Skip to content

Nissan CG10 / CG13

inline-4 · naturally aspirated · petrol · 1992–present

WhatsApp Telegram X Email

Also known as: cg10de, cg13de, cga3de, cg12de, cg10, cg13, micra 1.3 engine

Nissan's small petrol four — the 1.0 CG10 and 1.3 CG13 — in the Micra, March and Cube.

It is a chain-driven, all-aluminium, twin-cam design that was unusually sophisticated for a supermini engine of its day, and it is most of why cars of that generation are still running.

Its recurring complaints are cheap and physical. Ignition coils fail one at a time and misfire under load before they do at idle; the idle control valve carbons up and gives a hunting or stalling idle; and the crankshaft position sensor produces an intermittent no-start that reads as an electrical fault.

A rattle on a cold start at high mileage is the timing chain tensioner, and on a car of this value that is often the point at which one is retired rather than repaired.

The CR family that replaced it has its own page here and shares the model line but not the engine.

Cars fitted with this engine

1 generation, 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.

Sign in or create an account to add what you found about CG10 / CG13.