There’s a certain level of abuse some vehicles reach in their lives after which a trip to a dealership — whose techs will only fix a car the right way — just doesn’t make sense. Obviously, no one in their right mind would take a 375,000 mile ex-NYC Taxi they bought for just $800 to a Nissan dealer to get fixed. Of course that’s what we did.
Conceptually, this project with Copart is supposed to be a zero-to-hero story that demonstrates the many, many possibilities that exist if you broaden your project car search to include Copart. We probably ended up a little closer to zero than they originally bargained for when we optimistically picked the cab. We chose “hard” mode and it’s been a wild ride ever since. But this is a hero’s journey, after all, and you don’t become a hero if you don’t experience any adversity.
Oh, man, did we set ourselves up for adversity. We bought a sight-unseen cab that had been through the worst New York could throw at it, including salty winters and potholes big enough to swallow Bill DeBlasio whole. These vehicles have Nissan’s notoriously garbage CVT and the photos showed all sorts of potential problems.
What we did know was that it had a complete motor and transmission, and had been used within the last few months as a taxi. Otherwise, it was looking rough.
If you look past the body damage and squint at the windshield you’ll notice it has a biohazard sticker there to warn would-be buyers of biological hazards. Again, this was an $800 car.
From Gossin’s Rescue Garage To Capital Nissan
When we last checked in with the cab, our NV200 was being looked over by SWG. He did his valiant best to rescue the cab and got it running again, complete with tires and wheels, but ran into a massive oil leak that was going to take more than driveway wrenching to repair.
The plan was always to swing by a dealer, both to get some recall work done and to see what kind of hilarious estimate we’d get if we got it fixed at a real service center. With the crank bolt as immovable as Excalibur, it seemed like maybe the next stop should be the closest reasonable Nissan dealer. Of course, not just any Nissan dealer would do, as this is a crazy thing to roll into a shop.
SWG already had a good experience with Wilmington’s Capital Nissan so I called them to see if they were game. To my surprise, they were anxious to see what the van was like and asked us to ship it over. I even explained that we were not likely to do any work there, which didn’t phase them at all.
The Big Dropoff
As you’ll remember, SWG diagnosed a huge oil leak that seemed to stem from the front crankshaft pulley seal, although it was difficult to be sure what was actually happening without repeatedly refilling her with oil. A dealership, with a lift, should be able to remove the crankshaft pulley easily and diagnose the issue.
So off the Nissan went on the back of a tow truck to Capital Nissan. I called Ken, our friendly Service Advisor, and walked through the gameplan. The most basic thing we needed to do was to determine what’s going on with the oil leak, as, until that’s repaired, we can’t move forward. It was leaking that much. We’d also driven the cab… not at all, so determining that the Nissan’s transmission was in full working order would be helpful. There were a couple of open recalls as well so, sure, get those done.
In order to baseline our cab as be we could, I also asked for a full rundown of everything that they’d have to do in order to bring the cab back to life mechanically, along with the associated cost. For all that, we’d pay the minimum diagnostic check fee of $324.99.
Ken’s first concern upon getting the cab was getting it into the shop. Did we want to risk running it a bit? I said I’d rather not, being unaware of how much oil was still in the thing. Ken decided it wasn’t too heavy and so getting it wheeled into a service bay was probably the best course of action.
The Dealership Cracks The Case
Before even removing the crank case bolt or replacing the seal, by getting the NV200 on a lift, the techs at Capital Nissan were able to diagnose what they saw as the main cause of an oil leak. It seems that 375,000 miles of hard New York City life resulted in the big crack in the timing cover you see above. The timing cover, by the way, is what you pour the oil directly into on this engine, so it’s no wonder it flowed out onto the ground so quickly.
A Nissan dealer, of course, will only repair things by-the-book, and right off the bat the estimate for parts and labor to replace the whole case would be $2,192.14. Ouch. SWG was relieved to discover that even if he’d removed the bolt and swapped the seal it would still be Exxon Valdez when he restarted the cab. I was a little less comforted by the price.
It gets worse. The rack-and-pinion steering had cracked and separated from the subfame.
Replacing the steering system would be another $2,329.10 if done the official way. We’re already looking at about $4,500, or approximately six times the cost of the cab (or about twice what it cost to buy it and ship it around the East Coast).
It doesn’t end there. Ken and his colleague Cheryl explained the following also needed to be addressed:
- The driver front strut is bent and the front wheel is cambered into the fender.
- The tires are shot.
- The oil pan and CVT pan are both dented.
- Both lower control arms are shot.
