Took my Z in to have the top 'fix' installed, it's a 370 convertible, they have a manufacturing flaw with these tops, the bands they use suck. The guy tells me that the "fix" for their shitty product is $1100 and i freak, i bought the car 100 days earlier from Carmax, it's a 2017 and had 9000 miles on it. The guy tells me maybe carmax will pay for it ... oh wait 100 days, i missed their warranty by like 2 days. So i complained and the Nissan dealer service guy told me he would see what he could do, he called me back in the shop like an hour later and said Nissan agreed to apply the fix... gee thanks for fixing your defective product.
I leave the car with them and they give me a windup toy rental for the 2 weeks it takes them, I get it back and the guy tells me "ok you can't use the top for 4-5 weeks and you have to park it in the sun, the top needs to heat up so the bands stretch in the heat. I thought he was joking but this is how they build them and in the factories they have massive parking structures with heat lamps in them to heat the tops .... fucking voodoo shit going on. Cool get the car, park in the sun, 4 1/2 weeks later i try the top and it kind of sticks and i have to push it to get it to open up, i call him and he says that' is normal for the first couple weeks of use, i also tell him it sounds like something is "rolling around" in-between the layers of the top, a screw or bolt or something and that the top doesn't seem right. He tells me to bring it in and they will look ....
Bring it in and he tells me they didn't find anything in the top and it's good to go. Great drive home, pull the top down a bit to get it to close, and think I'm set.
The next day i go to open the top, push on it, and i mean LIGHTLY ... and i hear a loud bang and the top completely stops working! Won't go up, won't go down, it's going to rain .... So i call and tell them the top isn't working at all now and it's going to rain, can i bring it in and park it inside there since I don't have a garage, no problem they say.
Bring the car in, get a light home.
A week later they call me, "So just curious Mr. Landau what did you do to the top?" Told him i did nothing was just trying to close it .... this is when i find out a 1/2 inch thick U shaped piece of steel that the roll bar of the top sits and rotates in SNAPPED IN HALF ... he said it was impossible for me to break it by pushing on the top and they have never seen that happen and have no idea what to do because the U is welded to the subframe of the car, one on each side.
Back in my shitty loaner car, get a call after two more weeks, they talked to Nissan factory headquarters, they have never seen this happen either, it just shouldn't every happen and never has, so now since I had the $1100 fix done i got a 1 year warranty on the top with it, and they are going to fix my car ... except there are no top assemblies in the US ... they have canvas .. but i need the entire assembly from subframe up and they have to look for one hopefully there is one in Japan at the factory.... so i wait ... 4 weeks go by and i get a call they found a top in Japan and they are going to ship it to the US ... so i wait... 3 weeks later the top has arrived ... but the regular nissan techs at the dealership can't install it ... they need guys from the Nissan factory in the US to fly to FL to install it ... so i wait .. lol.... another week goes by and they call me that my car is ready .. i go in to get it the top is closes i said "can i try it before i leave?" ... nope have to park it in the fucking sun again HAHA ... i told him they could just give me a new 400 when they came out and keep the car, he laughed, he said if i bought it from them that might have actually been an option.
I asked them if i could have the canvas from the old top as a spare and i was told no, they took the entire car about down to the frame, took the entire assembly from the subframe up, crated it and shipped it to Japan ... so it seems that since the steel snapped there was a huge issue, the steel that is made to use the cars could have had issues and they needed to study the frame and do metallurgy tests on the steel and samples from that batch to compared them.
In the end the car I paid $34,000 to carmax for had $32,900 in work (Nissan's charges for top, work, shipping, flight and time for two factory workers, etc.,) done.... and they fucked up the alignment on the rearview camera even.. see there was a tie in if you read this far... congrats.
