At the risk of sounding pretentious and stupid, which all things considered may very well be true indeed. I don't understand Cars at all. But basically I inherited my parents h35 which seemed amazing at first until the problems started kicking in heavily during last few services. Noticed there was an oil leak and it was pretty significant, took it to the Stealership despite fishing out thousands of dollars just for scheduled maintenance that looked like trumped up oil changes and fishing expeditions into finding costly repairs. After last visit saw a note of the records saying there was leaking clllant but didn't trust dealer plus couldn't visually see anythint at first. Weeks later puddles profusely leaking and things were very wrong at that point but idk what. My parents insist on taking it to the dealers and they had the audacity to charge 1800 dollars. When I keep telling my elderly parents this is an upside down mortgage or something similar where'the damages and maintenance far exceed any value that could be obtained. Just based on the scope and huge extent of damage to all the hoses there wasn't a worse time to get a painful bill at a time like this. And it just feels like a not fair system to pay premium maintenance but not have them address items like this without an insane fee or have any warranty or something on services (coolant flush perhaps?)?

So they didn't not report it but they didn't prevent it from occurring in any manner and the extreme cost of repair at this point would have been avoidable perhaps in some degeee. felt unwarranted on our part. The service guy I talked to today want even able to BS me and say I didn't get screwed. He just said all plastic hoses and stuff need to be replaced eventually.. he even said it was normal. But I was wondering if I could somehow find some liability from their scheduled maintenances the two visits prior so as to not be on the hook for the for the obscene costs and egregious practices. It's wrong to gouge your customers for
starters but they just feel predatory at point. Is this a normal issue at 150k? And why aI haven't read anything similar to that occurring, especially on that type of scale. So I'm not sure what to do. If there's a h hope or advice I could receive from anyone regarding this at all I would be very grateful for the assistance and info. Thank you and nice to meet you all.

 

I'll give you advice but you're not going to like some of it I'm afraid.

1. I highly recommend you read up on basic car maintenance, what issues a 9 year old 150,000+ mile car brings to the table, extended warranties and maybe most importantly find a trusted local mechanic to take your car to so you can avoid the stealerships if you don't want to pay their high
prices. There is a trade off there however, because dealership techs are trained to work on certain vehicles so hopefully they'll be more educated on the types of cars that dealership sells. I for one am not a fan of taking my car to a dealer.

2. When a mechanic tells you that there is an issue with your car ask for proof or go get a second opinion. Yes mechanics screw people all the time but in this case you made some uninformed decisions which could have prevented the coolant issue from getting out of hand. Assuming the dealer was wrong with their diagnosis was a bad call. You are stuck with the bills you generated unfortunately.

3. Join a forum like this one and read, read, read. There is a ton of information on here that will help you become a more knowledgeable Infiniti and overall car owner. You will find answers to a lot of questions here and solutions to a lot of problems as well. Ask a couple of questions if you must BUT we won't spoon feed information on a lot of topics that have been discussed here thousands of times, we require that you do a lot of research yourself so you won't have to ask a lot of your questions. It's actually a forum rule, make sure you read those as well.

4. Be prepared for a lot of repair and maintenance issues to pop up as the car continues to pile up the miles. If you have half a brain and a basic set of good tools a lot of these you can tackle yourself after you learn about your car. This step alone can save you thousands of dollars in the future as parts are a lot cheaper if you buy them than if you have a mechanic do it and of course labor is free.

Have a "can do" attitude and you will find car ownership a lot more fulfilling than you will if you carry a "gloom and doom" one. Plus it just makes you a more grounded and happy person overall.

 

Thank you for your input, I honestly don't care if I'm going to dislike it or not. It is sincerely appreciated and frankly necessary. It was just a painful feeling inheriting such a beautiful car (IMHO though not as slick as the coupe ) but then with such terrible maintenance fees and costs. I just don't know what to do at this point. I sold my Tacoma to get a more fuel efficient vehicle. But I ended up getting this one which is less efficient and just seems to have appalling costs. But it's resale value is so low compared to the price originally paid brand new 9 years ago, and furthermore with the scheduled maintenance and all the hose replacements being a further 6,000 dollars total added into it.

What would you guys do? I'm not very materialistic and would be fin with a crappier looking car that's more economic. Despite not knowing what that might be. I'm just terrified of what else is wasiti g on store for this vehicle and haven't found any estimates of how long it's longevity would be. It seems most people buy it with a ton of miles on it for cheaper or sell it before it gets over the hill. I just don't know what to do.. and did I deserve the huge cost in the hose thing and is it feasible I could have done that on my own.

 

Damn I just read the half a brain part. I'm sunk.

 

Yeah I agree I screwed up and will continue to do so. I'm the sorry idiot who specked the vehicle with the autozone person and saw the coolant levels were steady and not �� any leaks or problems does. I just keep wondering what's going to happen next and how I'm gong to screw it up then. I'll follow your advice definitely but I everyone on here is on a whole different levels of intelligence than I am about. Thank you very much for your input. I guess I just wanted to know if I could have prevented the coolant lines from corroding earlier and if I had missed some basic maintenance 101 stuff or tips to help. If there anything else that anyone with any Infiniti car would it's high mileage and semi-average maintenance to be weary or prevent hopefully beforehand, I will always be grateful for the wisdom and learning new things. Although I suck at mechanics, my friend still makes fun of me for draining my transmission fluid during an oil change and doubling the oil. So we'll see how long this lasts I suppose.

Happy driving.

SC

 

Don't be so hard on yourself. No one has become an expert overnight on anything. It takes time, effort, education and a lot of patience to become fluent in anything in life. Overall G's have been proven over the years to be very reliable cars but any vehicle with a ton of miles is going to have things fail and need to be repaired/replaced. If you need good fuel economy sell the G and buy something more gas friendly, used Hondas are a good choice.

And reading your posts it's clear you have a lot more than half a brain just need to fill it full of knowledge. It's called life and it can be very rewarding!!