If you are considering buying a used Nissan Pathfinder, these are the common problems worth knowing about first. Our garage database tracks 2 known faults for this model, 2 of them rated high severity. Every one below is a repair bill a seller has good reason not to mention.
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Check a Nissan Pathfinder advert (free) →The Nissan Pathfinder has 2 known faults in our database, 2 of them rated high severity. The most serious are engine (single-row (simplex) lower timing chain snaps prematurely, destroying the engine) and bodywork (the R51 Pathfinder sits on the same ladder-frame chassis as the D40 Navara). None of them makes the car a bad buy on its own; the risk is a seller who knows and says nothing.
That is a count of the faults we hold, not a reliability score. Popular cars get written about more, and a newer generation has had less time to show its faults.
No year is a write-off on its own. What matters is which serious faults a given year and engine can have, and whether the car in front of you has had them fixed.
Each one is set out in full below, with the symptoms, the typical mileage and a rough repair cost.
One owner each, in their own words rewritten as a line, and not counted in our risk scoring. A fault joins the list above once a second report or an editorial source backs it.
Sellers rarely admit these faults outright
We track 5 specific phrases sellers use in adverts to soft-pedal these exact issues. Paste any Nissan Pathfinder advert and we check it in seconds.
Check an advert now (free) →Recall work is done by the manufacturer, and GOV.UK says you will not usually have to pay for it. These are the 4 DVSA recalls for the Pathfinder, newest first. They do not tell you whether this particular car has had the work: for that, put the registration into the free GOV.UK MOT history check, which shows a recall status where the manufacturer shares it, or ask a franchised dealer to check the VIN.
Passenger air bag may not deploy correctly..
Put right by: Replace passenger air bag inflator
Incorrect installation of the front seat belts has occurred where the position of the left hand side and right hand side seat belts may have been swapped. This incorrect installation affects homologation regulation and may potentially affect restraint performance.
Put right by: Recall the vehicles that are likely to be affected to check and where necessary refit the front seat belts.
The front lower suspension/steering ball joint retaining ring may not have been manufactured to specification. This could in extreme circumstances result in the detachment of the ball joint from its housing. This can then cause loss of control of the vehicle.
Put right by: Recall all affected vehicles to check and if required replace the lower link ball joint.
The Drivers power seat harness may become trapped between the metal seat bracket and the seat lifter Mechanism. If the vehicle continues to be driven in this condition damage to the harness may occur and this can result in loss of operation of the driver's power seat. In extreme circumstances unexpected self-operation of the driver's power seat base may occur.
Put right by: Inspection of the driver's power seat harness for correct installation rectify if necessary. If the harness is damaged it will be replaced with new.
Recall data published by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency under the Open Government Licence v3.0. A recall listed here may not apply to every car of this model: the build dates and the registration check are what decide it.
A timing chain has no change interval, which is not the same as lasting for ever. Listen for it on a used Pathfinder, and check the oil has been changed on time. These are the figures UK specialists work to.
Single-row (simplex) lower timing chain snaps prematurely, destroying the engine. Wear tracks oil history rather than mileage, and the warning is a cold-start metallic rattle. Replace as a full kit; many owners upgrade to a duplex (double-row) lower chain kit for reliability.
Always confirm against the vehicle handbook. Intervals vary by engine, and several manufacturers revised theirs after failures in service.
No Nissan Pathfinder year is a write-off, but the R51 (2005 to 2014) carries the most serious faults: engine and bodywork. Year matters less than whether the specific car has had the known fixes, so check the history for them.
Ask the seller about the engine and bodywork faults on this page and whether they have been fixed, with invoices. On the test drive watch for metallic rattle from front of engine on startup and heavy flaking rust or perforation on the chassis rails ahead of the rear wheels. Read the MOT history for repeat advisories, then paste the advert into the free check, which reads it against its known faults before you travel. Check a Nissan Pathfinder advert →
The DVSA lists 4 safety recalls for the Nissan Pathfinder issued between 2012 and 2020. The most recent, from January 2020, is "Passenger air bag may not deploy correctly". Recall work is done by the manufacturer, and GOV.UK says you will not usually have to pay for it. This list is by model, so it cannot tell you whether one particular car has had the work: the free GOV.UK MOT history check shows a recall status from the registration where the manufacturer shares it, and a franchised dealer can check the VIN.
Owners report 29.7 mpg on average across the Nissan Pathfinder engines with data, about 88% of the official combined figure. The gap between official and real-world economy varies a lot by engine, so the Real MPG page lists every engine and generation separately, from 127 owner submissions. Nissan Pathfinder Real MPG by engine →
Looking at a Nissan Pathfinder right now? Check the advert before you go and see it.
If you used to check the Honest John “Good & Bad” section before the site closed in 2026, this page is where that information now lives. We rebuilt the Nissan Pathfinder owner-report history from the archived Honest John dataset, added our own research, specialist and owner-club sources and DVSA recall data, and we keep it free. Each fault above is badged with its source. The same data feeds our free advert check, which reads a listing against every known fault for the exact engine and year.
CarAdCheck is not affiliated with Honest John or Volkswagen Financial Services. What happened to Honest John, and where each feature lives now.
Knowing what a Nissan Pathfinder goes wrong with is half of it. The rest is reading the advert and checking the car's history before you hand any money over.