Rubus Dragon

Hello everyone, I'm from Uruguay and I'm the proud owner of a 3rd generation 1994 Maxima SE.

I bought it about 3 years ago with about 125k miles which is not bad for a car this old and I've already put 22k more on it.


I love my car and I don't plan on getting a new car anytime soon but my car has given me quite a few headaches. Spare parts are non-existent down here so I have to import everything from the US which takes time. On top of that almost no repair shop is willing to work on it because it's a pretty rare car here so they don't have the knowledge to even diagnose what's going on with it.

There's only one guy who accepted working on my car and he's been doing all the repairs since I bought it. He has managed to keep it running but not in great condition and I wasted money on stuff that didn't need to be repaired or that didn't really get fixed and my car still has a lot of problems and I'm fearing it might end up breaking beyond the point of repair.

I'm completely ignorant when it comes to car mechanics (I can't even do my own oil changes) but I realized that if I want to keep this car, I'll have to learn to diagnose and even repair some stuff myself and that's why I decided to join this forum.


Here's a list of issues that I need to resolve:

• Suspension feels super rough after I changed the suspension struts (along with other suspension parts). I believe non-compatible struts were adapted for my car when I got that repaired.
  
• Car pulls to the right, especially when accelerating. Everything is perfectly aligned and I took it to three different shops to get it checked so that's not the issue here. (this is not related to the previous point because that only happened after a repair and this is a problem my car always had).
  
• Temperature fluctuates a lot, like the sensor was failing and the radiator fans are not turning on as soon as they should?
  
• Power is inconsistent, sometimes feels sluggish and makes a rattling noise when I accelerate, sometimes is just smooth and nice like it should be.
  
• 1st gear feels weird, like it pulls too much.
  

Here's a picture of my car BTW: