Need some advice
 

I'm going to check out a used 2001 Maxima GXE for sale. As far as I know it is stock. It has 108k miles on it though, ridiculously high. The guy is asking $7000, waaay below blue book. At that price I have to check it out.

What things should I keep an eye out for on this car? I'm going to have a mechanic check it out but wanted to know if there were specific areas I should pay attention to or tests I should run. How do I check the tranny besides fast acceleration?

Thanks.

geez... @ 108k i hope there still is a tranny. j/k. just have a good tech check it out. he'll know best.

fast acceleration is NOT an indication of a good transmission. A good transmission is supposed to shift quickly and smoothly in both directions, up and down shift. A horrible tranmission that's stuck on 1st will accelerate great!

btw, previous nissan trannys have had problems shifting to overdrive when cold so definitely check that out.

I had a 2001 GXE auto, and here were the issues I had with mine:

*Check the rotors - mine warped pretty early on. You can tell this by feeling vibration in the steering wheel when you brake.

*Check all of the windows and make sure they go up and down smoothly. Both my passenger side and drivers side window motors (I think it was the motors they replaced) died.

*Make sure the transmission isn't slipping or shifting too hard. It's not the smoothest automatic transmission though - mine always sounded a little sloppy in its shifting, but I never had it checked out.

That's pretty much it. Just a note of personal preference though - My GXE's suspension with a strut bar and sway bar felt no where near as nice as my SE suspension without anything. If you're looking for more of a luxury ride then by all means check out the GXE. But if you're looking for tight handling, you'll probably want to swap out the suspension first thing.

Good luck - that's not a bad price, so long as they weren't a hard 108k miles.