97 Maxima, repair heart attack today

Oct 31, 2006 4 Replies

Just thought I would relay this story and see if it sounds about right.



I found water leaking form my car. Took it to Nissan today. They called and said it was the water pump. My immediate reply, "well cool, nothing major". WRONG!



Little did I know that you have to take the front of the engine off to fix it. Although it has 183000 miles on it, who came up with the idea of putting a commonly failed part behind the timing chain?



Hammer number 2, he made the comment that he is surprised the car is still moving. I don't understand what he was telling other than the CV joint were dry and about warn to a point of separating. I thought CV joints were similar to U joints. Once again, I am wrong.



I will let you know more after the fourteen hundred dollar saga is over, or do you think I am spending too much?



Fred


spending too much?

The water pump failed after 183000 miles. That's common? Also, did you use only Nissan recommended coolant, or just threw anything, like Prestone, in there? You will find that Japanese cars use silicate free coolants, and the regular green prestone is not silicate free. Further, you may notices that the orange Prestone is silicate free, but is only recommended for GM cars with long life coolant. Dont put that stuff in a Nissan.

CD

So what SHOULD one put in a Nissan if not green and not orange?

OEM Nissan coolant is green... it is just formulated to be silicate-free... which typically none of the off the shelf (prestone etc.) brands are...

In this case it's not the color, but the composition that is important.

Nirav

But wait,,,

you can not use Nissan OEM coolant - because its 5 dollars a gallon more,,,!!!!!!!!!

$5 extra every 30 or 40K miles,,, almost the cost of 2 gallons of gas,,,a real budget breaker,,,LOL

use Nissan OEM coolant,,not that stuff they sell at Checker.

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