I need a new transmission for my 2015 Nissan Sentra because there's a part in the transmission that is messed up and their is no way of fixing it. The Nissan dealership is asking for $4500 and that went down from $5600. I definitely dont have the cash for it and I finally got approved for a high limit credit card to put that on but before putting that big of a charge on my card I wanted to ask you what would you do in this situation. I also owe $5200 on my car and it has been sitting in the driveway for at least 6 months now. I am also in the Army and will be deploying later on this year so if I fix it it's going to be sitting in the driveway again if I can't rent it out. It is an automatic car and has around 138k-142k miles on it. Any advice and suggestions are much appreciated and thank you in advance.
Normally I'd say get a second opinion on the trans but the Jatco CVTs used by Nissan are known to be awful so it's very likely it really is shot at that mileage.
Unfortunately you're caught between a rock and a hard place with that thing. To make matters worse that credit card probably comes with a crazy high interest rate. The kbb.com site pegs the fair market price of a 2015 Sentra at about $6000. Between the remaining car loan and cost of the transmission you're looking at putting about $9700 into that $6000 car.
Maybe find a shop that can install a low-miles used transmission with a warranty for less money, then sell the car off once it's running to minimize your losses? Hard to say, I don't know how much cheaper that would be.
A rock and a hard place is exactly what this situation is. I've thought about doing that or put it on Turo until I make money back from fixing it and then selling it. Thank you so much for your advice!