Review of the 1997 Nissan Quest Minivan

I bought a 1997 Nissan Quest over two years ago, from a major dealer, Phil Long Nissan. The asking price then was about $5800, and the vehicle had 98,000 miles on it. I offered $4200 out the door for my van, and left the dealership very happy.

The van is white in color with grey interior. It has a 3.0, V6 engine and has fantastic pickup. It has an automatic transmission, both front and back windshield wipers, front and rear defrost, factory installed radio, tape deck, heater, and radio controls in middle section of van, for passenger convenience.

Overall, I got a great deal. (Thank God for the Buyers market!)

For the first year, I had virtually no problems. I took the vehicle on many long trips for my brother's baseball season. My husband and I enjoyed our problem free van right up until about six months ago. At that time, the vehicle had 129,000 miles on it.

The problems started out very minor with the main window controls on the driver's side door. The control for the passenger side door was the next thing to go out. Next, my front windshield wiper motor went out. In fact, the gear inside the motor snapped in half. The wiper motor for this particular vehicle had to be the worst design I had ever seen. From there the problems took a dramatic turn for the worse. The vehicle died at my husbands work and we had to tow it to our mechanics, which wasn't too costly.

We ended up spending $800 to get the NOC Sensor, and the plugs and wires replaced. Supposedly this would take care of the problem. Except it didn't. We had to tow the vehicle in again two weeks later for the same reason. We proceeded to spend $200 for a fuel system cleaner and another diagnosis. We were told that it was probably the fuel pump and to bring it back in the morning. The cost of a fuel pump replacement with labor was somewhere in the neighborhood of $450. I was tired of throwing away my money.

I took it in to another mechanic and found out that my number 4 fuel injector was going out, and that both of my Oxygen Sensors were "lazy." "Lazy" meant that they weren't out and they were still functioning in range, but not as good as they could be. In fact, they were riding the line as to whether they were truly functional or not. He told me that he was going to do a fuel system treatment and that if it didn't work, then I would have to pay $1200 to get it fixed.

I just couldn't afford that, so I took my van home and drove it till it died. Meanwhile, I did some research online, and found that there were places that would overhaul my injectors for about $15 and I was thrilled. I decided to order a mechanics CD online from eBay, in order to fix this problem myself. It ended up being a minor fix. I didn't even replace the number 4 fuel injector. Instead I took a Qtip and cleaned out the filters all the way around it, and stuck a very thin pin in the injector hole to dislodge anything that could have been blocking it. This seemed to work as all of a sudden it started dripping fuel. I put it back in the van and it worked! So I found that the van was pretty easy to work on.

The next problem I had was that when I tried to get the windshield wiper motor from a parts store, I couldn't find it. I tried new parts stores, used parts stores, and finally had to call Nissan, who sold it to me for close to $80 with tax. I thought that was crazy.

The next problem we had was the window latch on the side door. It broke and nobody carries those either. I called the dealership but they wanted another $70 + tax for that, so I went and got a ball bungee cord and slipped it through the open whole in the window. I tied the other end of the bungee cord to the window holder inside the van. It seems to be working wonderfully.

So did I get a good deal in hindsight? Absolutely. Nissan has a great record, a fantastic engine, and we've had nothing but satisfaction from all of our other Nissans. (We've had 4 others.) Nevertheless, as my dad always says, if you buy a car with 100,000 miles on it, you can expect problems. We've had our share of them, but the van is definitely worth it.