Here he is enjoying his new Altima....

http://www.altimas.net/forum/showthr...threadid=13688

 

And he is impressing those board members with his writeups

 

Nice find, Russ

That reminds me, I've got to send him an email

 

I have to meet up with hime sometime to check out his Altima.... havne't heard from him in a while....

 

He just responded to a email earlier, and he said the Altima is a much better car than the Maxima basically. Smoother and better ride. Maximas suck he said with a

Hmmmm....

At least we have better quality control.

 

Oh man, that's soooo funny coming from Paul

 

Did I miss a post about what happened to his Max?

 

Traded in cause payments were too high if I'm correct..

 

Paul...

Had: 2k GXE auto
Traded for: 2k2 6spd
But then traded (after like a month) for: 2k2 Altima 2.5S auto

He told me that the 6spd was just too much of a pain in all the traffic he drives through and that he realized why he converted to automatics 10 years ago.

D'oh!!

 

Yea I think there is more to it then what he said to us. He would have gotten a v6 in the Altima instead of a slow auto 4cyc. He even said the Altima is lighter than the Max and we all know that is not true. He got a barebones 4cyc Altima auto. 2.5S.

 

Actually a 2.5S/automagic is 200lb lighter than the Maxima. It wouldn't be as fast as his 2k/automagic, but it'd be pretty darn peppy for a 4-banger. He got the 2.5S w/Convenience package, added fogs, and HID's are next I think. He probably took a big enough hit on the early trade like that that the an Alty 3.5 was no longer possible

Checkout: http://www.paulwendy.com/altima/

 

Peppy but very noisy at highway speeds for a 4cyc.

 

Man, I know exactly what he's talking about. I just bought a 5 speed 2k1 Max and had planned to transfer all my mods from my 2k1 auto then sell the auto (by the way I would not have done this where it not for this board ). After driving the 5 speed for a couple of days I realized that changing gears is lots of fun but it's also lots of work and to my surprise my modded auto is just as fast, except top speed. So now I've decided to sell the 5 speed!

 

it really sucks to see that a maxima owner trade in to an altima but not even the V6 one...hope he likes the altima

 

He never said anything about payments being too high on the 2K2 but I think high payments may be part of the equation considering he probably took a big hit on the 2K trade to begin with.

I remember his post after he had just purchased the 2K2 where he said that the trade did not make sense financially but was done for Maxima love.

Anyway, I wish him the best with the Altima. It looks like he is enjoying the ride already.

 

What's with the comment on his home page which states that the next generation Maxima will be built from the Altima platform?

 

Hey guys! Been hiding out. Expected a lot of flack from trading in my Maxima. Quite a few of you have sent me email to come back to the forum. I'm here.

 

Steve wins the prize. I don't have the bare bones Altima. I have the S. I considered both the VQ and the QR 2.5. After I drove the 2.5 I was quite happy with the power and it's perfect for the type of driving I do. The CVTC makes if feel like a 6. I don't think it's noisy on the highway. I drove down to Durham, NC for Thanksgiving and was really happy with it. Nissan really did a nice job on this 4-banger. 175 HP and 181 TQ. That's better than the orignal 3rd gen V6. Also... the QR 2.5 takes 87 octane and gets great gas mileage. With my 2000 I was averaging 18 MPG in city driving. I'm way above that now.

BTW- Maximas suck.

 

Weight, you can't say the Maxima is 200lb heavier. Who here know the weight of a GXE with same options to a Altima 2.5S with same options? All we know is the max weight and the Max still comes out lighter.

I have not driven the 4cyc yet, but I heard from many its buzzy. In some cases I miss a auto, and I am sure I will miss it alot once my work moves to the other side of town where there is only one freeway to get there and its under construction for the next 10 yrs!!

 

The Maxima came out a whole 1lb lighter when we were looking at that before. But Paul has the QR25, not the VQ35. Displacement costs weight.

Paul's right, though. 175HP in a car only weighing 3069lb would make for a peppy car. Plenty enough for around in our area. I never manage to break 3000rpm around here in traffic with my V6. So maybe he'd only need to go to 3500rpm

Seriously, traffic is so bad here during the day that you go nowhere, and the cops are out in force at night so you can't even do much then, either. It's locked down like mad here If I didn't go on long weekend highway trips all the time then I'd be better off with a 4-banger too. The V6 oomph is nice on the highway, though. But a big-4 and less weight would give about the same oomph

 

Hi Paul! Please stay.

