Hi Guys!
I aquired a 1994 Nissan Maxima 6 cylinder a little over a year ago from the original owners son. (Unfortunately, the car outlasted the original owner!) Great runnning car with a lot of miles. After a good buffing and polish the car is respectable to drive. About a month ago I ran it low on gas left the car sit over the weekend. On Monday when I started the car it developed a misfire. I filled the tank thinking I was just running on fumes. Guess what, the misfire continued. I drove it a couple days (hoping it would just go away) with the miss and decided to change the spark plugs, wires, cap and rotor. No change. After pulling one spark plug wire at a time I discovered cylinder #5 had spark but the engine obviously was the one that was misfiring. I figured the injector must be bad and unfortunately the sucker is located under all the intake crab. I decided to take it to a mechanic and on the way the misfire stopped (of course!). I continued on to the shop. In talking to the Mechanic, he said most likely the injector is sticking. He suggested a “flush” of the intake system and injectors. I said ok along with an oil change. You guessed it, all was fine until almost home and the misfire started again. So I say to myself, “self, i only drive this car two miles a day, live with it”. Well today when I started up the misfire is gone only this time my “check engine light” is still on. Hopefully it will go out tomorrow. With 188,900 miles this car runs great. I paid $1500 for it do you think I should invest the $500 they want to replace the injector or just hope for the best?
Have the code read to see what is happening, but do have the fuel filter replaced.
and blow $7 on a bottle of SeaFoam and dump it in the gas tank.
And many auto part stores will read the codes for free. You should get a code in the format [P1234]
Come back and give us the code.
The CEL won’t go off immediately. You need several start/stop cycles before the register is cleared. It might go off by the weekend, but you should get the codes read to see what they are. Your mechanic can do it if he hasn’t already, or you could go to a chain auto parts store. Some of them have code scanners that they will let you use for free. Call first to make sure they have one.