Parts for your car

Several years ago I sold a 3.5L engine for an Infiniti G35 to a very nice man from Mississippi. This man was buying the engine for his wife, who loved the car. As far as stories go, I have plenty of them having been in this industry for the number of years that I have, but this story sticks out. It sticks out because Infiniti engines rarely fail – and they seem to fail on when nearly new.

“I got the car for her, and just figured she would maintain it,” the husband explained to me. “But she never changed the oil, and it’s like silly putty in the oil pan.”

We had several low mileage engines for sale at the time and sent them the nicest one we had (the car was a 2003 Infiniti G35). As far as we know, they are still driving their G35 to this day.

This family spent thousands of dollars they wouldn’t have had to had they originally maintained their vehicle. It isn’t uncommon for us to encounter this since we sell engines.

There is, however, another side to this coin.

We sell a lot of engines to families who maintain their vehicles. Sometimes their engine has failed because they’ve just worn it out. There really isn’t any way around this type of failure, since you can’t change the design of an engine you own. The only thing you can control is how you drive in a case like that (read: not like a bat out of Hell).

There can be external factors that cause engine failure.

If you drive an Infiniti, be glad that your vehicle does not use a timing belt , but a timing chain. This is one of the greatest points of maintenance overlook for many vehicles, but you don’t have to deal with it. However, you must make sure to replace your water pump. This is one of the most common things I see destroy Infiniti engines. Why? Though lack of timing belt replacement causes a lot of engines to fail, most people do eventually change their timing belt (maybe not on schedule, but they have it done). Most shops worth their salt are going to recommend a water pump replacement at the time of that timing belt replacement, since when you replace a timing belt, you’ve done 90% of the work of replacing the water pump. As the owner of a vehicle with a that doesn’t require replacement as part of normal maintenance, you have to make sure to replace your water pump. If you don’t, and it fails, you could easily overheat your engine and destroy it. When that happens, you’ll have to call us.

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