Living with the Nissan Juke.

[Dblock]

It's a pretty awesome engine though to pull such a big car. An older Mk2 ph2 clio is about 100-200kg lighter. Yeah I'm sure they used more screws but come on.

 

Will it not maybe take a little longer for the engine to break in or loosen up.

[rabbitstew]

Will it not maybe take a little longer for the engine to break in or loosen up.

 

Looks like you are correct.

 

Mileage on our Juke now is 5000 miles. Not bad being as we have only had it a few weeks. I was fortunate enough to be "allowed" by the missus to give it some spirited driving last weekend down some newly found back roads and see how well the engine had loosened up.

 

I have to say I was very very supprised at how "nippy" the little juke felt on the back roads. When the turbo is on song, responsiveness is quick and it certainly feels more powerful than it really is. It certainly bought a smile to my face. The only points I didnt like was the lack of traction the front end seems to have. The wheels spin up pretty easy when you pull away sharpish and I still cant get used to having to drop it into 1st gear when approaching roundabouts - in order to get around the incredible turbo lag the car has. In any other car, you`d leave it in 2nd and just floor it if there was a gap, but you could actually go & make a cup of tea (or cook a pie) in the time it takes for the jukes turbo to kick in.

 

Handling wise, it also handled miles better than I expected for what looks to be a top heavy car. I felt comfortable throwing it around the twisty bends, and yet the ride still felt comfortable. A good compromise.

 

We are also noticing how more and more jukes seem to now be popping up. When we first got this one we didnt see many on the road, but now theres 3 in our village alone which have appeared this last week or so.

 

Fuel consumption is remaining at about 48mpg, but the small fuel tank is becoming anoying. What would have normally have been a once a week fill up in our old diesel is now a twice weekly fill up in the juke. Having to refuel every 3 days is something id just gotten used to in my zed, but is a bit of a pain for a diesel. Shame they couldnt have used that big empty space in the boot where the "optional extra spare wheel" goes to fit a 50L fuel tank rather than what I think is something like a 35L one.

 

All in all still enjoying it.

[rabbitstew]

Well, noticed first scratch on the side of the Juke this weekend. We`d been driving all over the place on Saturday doing the shopping and stuff and must have parked up and got in / out of the car dozens of times and not noticed any scratches.

 

Then Saturday night I noticed the neighbour had guests and had parked their car close to ours. Then on Sunday when we get in it, i immediately notice a scratch on the side of the Juke. Its a pencil line scratch about 2.5->3inches long on the passenger side rear door, but deep enough so you can see the primer. Needless to say the missus isnt happy. But, not much we can do about it really.

 

In general ive noticed because there is no fence between my drive and my neighbours drive, they feel they can use our drive as if it was their own. I actually watched my neighbour doing a 3 point turn half on her drive, half on hers, before nearly driving into the side of my zed as she drove forwards, over my drive, over my lawn and out on to the road. All because she didnt want to ask her friend to move her car which was blocking her in. The other week I looked out and thought we had guests arriving as a car had parked in my drive behind mine and some bloke was wandering about around my car, with his dog running all over my lawn, the dog was sniffing my Rays looking for somewhere to have a slash. Turned out it was someone visiting my neighbour and presumably didnt realise this wasnt her driveway.

 

Unfortunately the missus wouldnt let me go and have words with them, but it looks like im going to have to install a fence or something between the boundaries now just to stop people treating my drive like a public car park.

[Southernspeed]

One of my pet hates is people's lack of respect for other people's property, especially cars. To so many they are just a form of conveyance, so what does it matter if you whack your door into the car next to you

 

Mark at Abbey is now running a Juke Dig T as a test bed for tuning. He's already piling on the HP

[rabbitstew]

One of my pet hates is people's lack of respect for other people's property, especially cars. To so many they are just a form of conveyance, so what does it matter if you whack your door into the car next to you

 

Mark at Abbey is now running a Juke Dig T as a test bed for tuning. He's already piling on the HP

 

What amazes me is that you can park at the opposite end of a carpark where noone has parked, and yet when you come out of the supermarket you can nearly guarantee that someone has now parked next to you - even though rest of carpark is probably still empty.

 

Its the thing i hate most about having a new car is waiting for someone to mark it.