- The subframe radiator support is broken
- The front tie-rods are bent
- Both front window regulators are inoperable
- The HVAC vents on the front instrument panel are inoperable
- It has no cats!
And that’s just the stuff that was diagnosed right away. A full estimate for all the work was $14,406.62, if they were to do it, which meant replacing anything broken with genuine Nissan parts.
Gulp.
It’s Always Darkest Before The Dawn
I’m not a wrench, so I had to defer to Jason and David as to the next steps. I communicated to Ken that I was suddenly more concerned than I was before about the drivability of the van and admitted that I was worried we might need to scrap the project.
Ken, to his eternal credit, didn’t want that to happen. “Nooooooooo! It was gonna be so cool!” he argued.
I shared the report with David and Jason, wondering what they’d think. Neither of them seemed that bothered. It’s an NYC Taxi that’s been driven the equivalent of 15 trips around the world almost solely within Manhattan and Brooklyn. Of course it has issues! The folks at Capital Nissan weren’t giving up either. They performed the first recall job (the second one would have to wait until we replaced the exhaust) and even had a tech check out the CVT. Certainly, if the engine works and the transmission works, everything else is fixable.
For the first time in this project, we had a bit of luck. The transmission seemed to be in working order, though Ken admitted they didn’t get it up to highway speeds. Perhaps to encourage us further, they cut us a break on the diagnostic fee, charging us a minimal amount for the labor to check everything out. So, yeah, if you’re in North Carolina and want a Nissan, go check out Capital Nissan and tell them we sent you. Good folks.
After paying for the car, the next step was to have it shipped to Chapel Hill, where David would meet it with a bag of tools, a box of parts, and a song in his heart. Nothing could go wrong from here on out.
Well, that’s wrong. One more big thing could go wrong. And did.
Fix the cigarette lighter
Are we talking about a wet belt here? A thing that we’ve been warned about on this very site??!!!
https://www.theautopian.com/why-so-many-people-hate-wet-timing-belts/
Best I can tell it’s a chain drive twin cam DOHC.
How does a commercially used vehicle, presumably company-owned, run without catalytic converters? I mean, if the company owner says remove the cats, isn’t the mechanic also legally liable if he/she follows through?
Being it’s NYC the cat(s) were probably stolen and the owner said weld in some straight pipe. The downstream sensors throw codes but really don’t enter into the closed loop functionality.
Ahem, my mechanic back in the day charged me for an “exhaust extension pipe adapter”.
I think that was answered by SWG in a prior post. If the cats were recoverable, any self-respecting cab company would remove them before retiring the vehicle so they could be used on other fleet vehicles since they’re so expensive to replace.
NY does not allow the sale, advertising of or installation of used, recycled or salvaged catalytic converters.
https://www.way.com/blog/new-york-catalytic-converter-laws/
So these were stolen or removed for recycling only.
Yeah, I bet they were removed for recycling. That’s what happens where I live. The cheapest of the cheap cut the cats off, recycle the cats, and then either crush or sell the car.
Heck, nearly much every single time I’ve sold a car for $500 the guys always tell me that they’re yanking the engine and cat(s) and scrapping the rest.
DT: not even a family of cats?! what?!
Man, that laundry list is worse than Ghostbusters and Road Warrior combined!
This might not be the ringing endorsement that Copart was probably expecting when they partnered up with you guys.
Yeah, no kidding, especially with the remarks elsewhere in the comment section about how a lot of the damage, including the cracked timing cover and the dents in the oil pan & the CVT pan, was highly likely actually caused by Copart using forklifts to move cars around, not a good look for Copart *eye roll*
Adding to my earlier comment: in the late 90s I had occasion to visit some wholesale used car auctions frequented by buy here/pay here dealers and the like and noticed how the auction companies were using vehicles such as small pickup trucks, tractors, and even old airport luggage tugs, all fitted with large bumpers and hitches, to push and pull the cars around, with nary a forklift in sight. One would think that Copart would use such vehicles so as to avoid inflicting further damage?? Or is it simply cheaper and quicker to just use forklifts for everything? For badly damaged cars it probably makes sense to use a forklift but for cars still capable of moving under their own power or even just rolling it would seem like forklifts are a bad idea? Is it any skin off their nose for Copart to incur further damage to the cars? Almost seems like Copart is good only for parts and not for whole cars with the hopes of getting them running again…
I also wish they would use the true cost of the car after fees- which are really high at Copart.
Police officer: Do you feel this vehicle is safe for highway travel?”
DT: “Yes. Yes, I really do. I believe that…and I know it’s not pretty, but it will get you where you want to go.”
“She may not look like much, but she’s got it where it counts.”
