Nissan CD17 / CD20
inline-4 · naturally aspirated · diesel · 1983–present
Also known as: cd17, cd20, cd20t, cd20e, cd20et, cd-series nissan
Nissan's small diesel four — the 1.7 CD17 and 2.0 CD20 — in the Sunny, Sentra, Primera and Almera.
They are indirect-injection engines with mechanical pumps and nothing electronic worth the name on most versions: no rail, no filter, nothing to regenerate, and very little to read with a scan tool.
So diagnosis is physical. Compression, glow plugs and their relay, injection pump timing, and injector nozzles account for very nearly the whole fault list.
The timing belt drives the injection pump as well as the camshaft, so a belt service is the specialist job it always is on this generation of diesel — and getting the pump timing back is the part that takes the skill.
The YD family that replaced them is common-rail and has its own page here; nothing about the two transfers.
Cars fitted with this engine
3 generations, across 1 make. From the authored catalogue — an absent car means the catalogue has not reached it, not that the engine was never fitted.
Information, not instruction
CarGeek is a reference, not a service manual. Its pages are written from public sources and from what other people have found, never from a manufacturer's own service information, so they can be wrong or incomplete for your particular vehicle. Some of what they describe carries real risk: high voltage, fuel under pressure, stored energy, hot and moving parts.
Have anything you intend to act on checked by a trained person against the manufacturer's own procedure for your vehicle. Nothing here replaces that procedure.
Posted about this engine
Be the first to write this up
Nothing posted about this yet. Whatever you found is worth writing down — even a dead end saves someone the same afternoon.
What makes one worth reading:
- The car — make, model, year and engine. The same fault behaves differently on each.
- What you measured, not only what you replaced.
- What actually fixed it — or that nothing did, which is worth knowing too.
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