Infiniti crazy and considering a 1998 I30 - what to know?

[OwnerCS]

Oh when Infiniti fever sets in -- its hard say no to a yet a 2nd acquisition.. :-)

Tomorrow I will look at a 98 I30 with 140,000 miles. I'm looking to buy a first car for my teenage son. The owner indicates the alternator makes bearing noise and doesn't charge. The car runs but will eventually drain the battery.

The bearings on my 91 Q45 alternator started making noise -- so I replaced it with a genuine Nissan replacement. Yep - here's felt the pain associated changing the alternator on a VH45DE- LOL. .. Also, I've become quite a valued customer with IOS so I guess you can say that I now have a personal parts rep who has my account number memorized..

Is there anything I can do to size up this I30 quickly. We're not talking about a lot of money I believe at $800. Believe me, I've seen worse sell for a lot more.
The guy selling it says his mechanic just doesn't want to deal with changing the alternator. It can't be any worse than changing the alternator on a Q45 can it?

The alternator I took off the Q45 worked fine -- just needs new bearings. A friend of mine owns an alternator rebuilding service. I will eventually get him to put new bearings in the Q45 alternator as he will do it for a nice price just to keep it as a spare..

I know its a strech, but will a 91 Q45 alternator work on an I30?

I have the ECUTalk OBDI cable and diagnostic software for the Q45 and I like how it works. Though I know the 98 I30 uses OBDII. Some later G50 Q45s provided both OBDI and OBDII interface connections. Does a 98 I30 provide both also?

Is there a way to see or determine the diagnostic codes from the I30 without hooking it to a OBDII diagnostic tool?

What are I30 (OBDII) owners using for a tool like ECUTalk?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Craig

[tigersharkdude]

http://www.nicoclub.com/FSM/i30/1998_I30/el.pdf

go to page 33

the 30 is OBDII

You can find out any CEL codes yourself. It would take forever to right this out so just click this link
http://vbxmaxima.8m.com/ecu.html

after step one click this link
http://vbxmaxima.8m.com/ecudecoder.html