[CanX]

So riddle me this on symptoms and how bad this may be:

Well maintained 01 Xterra bombing along at highway speed suddenly makes a clicking speed and loses power/stalls. Coast to the shoulder and it won't turn over. Get it towed to the garage and I'm told there's no oil. Last time I checked my fluids was about a week before. Prior to this event:

-No noise
-No vibration
-No leaks
-No burning smell
-No runaway heat
-No nothing!

The only blip was a hint of loping idle the week before during the extreme cold (-30C and below). That went away after the engine reached operating temp and I've had it before in the deep cold.

Shop filled it with oil and when they turned it on it made a terrible clattering racket. They say I need a new engine.

Thoughts on this scenario? My hunch is frozen PCV line blowing something inside. Happened last year and blew the valve cover gaskets leaving oil everywhere. No oil leaking this time. If it was burning out the exhaust I wouldn't have seen it because I was driving at night when it went.

I needed a work pickup anyway so the X will be retired to the weekend rig when I have this sorted out, new engine or not. Just awful timing and frustrating keeping it well maintained only to have it die like that.

 

[kms1990]

hm, the symptoms you describe sound like the classic distributor failure on that model, usually if you run an engine for much time with no oil it will seize and never crank again which leads me to think the shop you took it to may have been looking for something to tell you it was and didnt actually know the cause. try checking your distributor to make sure its not the cause: good video on how to check it here:

it really honestly sounds like a bad distributor from the way you described it, i have had 2 vg33 engines like the first gen v6 xterra had and both had distributors fail at about 170k miles when it stalled did it just shut off and you coast to the shoulder or was it bucking and rpm jumping up and down not in correspondence to your throttle input? if it was the latter and it was bucking and banging til it stalled and left you that the distributor 100%

 

[CanX]

Right now I think a distributor failure would be a best case scenario. Still have to flat-bed it home to have my mechanic give it a thorough look. Got a 01 Chev Silverado with an 8' bed in cherry condition to tie me over.

 

[kms1990]

Right now I think a distributor failure would be a best case scenario. Still have to flat-bed it home to have my mechanic give it a thorough look. Got a 01 Chev Silverado with an 8' bed in cherry condition to tie me over.

you could have a rear main leak, my old 2000 x had one and that was the least fun transmission to move.