- I'm about to buy a new Stealth/3000GT Non-Turbo, what are some of the things I should look out for when purchasing?
Mostly things to look for in any car.
- Does it smoke at all?
- Does it hesitate and stutter, or idle smooth?
- Is it hard to start?
- Does it sound like it has a bigass hole in the exhaust (Mine did when I bought it, you will know if it does, trust me)?
- Does it shift smooth?
- Was the 60k/90k/120k done on time?
- Does it give off a general feel of having been abused, or does it look more like it was a weekend car?
- Was the oil changed regularly? (Speaking of which, check the oil level)
- Is the voltmeter reading around 12v?
- Try all the buttons. Besides being just plain fun, it helps see if anything is broken.
- What type of gas has been used in it? You can get by with the non-turbos using as low as 89 octane, but I personally never touch the stuff. 93 all the way, or 91 if its all thats available to you. (My dad has a bad habit of putting 89 in it, it pisses me off to no end)
- Pop the hood and stare at the engine even if you know jack shit about cars. Cleanlieness of the engine bay can tell a lot about a car (or so Im told, mine is fairly clean and my car is in fairly good shape)
- Find out if it has any mods to it.
Keep in mind that these are used cars, and many of them are close to or over 10 years old. Find out about anything that was replaced, and see if the seller has records of the work done.
Some commonly seen problems
- Lifter tick. Sounds like a light
tick tick tick sound coming from the engine. Explained in more detail in another part of this thread.
- Cracked dash vents. Right under the windshield are dash defrost vents that tend to crack. New ones are available from 3sx or probably your favorite mistu dealer (if its still in buisness), or you could opt for the aluminum replacement that wont break again as easily, avaiable from smokin-vr4 or 3sx (Hopefully Im getting some of these for christmas
)
- Bubbling door panels. The door panels tend to get bubbles in them. Not much you can do aside from getting new door panels. There are efforts happening to try to repair this, but as of yet there has been little success.
- Wear on the seats. Most likely the drivers seat, not much to say about it, the leather tends to wear out (not sure about you cloth guys).
- Yellow colored indicator light on turns. See corresponding section of this thread.
- Break light turns on randomly. See corresponding section of this thread.
- Tour/sport light blinking. See corresponding section of this thread.
- Window is stuck up/down/in between. Most likely caused by a broken window regulator (Mine was stuck up when I bought it, made for an interesting first trip to the drive through at McDonalds). Easy to replace, just need to find a new regulator for the corresponding side. Someone else wanna go into detail for how to replace this? I messed mine up twice, so Ill let someone else tackle it
Check out the rest of this thread, as it covers almost all these possible problems and more a lot more in-depth.
Did I miss anything? Had to get one more in tonight, gotta have the most points
I really shoulda reread it before posting, cause I went back and changed three things already, feel free to point out problems with the lists