Engine rebuild

Hi guys, I'm new here and I'm looking at buying a D40 auto (petrol or diesel), but the ones for sale in my price range($10,000-$13,000) have fairly high k's. so I was wondering if it's worth buying one with high k's at a low price ($10,000)and getting the engine and box rebuilt(roughly $2000), or would this not be worth the time and money?? Tia for the responses

Welcome to the forum!

If you can get the engines rebuilt for $2K there are quite a few of us who want to know where you did it! The cheapest we've seen is $5K and you have to remove the motor yourself, usually rebuilds cost $10K or so (diesel engine). $2K is a bargain!

As for needing a rebuild - the petrol cars are pretty solid, they're V6 engines so they aren't working as hard as a 4cyl petrol. Diesels should last longer than petrol because they're built more solidly, but other issues cause engine failures, like timing chains (replacement chains about $1.2K, labour about $600-$800 - maybe you can see why a $2K total rebuild seems so cheap!).

A high-km car will likely have other issues to attend to than the motor - steering, suspension, driveline (diff bearings, transfer case bearings etc). None of them should be seen as deal-breakers because they're all easily replaced and once done, gives you a nice strong car. Gearboxes are generally strong but some older auto models (2007-early 2009) had issues with the torque converters that should have been fixed by Nissan although it seems a few have slipped through the cracks. You'll spot them - drive it at about 90km. As you (mildly, not flat-to-the-boards) accelerate past 75km/h the car should start vibrating and this should stop at around 90-95km/h as the TCC finally engages. If that happens, the gearbox needs some work - it should cost about $2K+ with parts from Wholesale Automatics in Vic.

Good luck with your search!

Thanks so much for the reply and good info.. the 2k was a rough quote from a mate who's a mechanic that works at a wreckers so he said he wouldn't charge for labour, but it could go closer to 4K if I needed to pay for new parts. So another question I guess would be if I bought a D40 with say 250,000 on the clock apart from the chain what other major parts are likely to crap out? Also is there anything that is notorious about the Navaras? I had an eb falcon and my mate had an ed and both of the heads cracked at about 200,000 apparently that was the notorious thing with the e series falcons.
Cheers


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The timing chain is the "big kahuna" of sore points with D40 diesel owners, for pre-2010 models mostly. There have been a couple of 2010+ models that have dropped timing chains, but you could put those down to "normal failure rates". Pre 2010 the failure rates were excessively high, and included cars that were serviced properly every 5,000km and driven in a reasonable manner.

The other issues with the D40 reported on this forum: torque converters, wheel bearings (mainly front), broken clock springs, filling the diesel tank with unleaded, transfer case bearings, poor headlight performance, SCV. There'll be a few others - the occasional air conditioning fan resistor and turbocharger actuator vacuum control solenoid.