I just spent some time tallying up all the money I have put into my 1992 maxima so far and I could throw ..up. All in all I have spent $9258!!! That is ridiculous but true. That includes everything from mods to inspection and tags, eerything.

 

I've spent around $3500-4000 all together,including the price for the car and a paint job and a lot of bolt on. And yes, i think you spent too much. I know i wouldn't at least not on a 12 year old car.

 

I hope your not included your insurance into that.

I'm probably at about $5500 now and not done yet It's been a while since I've tallied it all up. Yeah it is alot, way more than I thought all said and done but meh, I'm happy with my car, beats the hell out of a payment, and atleast now if half the stuff breaks I can replace it under warrenty heheheheeh.

 

Yea i figured it out the other day and i have around 10k invested w\ price of the car, installs, fixing crap that breaks, supension upgrades, and other goodies.....now car has a blown engine and does not run....so add another 500 for the engine that I have to pick up next week b\c there is a giant gap where the engine used to be in it's bay!

 

in the 7 years i've owned mine, i've probably poured over $12k into it. towing, 2 trannies, mods, heads, tires, alts, brakes, batteries, timing belts, hundreds of little things. over time, you don't really feel it all at once, unless it is a tranny. still cheaper than a new car. if you are of the 'keep it because i love it, i mod it to keep it" camp, then resale value is sort of abandoned pretty soon. it really cannot be avoided anyway because these cars are only worth about 3 thousand, maybe on a good day. so no matter what, you're not really in this for the "resale value." that is sort of oxy-moronic.

it is like buying color printer ink: you get the 'great deal' on a cheap $70 dollar epson color inkjet. then you run out of ink in about 3 days, and you *must* replace both black/ white and color cartridges at the same time. and that is about $65. so they are forcing you to buy, in essence, the printer again and again and again and again and again and again.... (and again). and you cannot resell the printer EVER, not for any price --it is obsolete the day you buy it, and you are enslaved to ink payments for the 4-week heyday of the device's technologically-current usefulness. then a new one must be bought, as the customer support dissolves soon upon the advent of a new version .2.3.6 of the software OS.

buy a new maxima.

----welcome.

 

I havent even had this car for 1 year!! I need to slow down. And my mod list? It still has 14 more things I want to do on it. Totaling another $4920.

 

I would say just a rough guess but I think I have around 4500-5000 in actual cash in my car including the $800 I paid for it. I did get a lot of things by trading stuff I really didnt have money in though like my wheels and tires and audio equipment. I have found some good deals and got ripped of on some stuff too.

I will probably wind up with around 6K or a little more (maybe less...I really dont know) in it by the time I am finished but it will be like a brand new car (all suspension pieces are brand new, interior is brand new, paint will be brand new, plus I have VTC rebuild pieces and other engine parts) so I will say its well worth it.

 

I added it up and mine is around $7300. However, about 1/3 of that was directly related to the JDM swap. I paid $2500 for the car and the rest is in mods, most of which I am very happy with.

You shouldn't count insurance, gas, oil, etc., because you would be paying for those on any vehicle you drive. Maximas are actually fairly cheap to insure compared to a lot of the cars most of us would prefer. My Maxima is cheaper than the last two "second cars" I had, an 86 Mustang GT convertible and an 88 Celica convertible.

I also profitted over $1k on the sale of my Mustang and I drove the Celica for over 130k before it blew up and I only paid $2400 for it, so all of the money I saved in the last 5 years previous to the Maxima I can justify spending on a "toy" that I really enjoy.

 

You don't wanna go there.... In the last 5 years owning two Maximas, I've spent more on tires and wheels than you've spent on the whole car.

Put it this way.. if I had simply kept my first Maxima stock and saved all the money I've spent on mods for the two cars, I could have bought a track model 350Z with cash, or an E36 M3 and had $15k left over for mods

 

I dont feel bad at all about the money Ive spent cause every dollar spent was for something that improved the personal value of my car. It would suck though, to do everything up nice, and then crash or something. Oh Im not counting gas or oil or any preventive maintenance, just the frivolous stuff. My mod list is 2 pages long, I showed the tally to the wife! She was like and i was all like

 

sheesh, I've got about $1k into my car total, including tires!

 

$2,350 for car

$9.99X2=19.98 for 9007 bulbs
$1.99 for taps
$1.32 trusty SD 5.92% sales tax

Total w/o gas, oil change, maint... $2,363.3

But I've only this car for alittle more than 3 weeks.

 

you told your wife?!

dude, if mine EVER found out I've got $40k in this car, she'd kill me.

 

i'm pretty high up there with matt on this one.

 

I bought the car for almost 7k about 5 years ago, since then I've put about $2-3k into it - repairs and mods

 

I bought my 1st maxima in 1998 or so. Spent over $10 grand. I don't think I want to add what I've done since. ie.. engines/suspensions/tires/wheels/intakes/etc.... not to mention the heap of mods just sitting in the garage.

 

Yep I told her...! but she's tight, she's like whatever, as long as her husband is happy and faithful. Definately my "butter half". We'll see when I tell her the turbo kit I want to put on is $3000. I wont be done till I git one. But HEY , I probably would spend a grand total of $20,000 when I hand the max down to Lil' Kevin III. BTW I paid $3500 for mine with 90,000 miles.

 

Guess I shouldn't complain. The car was free (rescued from my sister, before she traded it in on some POS GM car)
But, shortly after the dreaded autotragic blew and cost me $1800... since then, only major thing is new tires.

 

hahaaa...i bet you my heap is bigger than your heap

 

hahahaha...suckerrrs!

Just imagine if you had to pay the labor costs on everything you did..
So you see, it really isn't that bad at all..well...except for matt, jeff and danny.
Damn..I'm talking...I havent had the car for 10 months and I'm calculating tranny, struts, wheels, tires, tires, tires, audio...and I havent even started any actual modding yet. Luckily, I havent paid anyone labor for it all...besides timing chain tensioner in Jan. Everything else fell under parts warranty carried over from my black maxima.

 

Thing is. Matt/Dan/Craig/Asm66/other OG 3-genners have all spend the $ repairing our cars the 1st time. Then we write about it so all the newer members can SAVE $. We've paved the way on alot of stuff that most take for granted. ie.. VTC work/manifod stud work/ etc..

 

Oh yeah, Thanks yall. Without your dedication Id be a lil richer, but not as proud of my sh--car! Ps- keep them smilies comin. This is my fav

 

I figure with all the money saved from doing all my own labor, even with mods, it's cheaper than what it would cost if I didn't learn how to do all this stuff with help from other OGs

 

I got my car as a hand-me-down so I aint complainin there. But ah, $1100 for rims/tires, and just dropped $650 for suspension. The only thing I'll be able to afford before i get out of college will be maybe a sub or something. Since I am young, insurance is eatin me (not as bad as some...$1100 a year), gas since for some reason my Max sucks when I dont baby it (210 miles with a 1/4 tank left). I'm happy with the car, and hopefully even happier when I install the suspension.

 

hand me down car- $0, rebuilt tranny- $1800, miscellaneous other stuff- $500.

Learning how to do stuff on your own- PRICELESS!!

 

20-25k~ waste of money now that I look back. I OD'd on my max lol

 

bought the car for 9k....i don't even want to consider how much was spent on mods...

 

we're all guilty of it.

is it just my imagination, or are a lot of regulars here buying new and/ or different cars? it must be in the air. i mean, they're keeping the maxima, but getting another ride of some sort.