Nissan X-Trail 2007 FAQs

Check out real-world situations relating to the Nissan X-Trail 2007 here, particularly what our experts have to say about them.

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  MY CHOICE would be the X-Trail, but there's not a lot to choose between the two. I would expect a dealer would offer you about $6000 on a trade-in for your Vectra assuming its in good sound condition. The kilometres are about average, so it seems like a car in the sort of condition you would expect for its age.

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• do I need to have electronic brakes fitted to tow a caravan behind an X-Trail?

  The X-Trail of that era has an unbraked towing limit of 750kg and a braked limit of 2000kg. On that basis, the short answer is yes, you need to have brakes on your caravan.

  But the detail is a little more involved. While you do need a braked trailer (caravan in your case) for the Nissan to handle 960kg safely, those brakes don't necessarily need to be the electric variety. A simpler mechanical braking system would also be acceptable and should work fine on a relatively light van such as the one you've described.

  Mechanical brakes are preferred by some users who like the fact that the trailer in question can be used on any car with the required towing limit. In the case of electric brakes, a control unit has to be fitted to the tow-vehicle. That gets a bit complicated and is an extra cost. Larger caravan (over 2000kg GTM) need electric brakes, but mechanical brakes are fine for smaller, lighter vans.

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• When the engine heats up on my 2007 Nissan X-Trail, the automatic transmission struggles to change gears.

  Engines and transmissions need to operate across a wide range of temperatures, from zero (or lower) on a cold morning, to extremely hot (when towing a trailer across the Nullarbor in mid-summer). Sometimes these differing operating temperatures bring out different behaviours.

  The problem of selecting gears is often caused by wear or a fault in the transmission’s valve body, or it could be something else within the gearbox such as a worn clutch-pack or band. On a simpler level, you could be looking at something as easy to fix as a mis-aligned or mal-adjusted selector cable. Another possibility is a low transmission fluid level. If this is the case, you need to find the source of the leak, not just top up the level, as a transmission is a sealed unit that shouldn’t need topping up.

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