Here's the setup: I bought my friends '97 SE, white w/ black leather, stock 16s, w/ 72k miles on it with the 100k mile warranty for $10k. Not a bad deal as it was mostly road miles. I had it's first brake job at 60k. Anyway, is well maintained and looked almost new.

In that last 6 months, I've put nearly 15k miles on it, with a little over 86k miles on the odometer. My mileage suddenly dropped by 30-40%, but still had the same power and ran great. Well, with the recommended spark plug change at 60k, I guess it was time to change them. The service manager at Nissan kept up the car and said it didn't need plugs at 60k. So, I head to Carquest and my killer jobber price on Platinum NGKs was $11.70 with $13.50 being "walk-in" price. I call Nissan and get them for $8.95. So, it took me an hour to change them (and they were much easier to change than the VG30 turbo I had in my Datsun 510!) and the mileage is back up there. I just love this car! The car has always been run with regular unleaded with 1.5 ounces of a special fuel additive and it's run great and gets 30.7 mpg on the hwy with an automatic. I'm not complaining.

I also added clear front markers, front strut bar, dropzone springs, OE splash guards painted white, Brembo cross drilled front rotors with Poterfields F&R, and just put on a set of 17x8 Mille Miglia MM11-2s with 235/45-17 Kuhmo Ecsta 712s. It looks and rides great. I'm thinking a Y pipe & the K&N I'm picking up today and I'll call it good. Just thought I'd share my experience with the car, as I'm sure many of you have had excellent luck with your Max, too. Later!
-Gary Savage
www.gary-savage.com

 

The other thing I forgot to mention that blew my mind was that the plug gap was also dead-on with the new plugs and the factory gap after 86k miles! I guess it was a matter of conductivity of the plugs degrading after that kind of life. Technology is a great thing and much different than the 30 year old Datsuns I've played with for the last decade.

 

Nice choice in car and color(enjoy), I highly recomend the 97-99 Se's, a timeless look to me!

 

Please show some more appreciation for your car and use 91 octane or better The motor runs best with super un-leaded, so your mileage, and especially power will go up. Since your thinking of adding performance mods, you should make 91 octane the absolute minimum octane you use.

DW

 

I've run 91 octane when I was out of my additive and it made no difference. The additive is good for 3-4 octane points, so I'm covered there. With almost 31 mpg/hwy, it didn't make a difference there. I can guarantee that my fuel specs are better than most who buy the cheap super unleaded at places like AM/PM and such. I'm just sayin'...

 

Run at least 91 savage. DW is right.

 

You'll never be able to really "call it good"

 

You really should use at least 91 octane gasoline. I have noticed almost a 2 mpg difference in my car just from running Premium every time over regular. You said that you run a fuel additive on every tank. If the additive increases the octane rating by 4 points, then the 87 octane gas turns into 91 after the additive. There doesn't seem to be any advantage to buying a bottle of fuel additive all the time rather than just spending the extra dollar for a tank of premium 91 octane. The premium around the Milwaukee area here is 92 or 93 octane, depending on the gas station. Since you pay extra for the additive, you might as well just buy premium and forget the additive.

 

Ah, one might think that your reasoning is logical, but in this case it's not. This additive is $10/bottle and will treat 8 full tanks, which comes to $1.25/tank. Running super is 20 cents more per gallon times 17 gallons on a fill up, coming to and extra $3.40/tank. I save over $2 per fill and get the added injector cleaner benefit, too. So, there you have it. The stuff must work for the engine to run clean and strong for 86k miles, where I hear of most people needing plugs and noticing a big difference by doing them at 60k. Technology is a wonderful thing.

 

If one bottle treats 8 full tanks, how can the octane be consistant? Surely you start off with maybe 93 octane on the 1st tank, 91 on the second, 89 on the third, and so forth. Unless this product has some sort of time release. Whatever the case may be, you're still better off with 91 octane.

DW

 

Savage42: What is the stuff you are using as an additive?

I just love this car! The car has always been run with regular unleaded with 1.5 ounces of a special fuel additive and it's run great and gets 30.7 mpg on the hwy with an automatic.

Ah, one might think that your reasoning is logical, but in this case it's not. This additive is $10/bottle and will treat 8 full tanks, which comes to $1.25/tank. Running super is 20 cents more per gallon times 17 gallons on a fill up, coming to and extra $3.40/tank. I save over $2 per fill and get the added injector cleaner benefit, too. So, there you have it. The stuff must work for the engine to run clean and strong for 86k miles, where I hear of most people needing plugs and noticing a big difference by doing them at 60k. Technology is a wonderful thing.

 

Actually, your reasoning is off, but it's not your fault. This "additive" that you're using claims to raise the octane rating by "4 points". This is extremely deceiving, because they want you to believe that it's turning your 87 octane into 91 octane, etc.

It's not.

When they say "4 points" what they actually mean is four tenths of an octane percentage point. So, in all actuality, your 87 octane is only being magically transformed into 87.4 octane.
So, you have to ask yourself, is it really worth paying that much for stuff that is honestly hardly doing anything to your performance?

On a positive note, think about all of the untapped power that you'll gain after you switch back to the good stuff.

 

Savage, would you just trust us on this. Please. Our cars are designed for 91+ gas. Use it!

 

Well, I've been building high performance motors for a decade, so it's not like I don't know what I'm talking about. You may notice that the writing on the gas door says "recommended" using super. I've run the car with regular and the additive and with super unleaded, with no difference in power or performance. Mileage was also unchanged, so I'm just sayin'.

Other benefits would be having the added injector cleaner in the system, I have no carbon in the throttle body at all after 86k miles, and it runs clean. The additive is called Freedom and is not sold in stores. The amazing thing about this stuff is that the mileage in my Tahoe went from 12 to 15 mpg, which is a 25% increase in mileage! So, I'll just have to run both types of gas combos next time we do our local dyno days and see if there is any difference down to 1 HP. To even think my Maxima is any kind of sports car is crazy. Once you've had a daily driver that weighs 2400 lbs with 340 HP / 400 ft lbs torque, this is my highway cruiser. I always appreciate the input.