These actually came with a manual in other markets. If the CVT is actually bad, I assume it wouldn’t be too hard to swap over.
A certain meme account will be weighing in with an acerbic response in 3… 2… 1…
Not until someone actually suggests that the CVT is in fact bad.
The MR20DE engine was mated with a horrible CVT, but also used a 6MT when used in the B16 Sentra, so finding one in a scrapyard may be relatively easy.
That would actually be a pretty cool swap for this project! I mean, it needs so much else, what’s a little transmission switcheroo?
Nothin’ a little JB Weld won’t fix…actually serious, my ’00 300M had a hairline crack in the stressed member oil pan – pan removal was engine out! A die grinder, Dremel, brake cleaner and JB got me another 3 years and 55,000 miles.
Dented pans and whatnot, “tis best to let sleeping dogs lie”.
Yeah you could redneck repair every part of this a lot cheaper but what do you have when you’re done?
Depends on the car… I never cheeped out on the cars I really cared about. At the same time I had many that were just drivers with no passion to me.
Will it suit it’s purpose for X amount of time? Cost benefit analysis.
More money in your pocket to buy something new.
In some ways the 300M may be worst car I ever owned, maybe tied with my ’88 Buick Regal. Chrysler corrosion protection was a joke, the LH platform ate tires, the “upmarket chrome” wheels corroded and leaked from the beads. nothing was easy to work on… I liked the size, comfort and style, though terrible rear visibility. Sadly traded a ’94 SHO that would not fit a modern type baby seat in the rear. My contemporary WJ Grand Cherokee had far less issues.
I had a cracked oil pan in a replacement engine for my Miata that I didn’t notice until it was installed. Drained the oil, connected a shop vac to the oil fill* to stop any residual leaking and then cleaned and sealed the crack. Worked great.
*Do this outdoors, the fumes could explode the shop vac
Is it too much of a spoiler for us to ask what exactly the recall work already done was, and what’s next?
Now I’m really curious if the CVT is still the original one.
After 375k city miles I doubt it, but now I’m curious as well. Sometimes improbable survivors go way longer than expected.
Biohazard sticker at the junk yard = blood in the car, probably from an accident (I equate it with someone died in the car).
That was my first thought too, but this is a NYC cab we’re talking about here. I think “Biohazard” may be considered as normal wear-and-tear in this case.
One hopes it’s only vomit from drunken fares.
https://youtu.be/N2boczY_myc
Oh God I hope it’s Urine
Might just be the name of a band who used it.
I remember being at a junkyard on an obscenely hot day. I saw a car, don’t remember what it was, that had its hood bent up over the windshield. A nice cool(ish) place to rest for a moment and have a smoke. There was some pretty serious impact damage on the driver’s side so I got in the passenger seat. I lit my cigarette, looked up and there was blood all over the headliner! Usually Pull-A-Part does a good job keeping out the biohazard cars, but that one slipped through, my guess is because the interior itself was red. Needless to say I found another shady spot in a hurry.
I am shocked at the cost of labor when mechanics basically make nothing.
Maybe you shouldn’t look up how much the line cook makes on the $15 avocado toast you ordered.
The amount of knowledge, skills, and effort required to be an auto mechanic are entirely disproportional to the pay. And the line cook didn’t shatter his elbow on the alignment rack.
Excellent points. What did poorly was to point out that our economic system consistently undervalues the people who actually get the work done. My buddy is a skilled woodworker and barely gets by even though his company charges tens of thousands of dollars for custom conference tables for corporations.
Trust me the kitchen in a really busy restaurant isn’t the safest place to be.
Depends where. Dealer techs here in Montreal do well
If you are paying the bill, there really are very, very, very few occasions where it makes any sense at all to take a car to the dealership for service (baring annoying shit like modern keys where there is no alternative – wankers). The one time I broke that rule for simple servicing I eventually came to regret it.
My local VW store had great oil change prices, and they threw in a free tire rotation. GREAT – I didn’t have a lift here in God’s Waiting Room, FL, and they were only charging about $10 more for the oil change than I could DIY. But then I bought a QuickJack, and it was time for the first MAJOR service on my GTI. So I do the service, and figure I’ll rotate the tires while it’s up on the QuickJack. The MOFO’s had cranked the lug bolts on so tight that it took my 300lbs bouncing on a 6′ length of pipe as a wrench extension to break them loose. EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM. Dealer monkeys, got to love them. Would have been all sorts of fun to get a flat on the road.
If they can’t get something as simple as properly torquing the lug bolts right, why should I trust them to do anything? Hopefully they used the right oil and actually changed the filter!! They definitely did not change the drain plug like they are supposed to at every oil change, it was chewed up. Monkeys!
