Hey it is David from the Redneck Garage its going to be a little overcast today and little
cold Today Im going to do a video on my NV200 Nissan service van.
Ive got almost 25000 miles on it and thought I could give
a pretty good in depth review of whats good whats bad and and what man I just don't understand
so lets get to goin on that.
I did get a brochure about the NV200 telling thet I needed to go buy one even tho Ive already
bought one.
Their marketing department is great ... The one thing that Im kinda sad about is because
I bought a 2013 instead of a 2014 um the warranty went from a 3 year 36 to 5 year 100.000 mile
on the 2014 model and I dont believe they made it retroactive so thank you Nissan even
though the trucks are exactly identical the people that were the early adopters of the
NV200 get jacked.
Which doesn't surprise me.
OK so these are brand new tires uh about 2000 miles on them and you can see that indeed
after having it aligned and new strut bearings everything put in that it is wearing quite
a bit on these tires uh JK Tyres is sending me a new set to be a tester I havent received
those in yet but I can see that the edges are getting worn down so there is an issue
with the tires on the truck and Nissan hasn't come up with a fix nor JK Tyres so Im waiting
to get my new set of tires and then well be doing a video about the testing As far as
like the appearance of the van, I think they are awesome they are great advertising tool
for the business uh they lend themselves well to whatever advertising you want to do with
it so have no fears about that.
These wheel covers if you get the ones with the sport wheel covers get ready to just keep
buying a bunch of wheel covers cause they fly off they there just junk and um about
40 bucks a piece Ive bought six of them already.
Ok so this is the back of the van key machines all kinds of junk in the back pretty well
stocked up for locksmithing uh I wish the van was a little bit bigger but all in all
you know it does a fair job the cabinetry came from Adrian Steel I chose the cabinet
package which came with a couple of these and something else then I ended up buying
another $1000 worth of cabinets to put another side one in and it closed off that one door
and then I had to make a little work bench and I had that cabinet also and didn't have
to buy that one and it came with the divider in the front.
Heat transfer from front to back is marginal uh there's a fan up there if it gets really
cold I can blow you know air in the back but after a while it will warm up overall you
know the lighting I installed uh leds in here and put a switch and that works really well
for for the lighting aspect of it but that is pretty good on this . The only option that
I didnt get on the van that I wanted when I bought it was the touch screen nav system
it did come with the Bluetooth for the phone which worked fairly well but it didn't have
any navigation or anything like that so i went to the dealership and asked them hey
what if I wanted to upgrade the stereo to the best one that was really one of the few
options that I could have had on the van that I didn't come with um and what they told me
was that it was 3000 dollars for the Nissan unit which was just a rip off and then they
started telling me that if then you do it then the Bluetooth many not work you may need
a new module so I just said forget it so I went to Alibaba and I bought this one for
about 350 and had to wire it all in um it does have navigation in it right so that works
fairly well and I also have like um I was able to wire in the buttons on the steering
wheel by trial and error and was able to to like volume and mute do all that like volume
mute everything I was able to wire this in to the Alibaba radio which was pretty cool
um so that worked out well and you know you could actually watch movies on it if you wanted
to its got AM FM up plays files , it actually has internet access if you have a WIFI signal
so for 350.00 that was a pretty good deal I also have I put in a camera so when you
put in the back up the camera actually works fairly well for an after market you can see
that its got pretty good resolution and that is a dirty lens right now cause of dirt on
the back and the camera actually does work fairly well when you put it in reverse.
I installed it in the keyhole for the lock in the back so that's pretty cool that works
well.
So all in all the radio even tho I didn't get the factory one this one turned out to
be fairly um nice as far as for what I'm using it for and its Android based believe it or
not You can see that Ive got 26613 on it its pretty cool the way that this works you've
got two trips you've got your miles per gallon instant you've got your average miles per
gallon my miles per gallon go down a little bit because there's sometimes that Im working
out in the really really cold and Im in the back of the van and I have to leave it idling
for power so I dont freeze to death so I think it would be getting 21 if I was doing just
straight up driving so that's pretty good itll give you distance to empty on your odometer
and it will give you the outside temperature I wish that there was a way for it to slowly
scroll thru there instead of having to reach up here and hit em all the time right like
every five seconds it could switch or something ... I don't know but it makes it pretty useless
like your outside temperature when am I going to flip over and see that probably not cause
I wanna see my either my miles per gallon or my you know so usually I don't drive around
with my temperature gauge on I usually have my odometer or my trip gauge or um miles per
gallon I like to look at miles to empty 227 is pretty good thing to know altho you have
the gas gauge right her so if you cant figure out your about to go empty then your kind
of retarded it will start flashing when it starts getting down to low um it will start
flashing then when it gets really low um then basically your display goes out you don't
have any display it will just keep flashing low gas so you have to get gas before you
see anything including I think the odometer The van is fairly quiet when your driving
it not alot of road noise the motors very quiet especially when your sitting in a parking
lot you can hardly hear it idling um thats pretty nice you could actually leave it running
walk away and no one would know it Ive been pretty happy with the quietness of the van
when your driving its not bad at all it does have the CV transmission in it and when your
watching your RPMS it will go up to 3K then slowly move down there's no shifting theres
no gears whatso ever Im not sure about the longevity of that I know its expensive if
it has to be replaced but I haven had it give me any issues what so ever as far as that
goes as far as driving the van one of the biggest things that Ive noticed uh in Middle
Tennessee we've got a lot of you know you've got some county you've got some farms you
got just a varied landscape of houses and environments that you drivin in and this is
not an off road vehicle absolutely not um I was driving on one driveway one time and
it had pretty good ruts in it and this is such a low slung vehicle that it drug the
back of the van and it ended up ripping um one of the brake sensor cables and when that
happened I had the van in for service and and they charged me like 500 bucks to fix
it so the 80 dollar call that I made cost me 500 because the van drug the ground cause
there is no ground clearance I mean theres absolutely none so dont try to drive it except
on a established roadway thats flat if you get off anything its gonna it will do damage
to your truck Now all that said the biggest disadvantage um really of the Nissan NV200
is the Nissan dealership network.
Your gonna get a warranty that you get with your truck and I don't think any dealer is
any different you know really probably Ford, Dodge all of them but that's a disadvantage
of buying a new truck is that they are going to break it off in you when you take your
car to the dealership there going to figure a way to hose you.
just take that brake sensor cable for example um they over charged me for the part they
charged me labor of 2 hours for uh I looked up the procedure for like a 30 minute job
which OK make money but then they charged me to uh adjust the rear breaks the rear brakes
don't have to be adjusted so it was just a hose that they bent me for and you know I
have a pretty good relationship with them so Im really kind of sad that all in all the
dealerships uh just jack you like that it is terrible Ill give you another example when
I bought the vehicle I get free oil changes because I bought a service contract if you
buy the service contract they supposedly give you a little bit break on the I think I got
like half a percent off the financing rate because I guess if you pay for your oil changes
first right they believe that you are going to take care of your vehicle and pay for it
and all that people that are responsible will pay for their car note (cough) and I havent
paid my car note in like 6 months so I hope they come get my truck ( laugh) no its auto
drafted anyway so um oil change before last before the one Im going to complain about
I went ahead and switched over to Mobil one I believe that Mobile One a synthetic motor
oil will extend the life of your motor uh it certainly cant hurt but every commercial
vehicle that Ive had for any length of time Ive run Mobile One in it and its flawless
you extent your time between oil changes blah blah blah OK so take it into the dealership
I had already changed it out to Mobile One one time myself because I didn't want to sit
around the dealership and wait two hours for them to do a freakin oil change there speedy...
so I take it in there and I get the oil change done and I say I want Mobile One and there
like OK so they come back and charge me almost 8 dollars a quart for the Mobile One right
and Im thinking OK either A) you need to give me the oil I that I was supposed to get that
I already paid for right this contract I paid for the oil or B ) give me a break on the
price of the mobile One cause you know I didn't get the oil but no they charged me almost
8 dollars a quart which is over retail which I can go out and buy if for you know they
are makin quite a bit of money at 8 dollars a quart what about that other oil so you need
to give me the oil or uh give me a break on the price but they don't because guess what
their whole thing is to jack you so anyway that's my my biggest disappointment with Nissan
you think they are going to be a different kind of company dealing with the service and
I this its that way with every dealership I don't believe it just My dealership I think
every Nissan dealership will hose you so thats what your going to be faced with um with a
NIssan vehicle whether it is a NV200 or a NV or anyway so that's the rant on the Nissan
dealership that your going to get hosed on overall the van has been really pretty good
for the first 25 thousand miles I haven't had a lot of issues I had one window switch
um one door lock switch there is one thing that is bugging me a little bit if you look
at the grain on the steering wheel right here and I don't know if you can see it here Im
going to try and get it on camerea on the top of the steering wheel where I keep my
hands the steering wheel is wearing away and you can actually see the rubber behind it
um so that's kind of crappy Im going to take it into the dealership next time uh and see
if they will do something about the steering wheel that would be a good thing you will
notice that the tires are terrible at this point now JK Tyres has told me that they are
working on it on new compounds and blah blah blah blah blah Nissan hasn't done ANYTHING
they haven't had a recall they haven had assistance they just keep saying there in no issue with
the truck and that's a lie so if you want to believe that believe it but its not true
there is an issue with the tires they will wear out at 15 thousand miles . Now the new
tires they are supposedly working on may last longer I don't know that's up in the air other
than the tire thing Ive been pretty happy with the truck OK so thats going to be my
review on my NV200 while mine is a 2013 if you go buy one right now the 2015s are exactly
the same except for the warranty I got jacked because I was an early adopter of the Nissan
van so to summarize the good about the van is the gas mialage uh the small size make
sit very maneuverable very comfortable for a tall person the negatives would be the tires
are still an issue uh maybe they will get that straightened out I don't know if you
buy one today you will still have a problem and you still have to deal with a Nissan dealer
and if you do uh the recommended procedure if you have to go to the Nissan dealer is
you probably get on Ebay or check online maybe Amazon to get you a rape kit uh so when you
go in you can do some you know send it off for tests (laughing ) anyway I don't think
you would go wrong with a NV200 its been a very good truck up to this point with the
first 25 thousand miles umm we shall see Ill be doing another one probably next year about
this time to see how many problems I've had in uh that length I'm David from Redneck Garage
keep turning wrenches .