I found a 95 maxima with 180K on it for 1000 or B/O. "Seller is MOTIVATED" She claims it has a blown head gasket. Thats what her mechanic said. I know blown head gaskets are really uncommon in our cars. The story is that she drove from San Jose to San Fran (50 miles) and just kept pulling over and adding water. It was also 100+ degrees out.
I'm thinking it may just be the thermostat or the water pump. What are some things i should keep a sharp eye out for?

Thanks in advance

 

coolant in the oil or oil in the coolant. white or blue exhaust smoke. If is coolant as she claims it would be white. Get it warm and then push it to redline and you should see some white smoke if there is coolant being consumed.

Coolant is leaking somewhere if she was adding water every 50 miles.

 

Thanks Feldman. . . the total trip was 50 miles, i guess she had to stop a couple different times to add water.

 

sounds like a pretty substantial leak, you will know if it is going out the exhaust (head gasket leak) or coming out of a fitting pretty quickly i would suspect

If it is a head gasket and is losing that much fluid it probably wont run too well either

 

you should look for a better deal.
I paid $700 for one that might have had a bad head gasket, but turned out to have no problem other than that all the coolant had disappeared from the system I filled it when I bought it, and it ran fine until the CEL came on for KS and o2. Sold it after that.

 

I just bought a 97 with a blown head gasket for my girl and we started it up once yesterday and the oil looked like mud and was spewing out of where dip stick is. We are swapping the motor friday.

 

i would wait for a better deal unless you find out the leak is somewhere other than the head gasket

 

One of the local guys here picked up a 97 with a blown head gasket. It's pretty bad, chocolate milkshake for oil, runs with a horrible miss. Luckily he has a spare motor to put in.

 

i would recommend buying it and 3.5 that *****