Hi all, this is my first post on the board. Bear with me, it's a long one.

I'm in the market for a car. I've been driving an '02 Maxima 6 speed for the past 10 years. Before the Maxima, I owned 3 Legends, and I loved driving them. The Maxima has been a good car, but I think I'm ready to go back to Acura.

I'm looking at an '09 SH-AWD with the technology package and 116k miles on it. The car is in pretty good condition cosmetically, but I have a few concerns about the car.

The guy had the timing belt and water pump changed recently. I'm a little bit worried that the timing belt was replaced because it broke, not done under regularly scheduled maintenance. I say this because the car was listed for sale a month ago, and the ad said that the car won't start. I asked him if he changed the timing belt because it broke, and he told me that he changed it because it was due under maintenance. The stories don't add up.

Pretty much every warning light on the dash is on. VSA, SH-AWD, ABS, Check engine. The check engine light is giving code P0303. The guy said that he had the ABS code read, and it said that the right rear ABS sensor is bad.

I know there are lots of red flags, but I used to work at a mechanics shop through high school and college, so I'm comfortable working on cars. If I can get a good deal on a car because someone else doesn't want to or know how to fix a few minor things, I'm all for that. From doing some research on here, an ABS sensor will cause the 3 warning lights to come on (VSA. SH-AWD and ABS), so he may not have been BSing me with that. Also it sounds like the P0303 code can possibly be anything from a bad fuel injector to bad plugs.

I drove the car, and it felt strong. There was a very slight high pitched noise at higher RPMs, but it didn't stutter at all when I got on the throttle. I haven't driven any other TLs with this engine, so I'm not sure if that noise is normal at all. It also has a slight amount of valve chatter at idle. This was common in all of the Legends that I owned, so maybe it's still a common thing among Acura V6's.

I'm thinking of doing a compression test on all of the cylinders to make sure the timing belt didn't break while he was driving it and screw up the engine.

My questions are:
1) If the timing belt broke while he was trying to start the car up, would it damage the engine? And if there was any engine damage, would it show up in the compression test?
2) What kind of compression should I expect? I'm assuming that if there is engine damage, it won't be in all of the cylinders, so one or two cylinders would be a different compression than the others.
3) If the compression is strong, is there anything else I should look out for that will show me any major concerns with the car? Does this combination of warning lights with the P030X code mean something else major is wrong?
4) Is the engine noise normal for a car with this amount of miles on it? It's subtle enough that most people probably wouldn't even notice it, but it's there.

Thanks for any feedback.

 

for shawd model most common issues
1. may burn oil on 3.7 liter engine
2. propeller shaft noise
3. torque converter failure

 

These aren't exceptionally rare cars. If you have concerns over the maintenance history of the vehicle just find another.

 

^^ Just findi another.

If you want to fix it up, with all the problems listed, I'll pay no more than 6K. If it were something cheap, he would have had it fixed already.

 

^^ I agree...

OP obviously these concerns are enough to make you second guess the purchase or you would have pulled the trigger already. IMO I would look for another one, besides you said every warning light is on, that can't be good.

Good luck and welcome to AZ..

 

Yup, move on and find another TL. I'm sure there's a lot out there.