My car has approximately 55,000 miles on it, and last week after stopping at a stop sign, my check engine light came on and my car would no longer accelerate over 2500 RPM's. Long story short, I towed the car to my local Nissan dealer and they told me there were many faults, but the main code seemed to indicate a faulty Accelerator Position Sensor.
The dealer then went on to tell me that this part is not available anywhere in the US and shows up as backordered from the manufacturer in Japan and will take a minimum of 8-12 weeks to get. They said my only other option was to put in a used part, from which they could locate 1 from a car with 80K miles, and the price was about the same $220 versus $240 new.
So my dilema is put a part with 80K miles use in for nearly the same price or be without a car for several months while Nissan thinks about manufacturing the part. To me this seems to be totally unacceptable, it doesn't seem right that it would take so long to get a part for a 2003 car. Yet I called Nissan consumer affairs and they told be that the part is not in stock and is on a manufacture backorder, meaning it has not even been manufactured yet. Has anyone had similar problems with Nissan and what did you do? This seems totally rediculus that it would take months to get a faulty electrical sensor on a 2003 vehicle. Can car manufacturers get away with not having parts available for newer model cars?