Might be looking at a 97 Altima for my younger brother as a beater. It has 150k on the clock. They are asking $600 for it. Any big things I should look out for on these..
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July 28, 2009 7:21 a.m. dxman92 New Reader
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July 28, 2009 7:53 a.m. The Brown Stig SuperDork
Wheel bearings, auto transmissions and mass air sensors are what I have seen.
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July 28, 2009 8:22 a.m. 16vCorey SuperDork
The distributors are also crap. Nothing to really look for, as they spontaneously fail, but just keep $100 in you budget for one.
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July 28, 2009 8:27 a.m. 4cylndrfury Dork
power steering high pressure hoses fail a lot in 90s Nissans, and are aftermarket unobtanium. Like $400 from the steelership. But Im sure some grassrotsy types have got easy fixes...if only we knew some of those types of folks
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July 28, 2009 8:29 a.m. jrw1621 HalfDork
The engine is a timing chain not a belt so it does not need to be changed often like a belt.
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July 28, 2009 8:53 a.m. belteshazzar Dork
but there's an o-ring in the timing cover that will fail sometimes and you'll loose a lot of oil. cheap time consuming fix you can ignore as long as you keep oil in it.
can't say I've seen many (any?) transmission failures. I know they're not interchangeable, but the transmission is very similar to the one in the maxima.
seen some dead distributors. seen some bad injectors.
not much else. great car from a reliability standpoint. same mpg as a maxima with less power, but at that price who cares.
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July 28, 2009 8:08 p.m. fastmiata New Reader
My wife's 94 SE lasted 192k on the stock clutch and other hardware. Other than oil changes, brakes, tires and one engine tune-up, the car never had any significant work done on it. A great car but boring.
