
I'll be looking underneath anyway.
 
d22's are fine.

keep in mind, UK i understand use salt of roads.
and which came first, the crack or the rust? we have seen plenty of utes with cracked chassis from overloading. the cracks will rust.

i don't recall seeing much of a problem over here. i would have thought with all beach going ute owners would have had rusted out chassis really fast.
 
If you live in Australia and own a D40 it is worthwhile belong to the FB group
Nissan Navara Snapped Chassis - Australia
Some D40 owners in Australia are affected by corrosion and some are not.
Some think they are OK but are not.
Salt on the road is only one issue but don't think that's the only cause.
Preexisting corrosion is another.
Internal chassis corrosion with no external rust is another nasty one. You can look under your vehicle all day and see nothing wrong.
 
certainly there can be other causes. eg not washing the acid out after the acid bath during manufacturing. (i think some early NZ made cars suffered that fate).
however of interest, D40's over here are not suffering the same fate.
either you guys got a bad batch, nz is fairly small so quite easy for us to miss a bad batch, or its a local problem.
 
speaking of English Cars, i used to own a Triump Stag and it did have a fair amount of hidden rust. my near neighbour has an XJS Jaguar and it has heaps of external rust . so maybe the Poms do put too much salt on there chips.:rofl2:
 
what you have to watch is people jumping on the bandwagon.
poms may have a genuine problem, but people downunder are using that as leverage to get their own self inflicted damaged utes fixed.

thats one curse of problem solving is that there is often many causes for the exact same fault.
 
what you have to watch is people jumping on the bandwagon.
poms may have a genuine problem, but people downunder are using that as leverage to get their own self inflicted damaged utes fixed.

thats one curse of problem solving is that there is often many causes for the exact same fault.

Well perhaps some are and perhaps some UK owners are as well?

Perhaps I am jumping in a little hard but you are painting a picture with a very wide brush. Are you allowing for the AU owners that do have a genuine issue? Where are you getting your stats from about all AU claims being false? Are you making them up?
 
I think Tweak'e's statement does allow for genuine issues too, but I tend to agree - there's going to be more than a few people who have caused a problem on their own ute (perhaps even unwittingly) where the symptoms are at least similar to those experienced by the UK owners and seek to have that remedied based on the precedent set by Nissan UK. It would be pretty difficult to produce statistics proving that some people will try to BS their way out of a situation!
 
I suppose there are abuse situations where you could try to make it look like it is a warranty claim. In my case I showed Nissan the corrosion two weeks after purchase.

I read an article about load carrying capabilities of 4WD utes. It said that utes were not designed to run at full load all of the time. They are designed to be loaded up, deliver the load and unload. So for much of it's life a ute carries little load.
The article also suggested that even without exceeding the maximum load ratings - if you keep your ute loaded eventually the chassis will crack - regardless of make.
This startled me a bit as I have a steel bullbar and side rails, rear drawers, battery, fridge, fuel I am getting close to max load (300Kg to go is the leanest load I can manage now).
For trips where I can I will take a trailer and load it with the recovery gear. Drive to the conditions should be OK I hope.
 

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