Well today is a sad day.

I got my max around a year ago [99, se-l, crimson blaze] as a gift. Mother's friend was selling it, said it was checked out by a mechanic and she overpaid to help him out.

A few months ago my starter broke, out of the blue. While it was being repaired the mechanic noticed that the valves were leaking. It was ignored, and that was that. The other day smoke started pouring out from under my hood.

Turns out the gaskets on the front and back are leaking profusely, something's wrong with my valve covers because my tranny is all screwed up, the wiring on my headlights is bad [as I suspected, due to the fact that I need to buy headlights once a month], as well as other various problems.

The total bill comes out to a whopping 1200 bucks, including the 2 new front tires I need.

Do you think it would be a smarter idea to do a part out? Or get my max fixed??

 

What does the $1200 include other than the tires ??

What does Valve cover gaskets have to do with your Trans ??

 

Allignment
Tune up
New valve covers
Replacement headlight wiring
Replacements on the gaskets
2 New front tires
Oil Change

 

It seems like all general wear items on a vehicle. Its not Rest in Peace at all for your car.

If you have any mecanical knowledge or know a friend that does, you can do everything on that list and only pay for the tires, mounted and balanced, and the alignment which should run about $200-$300. Then another $150-$200 in parts for the other stuff.

Why do you need Valve Covers ?? Probably just mean gaskets.

-matt

 

That's a bit of a relief.

The valve covers and the gaskets are also apparently leaking oil.

 

A 1999 Maxima is still under 10 years old and maxima's can go the distance also your Maxima color is very nice and with some minor mods looks very modern. I would pay double to keep the Maxima. I haven't seen any car 4 door with our fuel efficiency on a 6 cylinder motor that can compete. Sorry any honda mazda toyota if they are not brand new look and ride like do-do. The Maxima is tough reliable and with stock horsepower and features hands down the best car all classifications. Everytime on the org I see someone sell there Maxima or got into an accident and buy something else look at the posts give them some months and there back because the hooptie they got runs like garbage.

 

If I got anything to replace my max, it'd probably be a 350z.

If I do end up replacing my valve cover, someone in another thread mentioned that a good mod is a valve cover upgrade. In which case, this seems like the best time to upgrade.

Any suggestions on how I can take advantage of this situation with upgrades?

 

yea man 1200 to bring her back to life is DEFINITELY worth it.

hell man id spend up to 3k on mine if something unexpected happened like that.


and the mechanic who noticed your "valves were leaking" but didnt say anything isnt taking any kind of responsability here? is this the same guy who wants 1200 to fix it>

 

This is the same mechanic.
In fact I was the one who pointed out the thick, sludgy oil that was caked onto my engine near the gaskets and valve cover.

He basically told me- "It's not really leaking enough to be a problem. It would be a smart idea to fix it, but it's not a life or death situation."

That was a couple of months ago. Now this.

 

Hold on a second. Are you sure that your mechanic said valve cover and not valve BODY?? If you have leakage by your valve covers, you can fix it yourself by simply changing the gaskets. It's pretty unlikely that your valve COVERS need replacing.... Shouldn't take you more than 5 hours even if you have limited mechanic knowledge.

 

Valve BODY.

Thats it.

 

You can do all but the tires in your driveway. I would keep her. Paul

 

wow ^^
valve cover and valve body = 2 different animals

 

i would just put the money into it and let it live

 

Thats what i'm doin.

 

I can't!

 

I bet you could takin' your time with a good manual and advice from here. I find it sort of relaxing and rewarding to hear her purr when you are done. I'd be glad to help answer what I could. Paul

 

i can help you with your plugs and oil change. those are pretty easy.

the valve cover gasket im sure i could do but have never done it and dont wanna risk.

 

i would fix it evean if i have to drive my moms honda for a while yuk! sorry i almost threw up lol i hate having honda on my hands

 

R.I.P........what the MAX you have to be out of your mind,First the mechanic knew what Is wrong with It but He did not wanted to advise you about what he Is going to do. This is why he said he will do everything In $1,200 If, I am right that's just the price for the Valvebody for an (auto) tranny. This can be done but he will have to take out the whole tranny and check out the VB. The valve cover gaskets are on the engine I am sure that should be ok unless they are also included to the stated problem. The valve cover gasket should not be that much If you going OEM. I think doing all of this work for a Max thats not even 10 years Is worth It.

