WTB: Diesel Maxima

[83_maxima]

I am looking to buy a diesel maxima. Any condition considered. Sedan or wagon. Running or not. I am in Denver. The closer the better, but I am willing to travel for the right car. Let me know if you have anything!

[asavage]

Welcome!

The ones I run across in western Wash. seem to all be cosmetically challenged. Carimbo's is an exception, with a nice finish and very little rust. My two Wagons both have significant rust.

I have a line on an '82 Wagon in eastern Wash. It "ran when parked" but sounds to be quite shabby ("thrashed, interior-wise" is the way it was described to me), and hasn't moved in at least one year, possibly two. I have no other info on it, other than a tentative price of $250 or less -- it's at a car lot. I was going to offer a lot less and then go look at it and drag it this way, and try to find an owner for it. It's either silver or pale blue. AT, of course.

If it isn't rusty, it might be worth an interiour transplant, as they're not all that hard to find from a donor gasser wagon.

How much of a project are you up for? And how do you come to be interested in the LD28?

[83_maxima]

Thank you!

I would like to find an 82 or 83 wagon wherever it may be.

The majority of the cars I find in junkyards around here have very good bodies. I have never found a very rusty or otherwise wrecked/damaged car in the junkyard. Most appear to be good cars, they are also all gas. I have never seen a diesel car on the road in Colorado or otherwise.

I can handle a project to a certain degree. I can ususally find one or two gas cars here every couple of months - most of which have decent (if not sun-faded) interiors. An interior restore would not be a problem.

Picking up a car from the west coast would be the largest feat, but for the right car, I don't mind pulling a trailer.

I am interested in the diesel maximas because I have owned a gas 83 sedan for 20 years, and a gas 84 sedan (looking to sell) that I purchased recently. I like the idea of the diesel engine and the Nissan design is top-notch. I love the 6 cylinder engines. The 83 is headed for an L28E conversion. The diesel would be a unique car to own.

I am trying to put some feelers out there and see if there are any cars out there. They seem very rare. How rare are they?

Thanks,

-Ben

[asavage]

I like Wagons, so I seem to find Wagons The Sedans are around, I just don't seem to find many my way.

Saturday, I'm gutting a dead '83 Sedan (gasser). A fellow wants the AT/OD for a 620 conversion to OD, and I get the alloy wheels and whatever I can pull off of it (brown interiour), so I'm taking a utility trailer and will strip whatever I think I can stuff in my storage unit. Carimbo is going to get the axles. The engine is probably going to the scrapyard, too bad, but nobody up here wants it, and I could even pull it easily, I've got a cherry picker, but I've asked four people and nobody wants the L24e I guess.

I'll nudge Myrna to check out the '82 Wagon again and see if it's still available. I wouldn't come get a car that far away unless it was in very good condtion. In the case of this Wagon, it'll have to be made a driver, and then you drive it home. If it's not a driver and also not pretty, there's got to be a better candidate -- you're just too far away. For me, it's an all-day drive to pick it up, driving all day and having to go over a mountain pass, but it can be done without a whole lot of drama. For you, it'd be a lot bigger endeavor. Towing it would be easiest but most expensive. They do tow well, I towed the '83 Wagon back from the same town. Read this thread for the gory details of my '83 Wagon's acquisition and resurrection.

Have you read through the FAQ yet? Check under "MY differences" esp. If you don't get an '83, the AT will be non-OD, and you may prefer a 5-spd. The 1983 Diesel AT is a one-year-only trans.

[glenlloyd]

When I called and talked to the car lot people they said it was blue, but she didn't know what the interior looked like.

steve a

[83_maxima]

Funny. It seems like you guys got all of the wagons and the diesels. I have only seen 2 wagons out of about 12 cars over the past couple years around here.

Ideally I wouldn't have to travel over 1000 miles to find a car, but I have no idea how many are hiding around here, so I am keeping my options open.

Thanks for the turn on to the FAQs. Pretty interesting. I have always seen the LD28 in the FSM, but always thought of it as more of a novelty because I had never seen one. They appear to be a totally viable powerplant though and that has me interested...

Are most of the cars you find JY cars, or do they come from varying sources? Around here, it seems like they go straight to the JY. The person I bought my 84 off of actually advertised it and I found it.

[asavage]

Steve: yeah, reviewing the emails I see it's blue. However, the first time Myrna mentioned it, it sounded like it could be silver. The silver that Nissan used can easily be mistaken for a pale blue, I know -- I've done it.

83_M (you might update your Profile, button at the top of every page), the LD28 is a fine engine, and both the PNW and Florida seem to have a cluster of them. 1982 saw a lot of them being sold, not so many in '83. Of the Gen1 Maximas, I see about one a week on the road around here, even in the boonies. Three have been up for sale via CraigsList in the last month, and there's one in Portland for sale right now for $600. The diesel versions are a lot rarer, but they're still around. In my area, I'm the only one I know of that has one, and I've owned one of them for many years.

In my county, there are only two JYs, and they're both pretty poor. I did buy a trans and set of wheels from one '83 Sedan from one JY here, but that's because I was tardy in buying the parts from the car when it sat in a front yard for over a year! When it disappeared, I found out from the owner where it had gone (a JY) and chased it down, ended up paying a lot more for the parts.

However, I have to drive to the Seattle area for real JYs, and one of our members, Carimbo, scouts one or two JYs for us. When he found an '82 Wagon last month, I made a day trip and met him there and we stripped it. We're doing a similar thing tomorrow to a '83 Sedan gasser, three of us meeting to get as many parts off as we can. But it's a long drive for me.

