I owned a ‘96 Nissan Sentra with the 1.6 4-cyl. A pretty mediocre car but mostly pretty reliable. The engine itself gave absolutely zero problems, and is still running strong for a co-worker, now with over 200,000 miles on it. I had good luck with other, earlier 4-cyl Nissan engines, too, like the 2.0 that had 8 spark plugs, or the 2.4 12-valve that my ‘90 pickup had.
Their more recent 2.5 four as used in many of their products seems to have been much more problematic. A friend here at work has a 2003 Altima that has some weird issues.
Only time will tell how good the current generation Honda 2.4, like the one in my Accord, is. I can’t complain about its refinement or performance, especially considering the 3,400 lbs of car it’s hauling around. And it has a timing chain, not a belt ;)
Yeah, the current QR25 engine isn’t very good. The KA24DE that it replaced was excellent, though.
The Z24 engine with 8 plugs and the KA24E that was in your truck were bulletproof, but some of the cars came with suspicious engines. Like I said, the Nissan fours are hit or miss. Only the sixes seem to be consistently excellent over time.