CFster

I'm a newbie to this board who just bought a '98 SE (Arctic) 5 sp 42K. I happen to work in the auto auction industry and see a lot of Nissans come in off of lease. Like sometimes hundreds per week. In the past few years I've seen quite a few V6 Nissan engines come in blown up. I mean, severely - rods through the side of the block that sort of thing. These have been everything from Pathfinders to 300ZXs. For a while I was leary of buying a Maxima for this reason. The thing is, most of these cars were repos, so maybe we were just getting the bad ones. Also, Asian cars are just more reliable than anything else. I told myself that after driving this SE which I immediately fell in love with. So here's the deal - sometimes when my car has been sitting for more than an hour (and this has only happened a couple times) when I start the engine it raps for a split second before the oil pressure comes up. I mean, I have to be in the garage to hear it and it only does it for like a split second. Now, I've heard this noise on American cars and called it normal. Is this a normal sound for a Maxima? I'm wondering if they just build these motors loose. I'm sure everyone here is a little biased and will tell me they are the greatest engines in the world, but I need someone to tell me that they have heard that noise before.
Anyway, I'm sure I'll have pics of the car up sooner or later like everyone else.

P.S. Paid 14,200 for the car. Ain't wholesale grand?

Shingles

I wouldn't worry about it. For some reason 4th gen maximas seem to have problems starting. I think it has to do with a few things, part of it is fuel... atleast that's what it seems like for me. the VQ has been a top ten engine eversince it came out so it'll be a reliable engine. Plus the only people that I've heard blew their motor run it REALLY hard.... harder than you or I would ever do.

Welcome to the club.

-Shing

emax02

iTrader: (1)

around 70K it goes away completely after about 3 seconds.I have 90K now and the sound is still there has not gottin any worse or better.I would not worry to much about it though.Come to think of it,it seem to have started right when I switched over to synthetic oil strange.I dought it had anything to do with it or could it have?

CFster

a groaning sound from the left front wheel area under hard braking? Coil spring noise?

God, I'm getting paranoid.

Still love this car though...

CFster

mine has synthetic oil too? I just bought it so I don't know. The maintanance book says the oil was changed less than 4 months ago and its still very clean. I haven't changed it yet. You know I've heard of engines starting to leak after being run with Castrol synthetic oil. Seems like it just gets into and through places normal oil doesn't. I'm told it's only the Castrol brand though...

tclee

iTrader: (1)

I don't know what you guys are saying...but I think if you buy cheap branded oil filters (fram...etc) where these filters don't have flowback valves to prevent the oil from flowing entirely back into the engine...then when you restart the car...it'd sound rough cos you've got no oil in the engine to flow or something...reason is cos I've experienced it a few times in cold winter days...asked my mechanic and he told me fram sucks...so now I've decided to spend a lil' more on either mobil one or even somewhat expensive but decent nissan OEM oil filters..where there is the back flow valve thing in the oil filter that prevents the oil from flowing back into the engine.

I may or may not be right here...but hope it helps?

also, try not to save a few cents on gas...get premium...eventhough its mighty exp...cos in the long run, you're going to damage your car / engine and would have to face costly repair bills.