 

Thanks Steve. I tend to round off figures when the benefit me. LOL. 3069 is right.

Here's an article about our lovely traffic, 2nd worst in the nation.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...2001Nov19.html

There are times when you can go fast, but you have to go out of your way for that. Usually you can go late at night, to the boonies, or to the track. For every day driving though...

 

OK... still working on my Permanent Resident status.

 

I guess I shouldn't take my 1 minute commute for granted

Maybe I'll dump my car and get a Segway for the work commute

 

Hey Paul how's the Altima paint holding up...better than the Max ?

 

So I should sh!tcan the idea of getting a stick? I leave my house at 5 to be at work at 7 and leave work at 3:30 and generally get home around 5:45.

Thats going from Mashpee to Peabody and back each day. If you live in MA, its going Rt 3 thru Boston and back...oh joy

 

I guess I'll stop *****ing about Houston traffic.

 

I want/need a stick shift very badly. But I think before I do anything (next-gen Max?, Alty3.5?, 2k3 Accord V6? stick?!?!?) I'd have to test drive it in rush hour traffic on 355 here in the Rockville/Gaithersburg area of MD, or on I-270 in the non-HOV lane. My previous car was stick and I loved it, but I'd have to see if it'd really be worth the hassle and I could put up with it - now that I'm used to an "autotragic"

I never minded stick before, even in heavy traffic for a few hours. But I only drove it twice per week (was in college) travelling to see the G/F 200 miles away on weekends. Schyuchyll expressway going into Philly is where I always got stuck. 20 miles of stop and go with a stick and a full load of people and luggage. Hehe...never really bugged me though for some reason...

 

If you mod the Segway maybe you could make it hit 20mph.

 

Chip it??

 

In this case I think it won't work... Maybe some Energizer E2 (square) batteries would give it a boost?

 

hook up the battery(s) in series instead of parallel and crank up the voltage - more speed - would reduce range, though

Might have to remove some diode limiters, though...hehe, or a "voltage regulator swap"

 

So far very good. One long road trip and no chips. I've only had the car for 1000 miles though.

 

See if you can rent a stick for a week. If you can't find a stick Maxima to rent, then find something similar. Sometimes you can rent stick shift Maximas at smaller rental places. They are very hard to finf though. That might help you make the decison.

 

Don't make my mistake. I test drove it in the middle of the day, non-rush hour. Most of my test drive was on I-270. If you go to VOB Nissan you can test drive my Maxima. They dropped the price down to $25,999.

I used to drive stick shift in the mid 80's. It was a lot of fun. When I moved to the DC area, the fun of driving stick went away.

 

hehe, I hear ya Paul

I drove my old Camry 5spd through some extremely heavy traffic back when I drove it. The stick never bothered me. But the thing about the Camry is that I had a ton of room in it, the pedals were spaced very well, and I could do all of the footwork I needed without ever "deanchoring" either of my feet from the floor. It was very painless to drive in traffic. Clutch take-up was very linear, and the engine made just enough torque at idle that I could inch along in traffic just by modulating the clutch (another advantage of a well designed clutch with a smooth and linear take-up). Completely painless. It also had a direct linkage so the shifting was very smooth, and the synchronizers were quick enough that you never outran them. If there was ever a manual transmission designed to be as painless and as user-friendly as possible, this one had to be it.

I'm not sure how the Maxima's manual tranny is, but a test-drive would be very tempting. Maybe I'll give VOB a call and arrange a test-drive for this Friday or Saturday. In fact, I think I will just so I can compare it. Plus it'll be fun to see what a car with REAL power drives like. I'll have to choose a time when there won't be much traffic so I can open it up though

 

VOB is advertising Paul's old car in The Washington Post for $25,999.
Its a small world.

 

WP (cars.com) said $27,499 though

I just used the contact form to arrange for a test drive. Who knows, 255HP and a 6spd might make me actually find a way to fit comfortably in the car!

 

and I hear you Steve....

My previous ride was a 91 Celica GTS 5 spd and that was great to drive, even in heavy traffic.....before I got my Max I test drove a Jetta 1.8 stick and was like wtf? The clutch seemd to have no tension at all in it....put your foot on it and it seemed to slam right down to the floor...and then letting it up felt there was nothing there....it also seemed like I had to look for the clutch when shifting...like it was too far over to the right and I had to hunt for it with foot...forget about it

How are Max's clutchs? Light? No tension? Is the clutch where it is supposed to be?

 

Clutch feels kind of heavy to me. Engagement is pretty good though.