Well, our Nissan Maxima broke down in the middle of the road as we were driving our newborn daughter home from the hospital! It drove fine at first, and then just died.
Turning the ignition got the engine turning over for a second, then just died out. We got it towed to the garage, and they called to let us know the fuel pump needs to be replaced for $600.
We are moving across the country in the Summer, and won’t be taking our beloved rust-bucket with us. Question is, is there an alternative to spending 600 smackers on a new pump? I know nothing about car mechanics, and my husband knows even less…
+1 to Tester, gotta have fuel to run the car. Think about it this way, if you get a new car you will have car payments, maybe $200 a month, if the car runs for 3 months you broke even, if it runs 4 months you are ahead of the game
The only possible difference could be the price of parts.
Is the shop quoting Nissan parts ?
If so have them price shop the parts houses like Auto Zone, O’Reilley’s , etc.
The rest is labor and that’s pretty much set by the work it takes to rplace it. ( unless you have a second shop to compare labor rates with )
This is tantamount to asking if somebody really needs a functioning heart in order to pump blood throughout his/her body. Hopefully the OP knows the answer to that question.
Yes, you need to replace the fuel pump on this mystery-vintage Maxima.
If it is a rust bucket, you might want to walk away from it and buy another car. That depends on how bad the rust is and how much you can spend. Describe the rust - where is it and how much is there? If you can post pictures of the rust, that will help.
No option.
If you had an old carbureted car you could do a “Cuban gravity feed”, which is a plastic liter soda bottle taped upside-down to the antenna with a plastic tube running to the carburetor, but in your case you’re screwed. You need 40psi or up to operate.
Yeah, they actually do this in Cuba. When they’re done driving, they put the cap on the bottle and take it inside for the night. Gasoline is in high demand in Cuba and it’d get stolen otherwise.
If you had an old carbureted car you could do a “Cuban gravity feed”,
I had to do that once on my 59 Thunderbird to get it home with the 390 4BBL to save a tow. Luckily my buddy was following me from a classic car show. Every "9 -10"
miles I had to stop and fill up the 1 gallon container…it worked as long as I did not open up the secondaries and drove it easy. You brought back some memories !
