Customer 01 maxima at a friends shop with blown engine. No oil change in 30k miles

Looks like cake mix.

A testament to the engineering of the VQ. Chryslers grenade without synthetic, yet this bastard ran with pure sludge for thousands and thousands.

Mmmmm, reminds me of brownie batter...brb.


This should be a crime. Your license is permanently revoked and you're required to do 3,000 hrs of community service LOL

LOL..yea seriously..You know whats ironic, this idiot just replaced spark plugs, axles, rotors, outer tire rod's etc....but NO OIL CHANGE in 30k!!

I guess no one checked the oil

That's a damn shame. Poor VQ. Some people shouldn't be allowed to own a car.

IMHO, not changing the oil for 30k miles certainly isn't going to cause that mess.
I see new cars returned 3yr/36k miles, no oil change, and there's no problems.
Maybe they used non detergent oil.

The girl I sold my 2k maxima to went 28,000 mile before she asked me to change the oil. It had only 1.5 qts left in it. The motor was knocking and everything when I picked it up. I drained what was left. Filled the motor with gas. Let it sit for about 20 minutes and then drained it. Filled it back up withe gas again and let it sit for about 5 minutes. Drained and poured in 5w 30 oil. Poured 4 qrts straight through it. Then put in some duralube and filled with 5w-30 high milage oil and the motor runs smooth as silk again. The vq3.0 is an amazing motor. That motor has 286,000 Mikes on it

I would also assume that it's had very infrequent changes the entire time with this owner. The sludge just keeps building and building. It's amazing it didn't lock up long ago from the pick up tube being clogged.

That's really disheartening. You spend the extra time and money to maintain a car and the next person does that.

That is horrible. Even the best engines in the world can be destroyed by idiots.

I agree. I kept that car in tip top shape and that girl has darn near destroyed it.

wow that is ridiculous to go that long without an oil change.

Shoulda used Amsoil

did you switch to that special blend yet?

A lot less oil usage. Going on ~12k now with the good stuff now. Probably change it soon around 15k or so. Still looks fine.

looks fine enough to not even need to add any in between change intervals?

i need to do that, just burned 1.5~2 quarts in 3.5k miles (or between oil changes)

doing hwy to work now hitting higher speeds probably equates to greater burn

No, still burns, just don't need to add as often. I'm down to about 1 qt every 3.5k.

Mobil 1 was getting bad. 1qt every 2.5k or so.

Man, all this talk of oil burning and I'm just sitting here with a 2013 VQ...

On a serious note, you guys might be able to get a decent dollar from someone that really wants an '02-'03 motor. You could show them how it runs before you pull it for a 5.7 swap.

Unfortunately to some, a car is just an appliance. Switch it on, use it, turn it off. Done.

Just be sure and make sure that oil gallery gasket is the new PN.

https://maxima.org/forums/7th-genera...-problems.html

I'm using the "altima" motor on this one (so unless someone switched some parts since '07, all of them should be fine). Other motor I have is from a '09 but has 20K something on it (sounds like it'll be getting 50 weight just to make sure LOL).

So, what you're saying is that these weren't cast or assembled in Japan
North American labor and QC is awesome!

More and more defects in every car it seems. Massive recalls this, pile of **** engineering that.
It's funny when people buy new cars (regardless of manufacturer) and you hear within 6 mo it has already left them stranded. Buying a new car is a joke.

Couldn't agree more. I make a decent living but spending 35/40k on a new car seems crazy to me. I'd rather wait 5 years or so and let the original owner take the hit on depreciation. I couldn't imagine spending that much money on a new car.

What's worse is the property tax scam on it and don't forget about higher insurance. People never factor those in and are crying at the end of the year when the govt comes calling.

The owner of that car should be sent to prison for abuse.

my f-ing township uses brine instead of salt, it is killing my car slowly... my original vq will prolly make it past the body.

i am getting an oil change today at a new shop block from work, dropping it off in 30 mins , fingers crossed ...new shops are always scary.

And lemme guess... she came running at you all angry because of the piece of junk car that you sold her?

Same thing happened to me about 20 years ago. Will never sell a car to a friend again.

Isn't that how it always goes

No oil change for 30k miles? My '02 would last exactly 3-4k miles until it burned away all of the oil in the pan, then no more engine. As a side note, it recently turned 155k which means I've now driven it exactly 100k miles since I bought it all the way back in '06 at 55k miles.

I had intended to get rid of it long before but I never have any problems with it. 100k miles and I've never even seen a check engine light. So far I've replaced exactly 7 non maintenance items. A radiator, power steering hose, passenger side motor mount, 2 front wheel bearings which were most likely killed by our third world quality Colorado roads, rear control arm bushings (ES) and a power window motor. I'm still on the original clutch too!

Other than burning through close to 100 quarts of oil in that 100k miles the engine still pulls like crazy and runs like a dream. It's going to be hard for me to look at anything other than a VQ Nissan for a replacement after owning this car!

Thats the difference with the 02-03 3.5 engine vs the 2000-01 3.0.. engine...the 03's are known oil-burners.. the 2000-2001 does not even burn a drop of oill in the 3-4k oil change intervals.

10k on a de-k - no burning

That video was heartbreaking (are we still talking about a motor?) but I agree that there were other things at work here. Not sure what, but I have gone that many miles without an oil change on more than one car. The key difference were 2 things. First off both cars I'm talking about had oil leaks that I didn't want to address as they were cheap dd's that I felt no connection to, that my wife drove.
I love her but she is hell on cars. The second thing is that I did at least, change the oil filter, my thinking is/was that I'm "changing" the oil every week as I put a quart in every Saturday. One of those cars survived my wife and lives on with my friend. The other car didn't survive.

I think that if a person sees their car as just transportation they have no "connection" to the vehicle, hence no love or care for said vehicle. Just like beating a child or dog, the day will come when it strikes back, like this poor innocent car.

In a perfect world the car would be confiscated and her licensed revoked and she would be condemned to a minimum term of 10yrs, but not to exceed 20 yrs to (gasp!) Public transportation.

My 97 Maxima gets babied to the extreme, much to my wife's chagrin.

Changing the filter is just as important as changing the oil (more important when using high quality oil and/or not using a good filter).

Imagine the cheapest oil with with a 2 dollar filter being ran for 30k (I'm betting city miles, too). With the previous amount of **** maintenance, that filter was clogged at 3k or sooner. From there it just spiraled out of control as nothing was filtered and the VQ (known for shearing oil) just breaking it down. No, one time of this wouldn't cause this much sludge, but already long OCI stretched to this massive one could do this easily (blow it up).

The vq30 is indeed a brilliant motor!! Freeze plug popped out of mines, its been frozen for months. I got everything fixed up and i runs smooth as silk! BTW my motor has 304k miles on her! Now im just fighting rust and im gonna win lol.

Just thinking back to my Miata days here and some of the remedies we would come up with for sticky lifters and such.

Once all the sludge was cleaned out of that pan, do you think giving the engine a good internal cleaning (maybe even twice) would help that engine a bit?

EDIT: I re-read and saw the engine is blown. Never mind. But assuming it wasn't...

Something we would do to clear out sticky hydraulic lifters was to drain the oil, install a cheapo oil filter, and fill the crankcase with 4 quarts ATF and 1 quart 50w oil, then idle the engine for an hour or so.

Again, this one is too far gone for that, but before it blew due to lack of lubrication, could this treatment have saved it?

For sticky lifters I run a bottle of valve medic. If that can't solve it, I have a jug of this:

This stuff is no joke. This is the stuff that places like Z1 use to clean out VGs before they replace lifters.