[dragon]

One of my pet hates is people's lack of respect for other people's property, especially cars. To so many they are just a form of conveyance, so what does it matter if you whack your door into the car next to you

 

Mark at Abbey is now running a Juke Dig T as a test bed for tuning. He's already piling on the HP

 

What amazes me is that you can park at the opposite end of a carpark where noone has parked, and yet when you come out of the supermarket you can nearly guarantee that someone has now parked next to you - even though rest of carpark is probably still empty.

 

Its the thing i hate most about having a new car is waiting for someone to mark it.

 

My missus had her A3 resprayed + alloys a month ago, just like you said she parked in tesco's miles away from anyone, came out and someone had scratched of/side door, iv'e never seen her ever! go mental like she did, I swear she could have killed someone that day!!

[DoogyRev]

A chap in the office has two, one for him and one for his Mrs. Her car has just been in the garage due to the paint concertinaing between the bumper and front wing. Apparently this is a known issue.

 

Garage have fixed paint and added a spacer between the two to stop it rubbing.

 

Keep an eye out for that one

[rabbitstew]

A chap in the office has two, one for him and one for his Mrs. Her car has just been in the garage due to the paint concertinaing between the bumper and front wing. Apparently this is a known issue.

 

Garage have fixed paint and added a spacer between the two to stop it rubbing.

 

Keep an eye out for that one

 

Cheers. I noticed a few days back that the gaps between the body panels are very close in some places. Like the front wings to the headlamps. You cant fit a cigarette paper between them. I did wonder then if theres any flexing in the car, then the paint would start to rub off!

[rabbitstew]

Well last week, driving along, car flicks up a stone and we have a large stone chip on the LH side of the windscreen. So, book it in to have it looked at and the window man says it needs a whole new screen. So, we book that in for last Wednesday. Good job we didnt have it done any sooner, as sods law, Monday, driving along, almighty bang and another car must have flicked up a stone as an almighty crack suddenly appeared on the opposite side of the windscreen!!!

 

Ive never had a single windscreen crack before, and he we have 2 in the space of a week!

 

Anyway, new screen was fitted without any problems and the insurance covered it. But, the screen fitter told us it was a special screen on the Juke Diesels which had extra sound proofing in it to reduce engine noise?!!?!!!!! Also, the price had we not been covered by insurance was £810 ???!!!!!!!!! Not sure whether he was talking rubbish or not...

 

Just hope we dont get any more chips or cracks on the new screen now!

 

Only other thng is, that the cars now at nearly 8k miles and its feeling nippier all the time. Definitely loosens up with time.

[rabbitstew]

Brief update. Juke is now on 13,000 miles! Not bad going! Its feeling more and more responsive all the time. I really think he didnt properly loosen up until about 10,000miles. Now, its much more revvy and responsive.

 

Fuel economy has remained the same, although if you cruise at anything more than 70mph then it drops even more. We got through a full tank (about 350miles per tank) the other day, crusing at 80 / 85mph on motorways and it averaged 43mpg. Pretty bad compared to our Peugeot 307 HDI "shed" with 117k miles on it which happily returns 52mpg per tank (600mile range) at similar cruising speeds.

 

Having driven down to Gatwick airport & back for our hols, being in the Juke was a nice place to be and have to say I got out of the car after 3.5hours of driving last week and felt perfectly fine. The ride was good, the steering is nice and responsive and now the engines loosened up, the throttle is nice and responsive. It still has huge amount of turbo lag at lower revs, so you need to slip the clutch a bit sometimes if your rolling onto a roundabout in 2nd gear.

 

We left it parked in a field near gatwick for 2 weeks whilst we were on holiday, and it started up on the button no problem.

 

The bodywork still looks good when its cleaned. No more scratches have appeared (touch wood) but the wheels are looking a little shabby now. Will need to give them a good clean.

 

We loaded it up to the brim the other week, and if you remove the boot floor you easily double your loading space. I really dont understand why they put the boot floor so high, its such a waste of space. We folded half the back seat down, and fitted a staggering amount of boxes and stuff in it, plus 3 adults. The loading space isnt as "long" as you get on a golf or a peugeot 307 for example, but was okay for what we wanted. Fully laden up the engine still managed fine, it didnt noticably struggle or have any problems at all which surprised me a little. Its times like this when the reversing camera really is appreciated, esp when you cant see out of the back window!