 

Part out, sell to junk yard, down payment on 2007 350z, the end.
Just kidding. Get it fixed and your maxima should be running fine for a while.

 

keep it alive. i love my car and if something goes wrong with it i fix it. and thats that

 

Check the regional forum on this site and ask around if there are any locals in the Florida area with extensive maxima experience that can perhaps help you out with some of the problems that you may not be able to perform yourself. Throw em a couple of bucks even. Good luck!

 

This is just my .02 cents, so take it with a grain of salt. If you have a problem coming up with $1200, or don't want to pay $1200 to fix your car for simple maintenance, why in gods name would you replace the car with a 350z? It just doesn't seem to make sense to me.

S

 

I think he was kiddin' about that 350Z thing. Paul

 

Let it go.

 

Crimson Blaze! Keep it thats what this forum is for most of whats need can be done with little to no skills and Im pretty sure you can find help

 

you cant even change your own oil? or do a tune up?(spark plugs, air filter)

 

I owned a 350z for two days and found out that the salesman sold me a used 2007 350z and lied about it when he sold it to me as NEW. How I found out was I looked at the odometer dash and saw screw marks and then found out that they turned back the mileage counter...so I returned it and got a pretty good compensation for not suing them.

Also they wanted me to trade in my maxima for $1900..lol! a 1999 Maxima GXE that's super clean with 124,000 miles on it. I told them if they joke around while I'm trying to buy a new car then I can walk over to the Infiniti dealership and they can take a bad review on their dealership (Which I did anyway). The total cost of the 07 350z was $54,300..$770 a month for 5 years (grand touring edition with the blue tooth talk, homelink, heated leathers, nav, bose, blah blah etc). I'm kind of glad I returned it. Bought a 2007 s2000 black fully loaded for $42,000. Which isn't too bad
(I can afford this because I made a lot of money overseas [2 tours])

*edit
So if you can't afford a $1500 fix up then I don't suggest you try to buy a 350z..lol you'll be living to pay off your car.

 

I did the tune up myself, other than that, I gave it to the mechanic and he's fixing it.

The 350Z thing was a joke.

There's bad and good news coming out of this. The bad news is that the maxima will end up being sold pretty soon. The good news is that the only reason it'll get sold is to buy the 7th gen. So it won't be for a while.

 

54k for a Z? 42000 for a S2000?? Wtf...WHY would you spend that much on those. You can get a 335i coupe for less than the Z.

 

Yeah I know but I love nissans. I would choose a 2007 350z over any european car. I like to mod cars and modding a bmw is not as fun from what I've read. Plus, what's the point in riding around in a bimmer if you're not a business man? BMW is overrated. Reason the "new" 350z cost that much was because it was after taxes. The car cost ~39,000 fully loaded msrp. After taxes it was pretty much ~$54,000. Can't complain for a "new" fully loaded 2007 350z 6spd manual @ 305hp.

Same goes for the s2000. MSRP was 33,000-ish and after taxes and all that crap it was $42,000. I prefer driving my maxima over the s2k because it's a lot smoother and consumes a lot less gas. I can't keep filling up on two tanks of 91 every week. Gotta choose the max to ride around in plus I don't have to shift. Driving manual to and from work in traffic has made me want to trade my s2k in for a tiptronic 350z but thankfully I have an automatic maxima to keep my "trading in cars" tendency at bay.

So that's why the prices were so steep. Taxes. Can't live with them, could live without.

 

Fix your car. If you part out you won't get back what the car is worth. Also take it to some other mechanic, a 2nd opinion never hurts.

 

sorry to hear that, i have to agree a second opinion aint goin to hurt

 

Man, SE-L's are not the most common maximas out there, beside being crimson blaze. all in all, it's a rare color of a rare edition. keep it, fix it, mod it. just keep it red, keep all the Se-L stuff on it, and let all the normal se drivers drool over our cool platinum colored gauges.

 

why u gotta be so mean lol

 

Ahh dun worry. That's until they SE-L run into an Infiniti i30t

 

fix that man wtf. or would you sell the whole car to me i will fix it?

 

Yeah, I am ssssooo mean, of course I just replaced all 6 coil packs with hanshins (damn 99's) and I get to deal with the crazy locks and the 120 dollar new keys because of the immobilizer, but I still love my SE-L

 

ouch, yeah gotta do mine soon as well