Thanks for the input, I always have to be reasonably sure I can reconstruct some of the vehicle history before buying one. Thats why buying the one I have from an older gentlemen with only one arm that drove the car less than 3,000 miles a year was not that hard.

How does the drivetrain compare in the car? Is the tranny better or worse in the 1993? Then what about the engine, any major differences there?

Captain, if I don't get the 1993 I am planning on either a flowmaster or magnaflow exhaust set up, so that will "fix" the A/C as you mentioned

Just to weigh in my opinion on the discussion I caused, I agree that a car with 50,000 miles can be abused, and also that one with 140k can still be in good shape, there are usually signs to determine that, but there are not signs to know if any car was overheated, or similar things that may shorten the life of the engine or tranny. In that case the car with 140k would potentially have more unknown history.

Yeah, my car has 150k and is clean as can be [internally that is]. Rocketfast has low miles [well, lower than me, but that'* all I remember] and his lifter valley looked like sludge heaven.

JMFC is correct, a car with 50k could of only had one oil change, while a car with 150k could have had the oil changed every 500 miles. You never know.. but like he said, there are many ways to tell how well a car was taken care of.


-justin

Best way to tell is get the maintanence records if you can. Thats what sold me on my car, i have stacks of recipts on my car, down to when the freakin HEADLIGHTS were changed. So with my car i know that the tranny was cleaned, the oil was changed every 3-4 thousand, the tires were rotated, so on and so forth. That was a big selling point.

I don't know about better or worse, but the transmission did gain electronic control sometime between the two years, IIRC. I think that I've heard that they tend to last longer than the older ones too - little upgrades here and there.

As for the engine, you get 5 more horsepower and a plastic intake. Not the cursed Series II intake though - these don't often fail. I know that there were a few differences internally as well, but I can't name them off. Reliability should be similar, all else being equal (but all else is never equal).

I think that you'll also have a different engine mount setup. Not sure if it'* all different of if they just added some, but I know that there'* a mount over the water pump on the newer ones (which I'm told does make changing that pump less easy).

That'* all I can tell you. I've only actually owned my '89 so that'* what I'm most familiar with too.