I had a 2000 Dodge Caravan, and it needed some recall so I had them rotate the tires. I asked that they hand tighten the lug nuts, and I was told “sir we have impact gun that are calibrated to toque specs” 3 weeks later, I went to change the brake pads, and I could not get one lug off. Not a braker bar with a pipe, or a neighbor’s impact gun could remove it. I took it back and told them in no uncertain terms how “nice” I was yelling at them, as if I have been stuck on the side of the road with kids in the car with a flat, I would have been royally pissed off.
Worse was one shop years ago that left one wheel finger tight!. I noticed a hellacious vibration on the way home and found all 5 lugs loose.
I hand torque mine so my wife or daughter can loosen with the (good) lug wrench I keep in all cars. Generally 85 ft/lb or so lubed. They also carry AAA in an area with decent service.
Sears store in Des Moines, Iowa, installed a pair of air lift bags on the rear axle of my 1969 Chevrolet convertible, because I was moving cross country with a U-Haul in 1982 and between overloaded and old coil springs it was sagging to the bump stops halfway between NYC and LA.
Anyway, it had a set of Mickey Thompson mag wheels with those special nuts. The Sears store ( I went there because what good is a warranty on work if you are a thousand miles away?) put the nuts on both rear wheels finger tight. Sure enough, about 150 miles west both the wheels fall off. Fortunately, it was about 6:00 on a Sunday morning so I was able to walk back until I found 2 of the lugnuts on sabbatical ( is lugnuts on sabbatical a great name for a band or what?) , walk to a convenient diner and have sunday breakfast until I could call the local Sears store and have them come and get things back together.
It’s remarkable that nobody ran into the back of the U-Haul trailer in the 4 hours it was in the road.
Yep, my Toyota’s don’t have conical seats, they are “mag” style with integrated flat washers. I give the washers a shot of oil upon install as well. This is all why I hate having someone else work on my cars.
Monkeys! So many monkeys working at shops…
And to add insult to injury, you pay premium pricing for their shoddy work.
There is nothing better than a local shop that does quality work at a fair price especially if they give you a nickname. I love my guys. Bring a pack of smokes or a 3 foot deli hoagie because no time for going out to lunch and they love you man
Absolutely priceless! I had one of those in Maine for decades – I used to trade him computer work for car work. Sadly the owner died and his son had no interest in continuing the business and closed it.
I have a good indie down here in FL that I trust, but they are the ONLY foreign car indie in the area and are priced accordingly – cheaper than the completely extortionate dealer priceing, but not that much cheaper. So far, no issues with their work though. At least they are an hour closer than the dealerships for BMW and Mercedes.
“Toque spec’s?” Are the units windchill or number of pom-poms?
Take off, eh?
We have annual inspection here in PA, soon as I get the car home ALL lug nuts are loosened a retorqued. I do apply a light coat of nickel never-sieze to mine, was well as to brake rotor top hats/hubs and wheel mount faces. Too many times I have bought a used car with wheels frozen in place. Thats one reason why my “capped” lugnuts last decades, as soon as I have trouble with a socket I buy a replacement set as well.
I keep a stock of OEM oil pan crush washers, as well as plastic body push pins.
Same – I keep lots of bits like that in stock. At this point, when I can I don’t even let shops take wheels on and off. When I need tires, I take the wheels to the shop, not the car. But at the time I had no way to do that in FL.
The 4Runner groups are full of posts from people with stripped or missing skid plate bolts and damaged and/or unremovable filter housings from dealer performed oil changes. It’s crazy how bad supposedly trained personnel can mess up simple tasks.
I do almost everything myself and have 2 independent shops I trust for what I can’t (or just don’t want to do anymore). Here in PA we need annual inspections so I spread the cars around (one shop is pickier about rust, the other about brakes). Both allow me to provide parts and fluids if the work is scheduled. Both will allow me to repair myself and sticker at no additional cost if there is an issue. I count myself blessed.
Oh yeah, I consider it a minor miracle when I buy a used car and all the underpanels are in place with all the screws.
My Mercedes was dealer-maintained to the point it had Mercedes tires and wiper blades on it – they replaced the seat bottoms under warranty and did not even BEGIN to put the seats back together again correctly after. Missing bolts, bolts not tight, broken bits. It was crazy – I found it because one of the underseat storage bins literally fell off. Forgot about that one. I have definitely had some poor quality warranty work on my own cars too. I read BMW the riot act after they did a stunningly half-assed job of replacing a door seal on my wagon – put it back on myself correctly in <10 minutes, which shows how little extra time it takes to do the job right in the first place. Monkeys!
