triplefour

i just got this NX1600 from a friend who said the problem was fixed.
actually i guess he said "its working now"

i have come to fully realize what that phrase means...

its working now.... but later it wont be.

the day i bought it i drove it all over town and then i stopped at jamba juice. i started the car up and drove out of the parking lot but as soon as i got on the highway outside the mall i noticed i couldnt get into 3rd gear, i was losing power, couldnt rev the engine...
felt like i had no fuel in my engine. but i do have fuel.

so i was going maybe 30 and coasting, the car was dead...i tried starting it with the key, nothing i tried letting the gear out in second while it was still rolling...it wouldnt turn over.

i dont know how but i managed to coast to safety across the other highway and into the neighborhood next to the mall.

i tried to start it over and over with no luck.
i tried jumper cables.
i gave up.

i left my car there overnight
i towed it with a tow cable in the morning to my friends house in that neighborhood.

i think i might have left it there one more night

then the next day i was going to tow it to the shop to have it looked at.

but of course i tried to start it first and it started right up.
wow!

my "friend" had been taking it to these mechanics and they had done a few things.
they had checked out his fuel pump, and i guess it wasnt coming on so they rigged a hotwire from the fusebox (in the place labeled fuel pump) back behind the back seat into that hole where a bunch of wires go, they spliced it in there to one of those wires i guess.
so now when you turn on the ignition the fuel pump comes on, guaranteed.
but it never goes off as far as i can tell. in my wifes NX, the fuel pump comes on...then it goes off. well whatever i dont really care about that right now. the fuel pump DOES come on, you can hear it.
but they couldnt figure out why it still dies sometimes while running
they were trying to tell us, last time we went over there that it was some kind of "electrical problem" and they would have to look at it for a few hours and maybe they could fix it, maybe they couldnt but they were going to have to go under the dash to mess around with the wires...something he said about a fuel relay...it was hard to understand and i wasnt really convinced to spend money...
i talked to other mechanics and they told me about the same story...no guarantees but they would charge me. and also that it was hard to fix it if it was working... i need to bring it to them dead...but then when i do, it just starts up when they look at it because they let it sit for a day.

so i thought about it, and asked people... and they told me to check the fuel pump relay so i changed that...i have a spare nx1600 for parts so i can get just about any part. and someone else told me to take a magnet to the gas tank and try to pull out rust flakes that might be clogging the fuel pump inlet and stopping the gas from getting out. then leave the magnet down there a foot away from the fuel pump intake..
so i did that...
thats pretty much all i did cause i couldnt think of anything else.
and it was running great!

so i drove it for a week..maybe even 2

and then 2 days ago, while i was leaving this sorbet shop i go to, the car died really soon after i started it again...

and i couldnt start it up again no matter what.

i started checking out the fuel system more carefully.
i went on my back under the car on the drivers side by the gas tank and tried to see what was going on. i saw this cylynder hanging there, one hose connected to the gas tank on the side that said "tank" and one hose connected (presumedly) to the engine on the side labeled "engine" so i thought this was the fuel filter (its not) and i disconnected the bottom hose "to engine" to see if fuel was getting from the tank to the engine...
there was no fuel coming out so i thought oh well then maybe the "fuel filter" is clogged and nothing can get to the engine. ill just get a new fuel filter.

so i towed it behind the theatre from the no parking zone i had coasted to park into.

but when i got the fuel filter it was way different looking...

so later the guy at nissan told me that i was messing around with some kind of fuel vent and when i think about it, its probably taking fuel FROM the engine and dumping it back into the fuel tank, like...i dunno if something went wrong and it needed to do that...
i think thats what the guy said. so basically he said troubleshooting there is not going to tell me anything.

i tried starting it the next day and it still wouldnt start. it hadnt quite been 24 hours yet. more like 18. i didnt have time to deal with it so i left it there again one more night.

now im going to go back over there and tow it to my house if i cant get it started.
if i could figure out what the trick is to get it started besides just letting it sit for some lenghth of time, that would be great. even still, randomly dieing while driving is dangerous. it never has a starting problem until its already running and it dies. then it wont start for 2 days. then it will start and run for at least a week, then it will repeat that cycle.

can anyone help me diagnose this problem any further?
i have changed a clutch, hubs, bearings rotors, brakes, engine mounts, all kinds of stuff so i know i can fix anything...but this one has got me stumped.
if it really is an electrical problem....

thank you for reading this much, i hope someone can help me out!