[rabbitstew]

Still going strong. Its 7 months old now and just turned over 16,000 miles this weekend on a trip to Somerset and back. We did nearly 400 miles in it over the weekend! Still getting about 350->375 miles out of a tank and the small (40 litre i think) fuel tank still gets me as I still get confused when im filling it up and it starts clicking full at just over 50quid. Im used to putting £75 or £80 at a time in my cars! Over the last tankfull, the trip computer was showing 50mpg. It does 52mpg over a tank full if you keep it to sensible speeds, but drops to 48mph if your "making progress" all the time.

 

Its my wifes car so she mainly drives it, but as we were going on a long trip this last weekend I had chance to re-acquaint myself with it after not having driven it for a few weeks.

 

The engine doesn't seem to have loosened up any more since my last post, so I think after the initial 10k or so miles the engine is nicely run in and how it responds now is pretty much it. Its nippy enough around town although that massive turbo lag does have a tendency to still catch me out. As I mentioned before, its especially noticeable on roundabouts, when your rolling up to one, and timing your entry with existing traffic going around it. If you see a gap, in most cars you can just be in 2nd and accelerate onto the roundabout., but in this 1.5Dci Juke, you either have to remember to drop it down into 1st when your to join the roundabout (something which feels a bit unnatural to me), or slip the clutch like mad in 2nd to get those revs high enough for the turbo to kick in. Otherwise, you roll onto the roundabout in front of traffic only to find the car bogs down and virtually stops.

 

I drove it for nearly 4 hours straight yesterday and it happily cruised at around 85 / 90mph on the motorway, and whilst it wasn't as quiet and as smooth as my BMW123d, it certainly wasn't too noisy - in fact it was quiet enough for the missus to fall asleep for most of the journey! At motorway speed, overtaking is easy and the car responds quickly. I had to do some very tight parking at the hotel we stayed at, and at all times I felt comfortable with the cars size and dimensions. The reversing cam is great for getting tight up against things, and with the front dropping at a 90 degree angle, you know where the front of the car is by looking at the side lights which are mounted on the top of the wings at the front corners. So you can squeeze it into places quite easily.

 

I'm still amazed at how small the normal boot is on them though. I opened up the back to put our overnight bags in and they barely fitted in. My missus does have the original boot floor in hers still, and you can easily store twice the amount of stuff by taking that out.

 

The in car entertainment works well, its got the Nissan Connect Premium kit (I think that's what it called), and the touch screen satnav worked well - speed camera warnings on it too - although I did prefer the bigger screen my HR 350z sat nav had. Bluetooth music streaming from my mobile worked well, and the handsfree phone worked well - nice and clear and the Juke`s mic`s didn't pick up the road noise so people could hear my voice clearly.

 

I actually opened the bonnet on it for the 2nd time since we bought it and checked the oil - thats all fine, after spending a while hunting for the dip stick, i found it is attached to the filler cap. Tyres are wearing pretty well. The fronts (its FWD) are only half worn at 16,000 miles. The 1st service for the car is coming up at 20k, (Im still amazed that you can buy a brand spanking new car and not have a garage check it for 20,000 miles), so will see how that goes. The missus has changed her job slightly, so she`s doing a lot less mileage than she used to, so I expect this 1st service wont come up until mid November time.

 

The only thing I did notice is that the exhaust sounds like it is blowing. Im not sure if this is "normal", but to my ears it sounds like it may be blowing slightly from the manifold. Anyone else got a 1.5 diesel juke notice this?

 

No more scratches have appeared and the front seems remarkably free of stone chips. Although i did drive it into a hedge on Sunday (luckily missus was asleep so she didnt know), so I wouldn't be surprised to see a few more marks on it when I look next. Oops! Those very narrow Somerset lanes.....

[rabbitstew]

As a quick update, the Nissan Juke is still going strong. It had its 1st service last week at 19,000 miles.

 

Before the service, after a bit of investigation by myself, what I thought was a blowing exhaust actually turned out to be the air filter housing coming out of its mounts under the bonnet, and therefore the plastic pipe which feeds it from the front of the car is resting on the engine and vibrating like mad. Strange as it sounds just like a blowing exhaust! I asked the garage to fix it as part of the service and they helpfully seem to have totally forgot about it, as its still doing it.

 

The only other problem flagged up was that the front passenger electric window motor has died so they have ordered a replacement which will take a few weeks to arrive apparently. Strange as we have only used that window maybe 5 times at most! Not good!

 

The tyres look like they are barely even 1/2 worn, so we should be on track to maybe get nearly 40k miles out of them which is good.