When I bought my 4Runner the front two skids were missing. When I went to replace them, I realized why: 4 of the 6 holes had sheared off bolts inside them.
I ended up fixing them with a combo of heli-coils and flag nuts.
The guys doing oil changes are not necessarily the guys doing actual repairs.
I was luckily able to rebuild my Honda key when the plastic housing broke. New housings are cheap, new keys aren’t.
That said my backup plan was a new key from an online dealer. Still not cheap but it was about half what local dealers and locksmiths were asking.
BTDT with my Volvo V70. But ultimately, I ended up paying the extortion for a new key as the aftemarket housings suck. But at least I saved a little by reusing the actual metal key blade (switchblade style key).
No ability to get a new key from anyone but Volvo. Mercedes is the same, I need one of those too.
A free first oil change for my Focus ST resulted in a new bumper cover after they lowered it onto something (I was told that “someone slipped off the clutch”, however that was supposed to explain it when it definitely looked like someone forgot to clear the area under the lift before dropping it). Recently got my current car back from the body shop (moron in a Civic Si speeding spun out on the highway resulting in pretty much an entire new front end which at least took care of that road rash and the scratched from one of my nieces) and went to change to the 3-season wheels and change the brake pads and they must have picked up a gorilla from the zoo as part of their enrichment program, handing him a cheater bar to put the nuts on. That’s all I need on a car with a reputation for weak lug bolts (really just poor resistance to morons with air guns).
I have to admit, I’m kind of curious how you crack a timing chain cover short of a pretty solid physical impact, which I don’t see evidence of in the photo? It’s solid on the block so it’s not flexing. Would it just be the almost unending hot cold cycles that are the culprit? Maybe getting submerged in a puddle while hot?
Maybe being dropped of a trailer?
Oh it was only dropped a few feet. It’s a NYC Cab, it’s definitely been through worse.
Transmission failure would actually be less of a problem since you have a spare in the comments.
Spec V swap. How hard could it be, asks the man who won’t go within 20 miles of trying it.
See? This is what you get for buying into a marque that still has dealerships.
You could pay a dealer to fix all the issues for $14K or you could buy 17 more $800 taxis and cobble them together into a single functioning cab for less.
If they bought 17, I bet they could get kore than one going.
Then it’s race time!
Would you mind if we parked them on your front lawn? I’m sure the HOA won’t have any problems with it.
Coincidentally, I live in the parking lot of a taxi depot in NYC.
Form them together like Voltron.
While every cab suffers abuse like this, most don’t show it so obviously. Checkers, Scud Caprices, and good ‘ol Crown Vics don’t rack up this kind of repair bill because they’re built like trucks. The Sentra-grade hardware on this cab ain’t gonna cut it.
I can’t imagine the repairs a Prius would need after this kind of hellish duty.
There is truth that a Crown Vic and F150 are not built much differently. They often shared powertrains and accessories as well. Arguably all an F150 had over dad’s old Colony Park wagon was ground clearance.
I did talk to a guy in Vancouver BC with 600km on a 5 yr old Prius doing Uber with the original engine, trans, and battery. However I do realize this was family owned and operated and maintained and it’s not NYC.
Toyota should buy it and put it in a museum.
Such poor timing with the “no cats” – a couple of years ago DT had an excess of cats in his “Holy Grail” Jeep Grand Cherokee.
True, but those cats were for a Jeep, not a Nissan.
RICH.
Worth the wait.
Actually when I read that in the article I thought his cats were what he was referring to.
I must admit, I am fascinated to see this project unfold, as I have owned some very high mileage vehicles that had a lot of needs, but none were used in such a harsh fashion as a taxi. But at the same time, I’m not sure I can think of a less desirable vehicle to put this kind of effort into.
Nissan Altima all the worst parts of Nissan and none of the cool factor of this taxi.
Is it in North Carolina and being shipped to North Carolina (Last paragraph)?
Yes
Lol. I fixed it. From the coast to the college!
What a cliffhanger!
It’s… let’s just say this thing has lived another 375k of miles just with a few months in our care.
Did you pop it in reverse to roll back the odometer????
That’s crazy, the normal NYC standard for taxis is only to survive a Bloomberg-sized pothole
I’m assuming this cab made many trips into New Jersey, because it shows clear signs of encounters with Chris Christie-sized potholes.
Christie is fluffy. Would bounce right over those.
(He’s not the filler. He’s the measuring tool.)
You know the old joke why are New Yorkers so pissed off? They realize the light at the end of the tunnel is New Jersey.