On the FAQ: I pretty much wrote it all at this point, but I am always looking for contributions (like the Fuel Filter section -- Steve?). This site was started last Nov. because I was answering a lot of email from people who'd recently learned about the diesel option in the Gen1 Maximas, and were looking for more info. I began using boilerplate for answers, and when I was up to eight people who were asking Qs, I decided to bring them all to one place -- here.

[83_maxima]

Thanks for all of the information and the warm welcome!

Is this 82 wagon you're looking at a diesel or a gasser? Do you have any more information on it? If you aquire it and are looking to sell it in the future (and it is a diesel) I may be interested depending upon it's condition and what else my current search turns up.

1st gens around here are few and far between. I may see one every few weeks around here on the road. Just not too many around. They can be found in the JY intermittently. The JYs around here turn their inventories over so fast it'll make your head spin. I found an 84 5 sp a few weeks back and when I went back the next weekend it had been crushed. I was hoping to pull the 5 sp conversion parts off of it but no dice.

I have yet to find anyone in my immediate area with any love for these cars at all. Z guys don't care and most other Maxima owners don't think very highly of the 1st gens. It's okay. I'll always love these cars.

Good job on this site! Nice forum!

Let me know if you come across any other 1st gen diesels...

[asavage]

Is this 82 wagon you're looking at a diesel or a gasser? Do you have any more information on it? If you aquire it and are looking to sell it in the future (and it is a diesel) I may be interested depending upon it's condition and what else my current search turns up.

It's this one. It's a diesel wagon. Direct contact info is there. I have no interest in keeping yet a third Wagon. In order of preference, I'd like to have someone resurrect it (not me), or I'll buy it and make a list of what it needs and sell it to cover my time and materials. I am not in the business of buying/selling used cars for profit, but working as I do in the local biodiesel community I constantly get requests about diesel vehicles, so I tend to do a lot of connecting people to vehicles as an offshoot.

If you want to contact Switzer directly, go ahead. Steve did. I get the impression that they are only loosely based as a profit-making enterprise. You may be better served by getting someone local to the rig to get it inspected etc.

1st gens around here are few and far between. I may see one every few weeks around here on the road. Just not too many around. They can be found in the JY intermittently. The JYs around here turn their inventories over so fast it'll make your head spin. I found an 84 5 sp a few weeks back and when I went back the next weekend it had been crushed. I was hoping to pull the 5 sp conversion parts off of it but no dice.

The JYs here are going to that model. Low prices, turn everything every two months. I'm not close enough to the "good" ones anymore to bother even looking. It costs me 2.5 hours and $10 in ferry fare to just get to the Lynnwood JY.

I have yet to find anyone in my immediate area with any love for these cars at all. Z guys don't care and most other Maxima owners don't think very highly of the 1st gens. It's okay. I'll always love these cars.

I admit that I am not all that crazy about the cars. I do like the engines though. The seating position for the driver hurts my back (I've discussed this somewhere else), and my knees are now getting creaky enough -- esp. the left knee -- that egress is becoming difficult, I have trouble putting enough power into the left knee to get my butt elevated. I had the same problem with a Subaru I had a couple of years back. The Aerostar's seating and access is perfect for me, though it's not a great vehicle in other ways.

Good job on this site! Nice forum!

It's canned software, very easy to set up. I am investigating some photo hosting software to complement it. I'd need to add more storage at that time, and as I mirror the site every night (and backup the database separately, belt-n-suspenders style), that makes the storage requirements x 2. Storage is cheap, but I am also not in the income bracket where I can indulge all my hobbies with equal resources.

Let me know if you come across any other 1st gen diesels...

They'll always be posted in this forum. eBay, CraigsList, and whatever other source occurs. You did see the Car-n-Driver diesel Sedan that just sold on eBay for $850, didn't you?

[83_maxima]

I may contatct switzer for grins if nothing else. See what they say about the car and what detail they can give me. It just seems like an awfully long way to go for what is more or less a parts car.

I just need to hit the junkyards weekly. Some will sell whole cars, and these things are not very popular - unless some z head looking for a crank for their stroker shows up.

I really like these cars. Not quite enough headroom for me, but they run and drive so nice and mine cruises the highway very well. I had forgotten how much I enjoy driving it when it was stored for 2 years. My seats were basically disintigrated and were leaving yellow fuzz all over the floor. I replaced them with a pair of grey seats out of an 87 and boy are they nice. Much better lateral support, higher seatbacks and an overall firmer feel. Very big improvement.

I did see that car and driver car. Someone on the maxima.org forum mentioned it and I took a look at the auction. It got me thinking more about the diesel models. I really do like the wagons though.

I guess I just need to keep my eyes open and see if I can find one close. I just have no idea how many diesel cars exist anymore, so I don't know what to expect.

[asavage]

As glenlloyd & I have mentioned in another thread, the load-carrying capacity of the '82 and earlier model Wagons seems to degrade over time. 1983 introduced coil spring and trailing arm rear susp. to the Wagons, a big improvement (I hope), as well as OD to the trans. Pay more to get an '83 if you have a choice. But the '82 Wagon I have does run out nice even so.

[Carimbo]

I replaced them with a pair of grey seats out of an 87 and boy are they nice. Much better lateral support, higher seatbacks and an overall firmer feel. Very big improvement.

Front seats out of an 87 Maxima? Did they just bolt right in?

[83_maxima]

The rails from the stock seats bolted right up. No problem.

[skinnerkate]

Ben, we have a diesel Max that we're planning to sell in October, if you're not in a hurry. Let me know if you want details.....

[83_maxima]

Yes please! Some details and even some pictures would be great. October is not that far off...I may be interested.