yes, I've read plenty of reliability threads already, and have seen the multitude of issues that get posted here... but I'm just interested in thoughts anyway ok?

I just picked up an 88 turbo in seemingly very good nick. It's got 100'000k's on it (60,000 miles) and I'm expecting to require a rebuild within a year or 2 of use... but aside from that, are the issues that crop up likely to be frequent and expensive? (one of the two is ok...)
It's going to be my daily driver with regular mountain blats and the odd event type thing...

I love the thing, I'm just a little apprehensive after finding this place

Charlie

 

Hey Charlie,

Don't let the horror stories found in some of the threads here scare you. If you have good compression on your engine, no major seal leaks, the previous owner(s) did not abuse your T2, and you are not planning on modifying it, you should be able to get well over 120K miles out of your engine easy. So unless you are planning on putting more than 30K miles a year on your car, you should be able to do better than a couple of years before you need to replace the engine.

I bought my 88 Turbo II with 86k Miles on it. By the time I reached 115k miles the major items I had replaced were my brakes, water pump, clutch, starter, wiper switch, oil cooler lines, every engine hose and vacuum line, fuel injectors, main cat, and replaced my pre-cat with a downpipe (keeps the engine cooler down here in Florida).

Along with those are the typical maintenence items of spark plugs, wires, fuel filters, air filters. I also replace my oil every 3000 miles, and flush my radiator every year(like every good RX7 owner does).

Don't freak out , these these things didn't all go at the same time, just here and there over the course of almost 4 years and 32k miles of hard daily driving (I have +118k miles on the original engine now). On top of that, several items I listed above (the fuel injectors and pre-cat for example), I replaced for reliablilty reasons, not because they had actually failed.

With only 60k miles on your car though, you are about 30k miles below where I even started replacing anything, so your probably in pretty sweet shape for a while.

Thats not to say that you don't need to do anything to it. If I were you, the first thing I would do is make sure ALL your water hoses and fan belts are in perfect condition. The last thing you need is a hose or belt going as you are powering your way up a mountain.

Enjoy your new T2,
Salguod

 

For me I've upgraded the entire exhaust system, brake system work, new clutch, etc..

For the 86-88 Turbo IIs you might want to replace the fuel dampiner as well around 100K miles as a reliability thing.

 

cheers folks, good to hear

Charlie