yesterday i was driving to the beach and all of the sudden my temp gauge skyrocketed. i pulled over and i saw that i was leaking coolant. i opened up the radiator cap a little later, and the radiator was bone dry. thats not a good thing . so i fill up the radiator, and took it to my mechanic. well today i got my car back... the water pump gave out, and they replaced it. that cost me $375. then... they asked me if i wanted to replace my timing belt, which i needed to do, and if i did it now it would save me $200, so i said ok. that cost me $300. then i told them i needed to replace a broken window regulator, which i might have been able to do myself, i dont know. that surprisingly cost me $165! and on top of all that, they said they found a gas leak, and they needed to remove stuff to get to it, which was another $75.

$915. i recently paid about $800 to replace the exhaust manifold/studs, so ive been hit pretty hard. i am seriously thinking of selling my 90 se. the car is in great condition inside and out. the auto tranny hasnt ever been rebuilt, and has 180,000 mi on it, but it is still running great, which is a true phenomenon. i really do want a 92-94 se 5spd, but i dont know if i have the funds. i dont know, well see.

 

same with my max, when it broke, it was expensive stuff...sucks

 

the mechanic took a little more advantage of you than he should... you have to remove the timing belt to get to the water pump. a new belt shouldn't have cost much more in labor than replacing the pump, and a new belt does NOT cost $300.

window regular should have been about $30 in labor and the part is $75, max.

gas leak depends on where it is for price.

but the good new is you've killed most of the gremlins in these cars. CV joints and tranny problems are the other two big ones. watch that, and you should be fine.

 

and to top that off, a huge rock hit my windshield today, and i need to replace this. and i thought i had an insurance deductible of something like $50, but i found out its like $250, so i gotta pay about $130 or so to replace it. so basically, im livin la vida broka now...

 

do motor mounts count as a gremlin.
taken care off
timing x
water x
driving belts x
axles x

Needs to be done/not has happend
tranny
motor mounts
struts

 

dont jinks me, im knocking on wood whereever i see it.

 

i was talkingabout my self... my tranny has 167-510 on it...lol its gonna happend to me sooner or later.. i am guessing sooner... b/c mmy motor mounts and tranny mounts are shot... getting my maxima jolted every time it shifts form 1-2 sometimes 2-3

 

Yea my max hit hard today too..just got done forking over $200 to fix two cracked rims...then had to buy two new tires to replace the two that got *ucked up...MAXIMAS BEWARE..DO NOT travel down Water St. in Manhattan...MAJOR ROAD CONSTRUCTION...I hit a steel plate doing about 15 mph...not a very pretty sound or sight....

 

there is alot of construction being done on the roads near the lower east side and down town, i just cant see a lowerd max hitting one of those sewar man hole covers while the road is being ripped apart.. and have little hight clearance .. I once saw a honda lowerd and its y pipe to the muffler got ripped right off the engine just b/c of the steel plate they put on the road.. all i heard is scrape and then smoke come out from undernithe.. needles to say that the owner was ****ed.. but it was kinda funy and f*cked up at the same time

 

you better get the mounts fix soon before something worst happens.

 

Yeah I think you kinda got jipped. I needed my waterpump replaced about two summers ago they did my water pump and my timing belt for 200, its all right there. I kinda think they ovcer charged you. It all depends on where you go. It seems they charged you prices as if you pulled in and asked for a timing belt change and then they had to do it, when they changed the water pump it shouldnt have been that much extra to do the timing belt.

 

that most of use are dealing with 10 year old cars, luckly I havent had too many problems

and Ive got 185k

so far ive done
clutch + tranny
Im getting my tune up this week
did my suspension
and I need to do my exhaust studs
and what everelse they find durring the tune up,

Im glad though because a member on this board opened up a shop a few weeks ago and hes got good prices and I know my car will be taken care of, not like when I had my suspension done, I showed up and one strut assembaly was leaning on my rim, and one rim was scratched and they broke one of my side neon tubes.

 

heres a brief rundown of my car happenings over the past two or three weeks...

a while back i got some superblue, hyperwhite, supposedly-look-like-the-headlights-in-mercedes-but-not-really 9004s, along with a wiring harness from ebay so i wouldn't fry my stock harnesses. i got the lights and harness w/in a couple days, and put em both in. (i had actually posted about some of these problems in the past, but i'm just covering all of them again here to sum it all up) the harness was hooked up properly, but my high beams would be on all the time. after un-installing and then re-installing the harness w/ no luck, i brought the car to my regular mechanic and he went to work at it. i picked up the car the next day and instead of fixing the wiring problem free of charge as a favor (which he was going to do) he explained that the harness i received was actually not made for my car. he had to do a bunch of wire splicing and other stuff to get it all to work: 100$

then i got a place racing CAI for real cheap off eBay, and tried to put that in myself along w/ a friend of mine. we knew what we were doing, and were proceeding w/ the install fine, until it came time to drill the hole behind the front fender for the intake to connect. we didn't have necessary tools to do it, so i brought the car back to my mechanic. he called me the next day to tell me that i had bought the incorrect intake kit. frustrated, i posted on here w/ some questions about what he had explained to me. he, as was discussed in my earlier post on this topic, was apparently too lazy to cut the fender and install the intake the way it was intended, so i now have a place racing HAI, more or less. it still works fine, but it isn't technically installed the way its intended: no extra $$, but a real pain in the *** to get the 'i don't think this part is made for your car' phone call again.

