Loosing Hair, Sleep, Not Eating, Thinking of Picking Up Smoking 2003 Altima 2.5s

[Beer]

Hello friends!

Please help me with some troubleshooting. I have been reading through manuals for a bit too long and if anyone can help me with some constructive troubleshooting I'll buy you a nice strong beer if I ever meet you in real life (I will too!).

I believe my Alti (03 2.5s owned in the family since new) has a host of problems that are causing her illness. The car has been abused in almost every way possible since it has entered my family. Poor poor car she is.

I will not go through the lengthy list of the abuses, but will go straight to the current problem: It will not start.

The hard start has turned worse and worse to a point that it ended up a dead car sitting in the driveway covered in snow...all this after I figured ~$400 tuneup to all premium fluids will do the job (did help a bit for a while).

The hard start had one nasty characteristic: after cranking it for few minutes (deep cycle optima helps a bunch) and promising her the best tuneup ever if she starts she starts HARD. She shakes and its like everything is going wrong in the engine. Knocking? More like what happens when they bust the door down during a raid.... It's scary sounding. It has been getting worse over a period of few years after the dealer has taken bunch of money and assured that it was fixed and after all the recalls and everything...heck they been at it for 4 days "fixing her"....well she does not stop by herself now... great, but nor does she start. One she starts and runs all crazy for 30 seconds or less (if I hit accelerator...i know bad...but it "fixes" it) the car purrs even on idle...sorta. Another possibly helpful thing I noticed was that the tach needle is jerky at idle. It does not jump up and down all crazy, but it feels lame and lazy and laggy. I can't explain it correctly (maybe i'll shoot a vid if I can start it) but it does not behave like it did when it was new/working properly.

Money has been tough and recently got worse and the car felt like it was her time as well right around the same time. Great...

She has all premium fluids (5 oil changes & 2 oil filters in 2 months) to flush the aftermath of Seafoam additive in the engine...whipped coffee colored mayonnaise - that's what I took out of the engine few months after using that Seafome stuff. I followed with Gunk engine detergent the kind that I had to run for 5 minutes and then flush. Did 3 flushes: gunk, flush, refill cheapo 10w30, drive for few days; then did a flush with out gunk, drove a week or so and then filled it with royal purple synt with another oil filter. Flushed transmission to synt (replaced trany last winter) as well. Coolant flush, spark plugs, air filter...I'm sure I did few more things I can't remember now.

Now I'm thinking it could be the cam positioning sensor. I know there was a recall so I called my dealership and they said, oh well your car is all set...no recalls, but bring $42 and we can tell you what is wrong with it...Yea right...anyway, I'm still probably going to do that, but the car is sitting out covered in snow and will not start and I have a cam positioning sensor in my hand and I'm hoping I can bring her to life. Logically I should be replacing the crank sensor, but I've read they do not go bad too often...

I'm going to go find it in a hour or so, any advice to where it (cam pos sensor)is on the engine and what you guys think can be wrong with the car I would greatly appreciate it and promise beer.

P.S. I also suspect that the car has a blown head gasket (or worse), but for now I will not go there...would explain what I [falsely?] attribute to the "Seafoam Effect".

P.P.S. Sorry for the long post and thank you for reading it.

[Darius]

If the oil is coming out milky, you have a major problem. Head gasket would be the most minor of the many possibilities. Buy a leak-down test kit and start there. Hopefully you have an air compressor. Leak-down can tell you specifically where it is leaking air and at what rate.

If you don't have an air compressor, buy a compression test kit. It is basically a gauge that screws into the spark plug hole and tells you how consistent the compression is across all 4 cylinders. I'm guessing you will have one that is low or two that are much lower than the others.

Start there. And no more sea foam. I think it has seen plenty of that.