mechanical advantage

It turns out that an upper timing chain guide is so absolutely worthless that nissan completely removed the part from the altima design in 97, that's why there aren't any on the market, because most people just remove theirs. Score one for the good guys.

The altima is purring like a kitten now. It has a new battery. The rattle from the engine is gone, and the bad motor mount is replaced, and now it sounds good again. Just need to replace the front brakes and rotors, get it inspected, clean up some scratches in the paint and sell her.

The beauty of all this is that if you went to a mechanic and said "I need you to replace a motor mount, put in new brakes and rotors, a new battery, and check out that noise coming from the engine", there's no way you're walking out of the shop with less than 1000$ in repair charges. So far, for me its been 60$ motor mount, and 60$ battery, the brakes and rotors will be about 100$. That's almost 800$ savings just by knowing a little bit about tools, having a repair manual, and not being afraid to do some things yourself. I owe that to my dad for making me help bleed his brakes when I was a kid, and always having some sort of broken piece of electronics around that I could pull the capacitors out of and play with.