2004 Nissan Quest SL Mini Passenger Van 4-Door 3.5L - Minivan - MD Inspected

I don't know about other brands, ut if you are looking at Nissan Quest vans with similar mileage and the timing chain and tensioner have not been replaced yet, t will be needing this soon. And it's an expensive job! The chain guides wear out and slip out of place. You'll know you have the problem when the car starts making a rattling noise at low idle. Changing the oil will actually stopit for a short while. Not sure why. Google it. Or research at Edmunds. http://www.edmunds.com/nissan/quest/2004/consumer-reviews/timing-chains-are-bad!.html?style=100305064&sub=&reviewId=220581719

We put this car up for sale after my wife quit her daycare business, ot knowing the occasional noise was such a big issue. When we discovered what was going on we pulled the car from sale and decided since it would be so expensive tofix, e might as well just keep it as a vacation car. So we had a new timing chain kit installed andfixed/replaced everything wecould find.Wedrove it to the Outer Banks for vacation, hich was great. But we have too many cars and keeping a car just for vacation seems dumb now. Equally as dumb is doing about $3,000 worth of work to the car only to sell it! But that's the new plan. As for fixing it up,I did the easy stuff like wheel bearings. I paid my brother to do the engine work. He's well qualified having done only mechanic work from the age of 18 to 52. With buying the parts myself, nd my brother only charging me $650 for all of the labor, have around $2,000 in the repairs. This would easily be between $3,000 and $4,000 at a shop. It should be good and dependable for a long time now.Here's what we did:

• New timing chain kit
• New plugs
• New valve cover gaskets
• 3 new wheel bearings
• New front brakes
• New digital display for the odometer and gas gauge (These typically go after around 100k, ou can google that too)
• Maryland Inspected

As for what's wrong with it - Not much. We lost the spare key. Sometimes when you get on the gas toget up a hill or something, here is a mild vibration you can hear (not feel). Possibly a heat shield or something? It's barely noticeable and has been this way for years. Very few scratches, ut it's old enough that it should be expected to have a few. The worst one is where the inside sliding door panel was loose for a while and scraped the car when the door opened. But beinga silver car it's not very noticeable, specially if it's clean. I'll let the pictures speak to that.

Note: One of the pictures was meant to show a scratch above the license plate, ut it makes it look like rust around the Nissan emblem. This was just lighting. The emblem is not rusted.