then, no more than 15 hrs after picking up the car after the intake install, i was run off the road and ran over what i thought to be a fairly small rock. it was certainly big enough to obliterate my front exhaust pipe, which ran me about $185 to repair. when i picked the car up after that, the mechanic told me that while they fixed the bent exhaust pipe, they noticed while the car was on the lift that i bent my frame, as well as did significant damage to my manifold studs. he explained that, although they're notorious for requiring repair on our cars, i had done insurmountable damage to them when i hit the rock. he said they could try to bang out the rusted and ruined ones, and replace them. i told him to go ahead and do it, and eventually got another phone call from him, telling me that they got 4 of the 8 or 9 (i cant remember exact numbers) studs out, but the remaining ones were in such a place that it would require removing my manifold and some dismantling of the engine (read: big labor $$$) i asked him if that was absolutely necessary and he said that while it wasn't, it isn't a good idea to drive around w/ weak manifold studs, as they could "hold up for an hour, a day, a week or a year" i decided to take my chances considering my limited income, but within a day of driving it after that, the noise when i would give my car gas was enough to bring it back in. he put it up on the lift again, and saw that the remaining studs indeed were going to give way soon, thus making it essentially necessary to do the big-time job of fixing them all. i gave him the OK to do it, and crossed my fingers at leaving the car at the shop for ANOTHER 4-5 days. once again, a phone call from the mechanic... while the car was at the machine shop getting the engine taken apart to fix your studs, it was determined that you need to get your headers removed to get to the ones we couldn't fix...oh, and you need a new fuel pump and timing belt" since my only alternative to fixing my car would be to buy a new one, the only real solution i had to this ongoing problem was to just tell them to do whatever was necessary to fix it. so i'm waiting for another phone call any day now to have them tell me some other ridiculous problem they encountered, while in the meantime i'm getting new headers, fuel pump, timing belt, manifold studs, and a stillen exhaust. all in all, the guy said he'd try to keep the total under $1500, and most of it will be labor anyways. i love maximas, but right now i really hate mine.... just needed to vent... bet your problem doesn't seem QUITE so bad huh matt1sd?

peace

 

that's BRIEF? i don't want to know the long version.

 

well i did say (LONG) in the title of the post; guess i kinda contradicted myself... thanks for reading though

 

I was screwing around on my dirt road today and i pulled the e-brake around this corner going about 40. i spun a 540 and the left rear tire fell of. it costed me a little but it was a stupid mistake, my dad almost killed me!!

 

Did you rip the tire off of the rim? Or did you rip the wheel off the car?

 

It ripped the tire off the rim, and then the tire got ripped

 

DAYUM!!! I need to knock on some big-time Lincoln logs, with all the probs everyone's having...

 

hmm... $915 yesterday + $130 today for the windshield + $800 for the manifold/studs = more than your $1500... , but it does help a little, i guess.

 

at least my max was owned by an old grandma and she never drove it at all and not hard at all, nothing has gone wrong on my max yet.

 

Same here. Car is super clean in and out. Jeez, everyone mentioning these things happening to their cars. You guys are scaring me. Stop it!

 

If your car has 180,000 on the orignal tranny you probably only have until 200,000 until it goes. If you don't want to spend more than $1000 dollars more on your car, then I would sell it and get a five speed. You've already put so much money in so far with the new t-belt, and exhaust studs, it's a hard decision.

 

No matter how much you guys love your cars, you just have to realize when it's time to let it go.

Most of the time if you just drive nice you'll have a nice long lasting car. My theory is drive like a granny on regular streets and roads and drive like a bat outta hell on the track. Get into auto crossing is 1/4 miles aren't enough.

Unless you live in an area with nice smooth roads without many lights then you better take it easy. stop and go is a big no no.

 

well my car only has 90,000 so i have nothing to worry about, (KNOCK KNOCK)

 

quick question. is it ok to run the maxima with water in the radiator.? My max over heated somehow last night. and i took off the radiator cap and spilled cooleant all overis it a short fix to fill with water can i drive like that? dunno why it over heated in the first place all i saw was needle in the H..like a jack butt i opened the cap..ouch burned what could have caused it.? all i heard was a hissing sound. could it be my thermostat stuck closed
i have been reading that its fairly a d i y prject to replace but the draining process and the water shortage is a hassle that is the first time i have had this problem i was told that it should be ok to drive.. i let it cool off all night.and filled it with water.. so hoefully it wont happen again. i turned on the a/c fan on, funny cause when i did that the heat coming out was luke warm, not hot
and it was all the way to the hot setting..


help........ already my maxima is starting to get its problems again

 

my car has had all the typical problems that everyone else has had. i put $2,000 into the tranny and cv joints, and alittle over $1,200 in valve cover gaskets, gas leak, motor/transmission mounts, rack and pinion assembly and a strut. I have an exhaust leak in the front somewhere, i believe, but i still have to find it. Well thats all for now.

 

 

Regulators are a can do. Did four in a day on my ex's 91. Fairly easy.