2003 Nissan X-TRAIL Pricing and Specs

You can tell a lot about exhaust smoke by its colour. If it's a blue-grey colour, the smoke is probably from burnt oil. If it's black, excess fuel is probably the cause. Make sure, too, that what you're seeing is not just water vapour that is a normal part of the combustion process and will disappear as the exhaust system heats up and turns that vapour into steam (which is invisible).

But if it really is blue smoke you're seeing, it could be a case of worn out piston rings, or worn valve guides or seals. If it's black smoke, you could have a problem with injectors, the fuel pump, intake system, spark plugs, any number of sensors that control the engine's fuel:air mixture, or about a thousand other things. That fact that the smoke disappears after a while suggests that the engine is happier when it has some heat in it, but really, it shouldn't blow any smoke of any colour at all.

There’s no simple answer to this as the final cost will depend on how much performance and battery range you wish to engineer into the car. That said, the basic cost of a kit to convert a conventional car to run on electricity is somewhere between $20,000 and $30,000, but that includes only the very basics. Neither does that figure include the cost of the battery-packs that you’ll also need, so the cost will only go up from that figure. All engineering sign-offs would add dollars to the final tally, too.

Converting petrol cars to run as EVs is a real trend right now, but if you look at the types of cars being converted, there’s a common theme running through them: The majority of conversion candidates are older, simpler cars with none of the safety systems that a 2003 Nissan X-Trail has as standard. It’s much easier, for instance, to convert a car with no air-bags, no anti-lock brakes and no stability control. If the car in question lacks power-assisted brakes and power-steering, even better. 

This is not to say that the conversion can’t be done, but it’s much simpler – and cheaper – to convert something old-school (like an air-cooled Volkswagen) than converting your relatively modern Nissan. You’d need to ensure that the car’s anti-lock brakes and air-bags (and everything else) still worked and then be able to prove that to an engineer before the car could be legally registered and driven on public roads.

What you’d end up with would be a Nissan X-Trail that represented maybe $50,000 and still only had 150km of range between recharges. Those numbers simply don’t add up when you can buy a second-hand EV – a Nissan Leaf, for instance – for comfortably less than $20,000; a car that is already legal to register and drive. 

On the surface, it sounds like you have a hydraulic issue, either with the clutch’s master or slave cylinder. Bleeding the hydraulics for the clutch and removing any air from the system would be the first step in diagnosing this problem and may fix it. Often, though, a problem like this is a constant one, not one that crops up 30 minutes into a drive. Is the clutch pedal returning to its proper position after you’ve taken your foot off it? Is there any evidence of a leak around the clutch’s hydraulic plumbing?

Perhaps it’s the clutch itself - X-Trails are known to be a bit flimsy in this department - and a worn clutch could conceivably work fine when it’s cold and not so well when it’s hot. Perhaps it’s the throw-out bearing that’s jamming and needs greasing. Does the pedal go hard and require more pressure when the problem starts?

By the way, many owners remove the standard dual-mass flywheel and fit a more durable and reliable single-mass flywheel when they replace the clutch. It seems to be a more robust set-up than the stock Nissan system.