Sentra Spec V help

[kedron10]

im thinking of getting a sentra spec v sometime soon and i was wondering if you some of you spec v owners could give me some pros and cons on the car. i already know about the butterfly screws and the header with the precat problems. but i wanna know how reliable the spec v is and i know its not super fast but in your opinion does it get the job done? lol. any info will help thanks

[mocha latte cupcake]

had one for about 23k before it got totalled loved every minute of it.

Balance shaft removal and header should be your first mods if its stock... those will yield best bang for the buck.

butterfly you can have fixed @ the dealership for free. also check for recalls... avoid 02's unless it has the revised engine, 04 had the option of brembo's with a face lift which i'm sure you know and also got a longer 1st gear.

anything else? mine was reliable as it comes... but always check compression and try to buy stock if you can. maintaining a car is key

[kedron10]

okay cool thanks. i saw somewhere onetime some guy said when you take out the balancing shafts it causes a lot of vibration and it made his MAF go bad and he had to change it. i dont know how true it is cause when looking up all this stuff i only saw this problem once. but you see the butterfly screws and header problems over and over so you know they are typical. you ever heard of the MAF problem happening?

[SpecV_Scott]

I had one for about 80,000mi. It was a great car until I removed the balance shafts. DO NOT DO IT. unless you are building the QR25DE for an all-out race application, leave the damn things in there. You will not feel the extra 8hp. What you WILL feel, is more vibration, and EVERYTHING will be louder. It's not like Formula 1 car loud, but it's annoying.

I LOVED that car until I did the balance shaft removal (BSR). Then it got old really fast. I also had motor mount inserts, which obviously amplified the problem...but I consider the $40 (and removable) motor mount inserts to be much more beneficial than the BSR, as the inserts will almost completely eliminate wheel hop.

Definitely replace the header. Definitely get a CAI and a decent exhaust. I had an AEBS header and Thermal R&D exhaust, and the car was actually pretty quiet. Until I did the BSR, and then it was more obnoxious. Lightweight crank pulleys are nice (but kind of a pain to install). I was also able to gain 7whp with an SAFC2 tune. I had an 03, which I think is still the best year (02s had lots of issues, 04+ were butt-ugly IMO).

The only things that ever went bad on the car were the MAF (killed by vibration from BSR), and the ECU (recall). Otherwise, I averaged like 25-26mpg in the city, autocrossed and drag raced the crap out of it, and had a blast the whole time. I've actually been thinking of grabbing another one as a DD.

[bigb996]

i had one for about 25k miles until i sold it....i personally would never own another one, nor would i recomend one. They have plenty of tq for a FWD car but the they lack tq steer so you will find at wot that the steering wheel wants to jerk out of your hands.

The paint quality was very poor to me. The interior was so/so.

I had CAI, header, greddy exhaust on mine and did not have any issues mechanically other than i did have an issue with the car completly dieing at intersections for a while, but i believe it was a bad MAF sensor i had to end up replacing.

I sold the car with around 70k miles on it and i got a call from the new buyer about 2 months after buying it from me telling me the motor had blown. He ended up takign it to the dealer to find the cat in the factory header(since i had put the car back to stock when i sold it) had collapsed and caused the motor to lock up. I think he ended up getting nissan to replace the motor for him but still a hassle. I hated the tranny myself the most because it was very scratchy feeling.

[Andr3w]

I've had mine for 6 years. 130,000 miles. It has been very reliable as can almost every car if you take care of it. The problems have already been listed so I'm not going to repeat. Let us know what you decide to do.

[F22B2slow]

I've had mine for 25,000 miles and it's great. Yes it has some draw backs but what car doesn't? Honda's have crap axles and massive camber wear when you drop them, these cars have crap motor mount rubber, and yes a slight vibration when the balance shafts are removed. BTW, ITS A MASSIVE 4 CYCLINDER! Of course you'll fell vibration from it. If the mounts are bad, the BS removal will make it worse until you get urethane replacements.

At anyrate, I've killed several cars in mine due the 6 speed being killer from 1st thru 4th. And yes it has a gob of torque that you will not find in a Honda unless its has a big cam or turbo.

Food for thought.

[DjFadeaway]

ive had mine for about 3 months now ..... not driving it atm because my license got suspended last week -.- i personally LOOOOVE this car i have an 04 the only thing i dont like is the lack of space in the back but hey im not riding back there lol other than that absolutely love it!!!