i have a 93 maxima. 176k miles. i love this car. it's fast, it's fun to drive, seems like it'll run forever. has power everything. it gets good gas mileage. rides smooth. awesome visibility.
it has some problems (i wish i knew the first thing about cars so i could fix them instead of taking them to someone who's gonna charge me an arm and a leg). if i had the money i'd get it all fixed up.
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problems that i can think of:
-whining / "grinding" noise coming from the front of the vehicle when turning. i put grinding in quotes because that's the best word i could come up with at the moment. some of those parts are worn out, i was told. i forget exactly what (bushings, tie rod, shocks, struts, couple other things so i was told). car pulls a little bit to the right.
-has a bad oil leak (or so i was told). nothing drips on the ground, however.
-engine struggles a little bit when accelerating thru the low RPMs. kinda stutters or something. i put some fuel injector cleaner in and it seemed to help a lot, but it could've been placebo. stutter is mostly gone now. i will also get some stuttering when i am stopped and have my AC on... RPMs will drop down to like 500 or 600 every couple seconds and the entire car will shake.
-muffler is looking pretty shabby, rusting up and a layer of metal is flaking off
-rear passenger side window doesn't work or even stay up. it is held in place with suction cups. i haven't figured out how to get the whole door panel off, and i don't wanna just tug at it because i feel that i might destroy it by accident.
-bose stereo is dead, or so it seems. it still lights up but it won't power on. i tried changing fuses and it didn't work. i'm gonna probably take it out (if i can figure out where the power cord disconnects) and look inside.
-cruise control doesn't seem to work
-drivers side inside door handle came loose about a year ago and now there is a knack to opening it. it didn't come completely off, tho.
-funny problem with locks: if i try to unlock all doors from driver side with 2 twists there is a chance that only the driver door will unlock. no big deal, except that if i open the door the car alarm will go off. half the time i have to walk around to the passenger door to unlock (it works normally). i took most of the valuable things out of my car and leave it unlocked most of the time now.
-leather seats in some areas are badly sun damaged and cracking like... crackers, or potato chips or something. real brittle in some places. probably because there is no tint on the windows.
-front and rear bumper have large cracks in them. there are also a couple big scrapes and one big dent in the car's body. a little rust here and there.
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bottom line tho is that it has been a really good car to me, i've had it about a year and a half. the radiator broke one day and was expensive to get replaced but what can u do?
if anyone knows which of these things i can repair myself and what i should probably get done professionally, let me know. i'm not afraid to get my hands dirty. money is the real issue for me, unfortunately. i feel like i could maybe do something about the radio, window, doors, poke around here and there under the hood without getting too surgical. i don't really have a lot of tools either.
i wanna keep it going as long as possible. it's probably going to end up getting sold tho.