It's in the shop now, but the mechanic hasn't gotten to it and I'm anxious to know what it could be. First of all the speedometer cluster has been flickering on and off for about a year. A few days ago, the vehicle would lose power in spurts to the point I turned around and went back home. The next day it wouldn't start, my brother came over to jump me off. I let it run for about 10 minutes and there was a loud broken metal sound coming from under the hood. My boyfriend said the noise had been there but not as loud. So the next day I go to start it to drive it in the street for the Tow truck and the battery is down again and the tow truck driver has a portable jump box, but it still wouldn't start. Could it be a combination of the timing chain and the speedometer gauge cluster that is causing my issue?
It could be a lot of things. If only I was a professional mechanic with the car right in front me.
If you trust your mechanic, let him diagnose it first.
Now this may not have anything to do with it, but if you can describe the sound as a "rattle" which gets worse over time and is very apparent at start up, those cars are infamous for catalytic converter failures.
I looked it up on an Infiniti forum and here is what I found:
https://g35driver.com/forums/intake-exhaust/327990-rattel-noise-smell-power-loss.html
Sorry, I'm late getting back to my post and your comments. I thought it would be the catalytic converter myself after looking online, but when he finally got to it a few days later, he said it was the Starter, he replaced it then called me the next day and said he got my vehicle running, with a new starter, but that the noise was coming from the Alternator. So I told him to replace that too. He called the next day and said it was ready. It drove well, but I noticed later that day the battery light and brake light was on, but didn't think anything of it. Well this past Thursday, which was the next day after it was fixed, I was sitting in front of my moms house talking to her with the vehicle running, I go to pull off and it doesn't go anywhere. It just rolls. So I rolled it back and parked in the street in front of her house. Tried to roll up the window it wouldn't roll-up. I had put it in park and it wouldn't come out of park. I turned the car off and back on, the window rolled up, but it still wouldn't come out of park. I'm waiting until tomorrow, Monday to have it towed back to his shop. He was closed this past Friday. I'm not sure if the alternator when back out since he said it was rebuilt, but the starter was brand new.
oh my! if the battery or brake light comes on you should definitely think about it. Those lights are there for a reason, if your brake light comes on it means your brake fluid is below minimum levels or your parking brake is on. If the battery light is on it means your alternator is not outputting the required voltage to charge the battery and you will very soon have a dead car like what happened to you recently. If this had been on a busy street or highway you could have gotten seriously injured!
Your alternator can be tested DIY with some very cheap 10usd tools, scotty has a vid on it