 

Bodywork is holding up well, no new marks appeared, although the internal door cards are showing a few scratches already from where the missus has loaded things in / out.

 

What was very strange however, is the Nissan main dealer who we took the car to for the service gave us a Ford Fiesta as a courtesy car! Strange as I was kind of expecting some bottom of the range Nissan Leaf or Note or something as a courtesy car - certainly not a Ford! Also very helpfully they make sure the courtesy car is totally empty of fuel, so you have to fill it up before you drive off. I guess they do this, as you are unlikely to be able to judge how much fuel you put in to match your miles, so they always end up making some free fuel out of it. Very annoying as if you are in a rush, you then have to fill a car up with petrol before you can go. Id much rather then ran it full-to-full on the fuel rather than zero-to-zero.

 

The wifes mileage isnt as much as what she was doing when we first got the Juke back in Jan, so I expect we`ll average 25,000 miles in this car over the first 12 months.

[rabbitstew]

Nissan replaced the passenger side electric window motor for us this week under warranty - looks like it was the whole motor failure rather than just a connector.

 

They still havent fixed the airbox though, despite me telling them twice about it.

 

Not really impressed with this particular Nissan garage at all. Every time they say they will ring you back they never do. If they do then its just a 1 ring then hang up so you have to call them back. For example, they never phoned us to tell us the part was in. We had to check with them. Then after they fitted it they never phoned us to tell us the car was ready even though they said they would. Resulting in us wasting hours walking about some shopping centre waiting for them to call.

[rabbitstew]

The Jukes now at 31,000 miles now and not much else to report really. No more problems, only that ive noticed the interior panels seem to mark easily. The alloys are looking a bit manky now as the only time they get cleaned is when the missus takes it to the hand car wash.

 

MPG has actually increased over the last 6 months. Now we seem to be averaging about 53mpg which is pretty good compared to the 48mpg it initially was doing. Must be now that the engine has run in nicely. I drove 6 hours in it on Saturday down to Cornwell nearly & back and only things which bugged me was the wifes choice of music and the lack of power compared to my 123d. There were quite a few frustrating moments on the back roads where I ended up getting stuck behind slower cars as the Juke just didnt have the power to overtake in the gaps which were available.

 

Tyres still have loads of tread left on them, so its looking like we`ll probably get a good 40->45k miles out of them.

 

Also another thing, the sat nav informed us the other week that Nissan has released an update for it. How did it know?!

[richmillions]

Good going but............ ........ come on

[rabbitstew]

Dont know if anyone else on here has a juke, but whats the top of your suspension struts look like? Ive just opened the bonnet on my wifes car for the first time in a few months and the top of the struts are totally rusty. I dont mean like a little bit of surface rust, these look like they have been left out in a wet field for 30 years. Ive never seen anything like it, even on ancient old barn find cars ive had. God knows how anyone would ever manage to undo the top nuts on them. The cars only 18 months old and done 30k miles. Reminds me a bit of how rusty my 350z exhaust was after just 20k miles. Do Nissan use mega rubbish metals or something?

 

If i remember I`ll get a picture and post it up to show you all what i mean!

 

EDIT: Just googled and apparently its a common Juke problem. A design fault means water just pours straight onto the top of the struts and they sit there in water until the car drys out.

Edited July 3, 2013 by rabbitstew

[maxi-glasgow]

I'll need to have a look at the wifes Juke. She got it last year at this time, due it's first service as turning a year old and she has only done 4,500 miles...

 

It's white but a petrol with reversing camera etc, drove it a few times and love driving it. Yes boot space it terrible.

 

She loves it.

 

She covered the Juke badge of the back with diamond replicas and another badge above the word Juke with diamonds on it saying Daisy.

 

So I look very good driving Daisy Juke about

[bronzee]

EDIT: Just googled and apparently its a common Juke problem. A design fault means water just pours straight onto the top of the struts and they sit there in water until the car drys out.

Once Nissan have sorted the problem. Why don't you make some rubber channeling to keep water out?

[rabbitstew]

EDIT: Just googled and apparently its a common Juke problem. A design fault means water just pours straight onto the top of the struts and they sit there in water until the car drys out.

Once Nissan have sorted the problem. Why don't you make some rubber channeling to keep water out?

 

I may have to. I`ll investigate a bit more at the weekend and see what we can do. I have seen people glue tuppawear containers over the strut tops to keep water out!