i have an opportunity to buy a 92 twin turbo stealth. the car has 137000 miles on it. the body is absolutely flawless and the interior is like new. i test drove it and it ran good. no smoke when starting up. when it did warm up though it had a surging idle between 1500 and 2000rpm after driving it. vacuum leak maybe?? it appears to be completely stock under the hood. they want 6500 dollars for it. sounds like a good deal to me. oh yeah, also when i was listening under the hood for any unusual sounds, i believe there may be a grinding kind of sound coming from the transmission when it was idling. it wasn't super loud. pilot bearing maybe?? anyways, i just wanted to get some info before i bought it. what else should i look for? i don't know if the 120k mile service was done or not. like i said completely stock. thanks for any help. really appreciate it.

 

The idle surging could very well be an IAC that is wearing out or going bad. I vacuum leak will usually lead to an "overboosting" condition. I don't know about the tranny grinding, but it should be cause for concern. You really want to make sure the 120K service has been performed, if it has not, you should get it done. If you have the chance, pop off the intercooler pipes to see if there is any oil in them.
$6500 is a bit much I think, especially if there is in fact a problem with the tranny and if the 120K service has not been done. Good luck..

 

The 92 cars had the four bolt mains caps in the engine from June build after that date so check the build date out as the pre June cars had crank problems with sagging center caps and soft metal in the crank. Mitsubishi fixed the problem with four bolt mains and a hardened crank from that June date on. Make sure it does not pop out of gear and that the reansfer case has been done under the recall on them or get ready to spend another $6500 to fix the tranny and transfer. you can take the car to a Mitsubishi or Dodge dealer and have them check the VIN # to see if it was done. Good luck cool cars just have to have the matanance right or they can really cost you if something breaks its like a Farrari. Nearly every part on the car is $300-$1400 depending on the year shop around some places are much better on price. Allot of parts come from South America some are very good some are crap.

 

well i got the car for 6000 dollars. according to carfax it's only had two owners and driven less than 1500 miles a month for the past few years. anyways will any dodge dealership be able to tell me if the transfer case has been repaired/replaced under the recall notice and does that involve removal of the actual transmission? this stealth has a build date of october 1991. will i expect to have crank bearing issues with it because it has a two bolt main? i plan on keeping it stock for awhile with no major hp improvements. will the two bolt main bearings fail with hp increases?? one other thing also, in third, fourth, and fifth gear the car seems to hit fuel cut off at about 4000 rpm under full acceleration. the needle on the factory boost gauge pegs out past 14psi in all gears. i was under the impression that most cars don't reach 'full' boost until second or third gear. is the gauge off or could it be making more than 14psi causing the ecu to cut off fuel?? sorry for all the questions. the only stupid questions are the ones not asked!!! thanks for any help. it's GREATLY appreciated.

 

I think they can drop the transfer case without pulling the tranny. Common sense would say the the 2 bolt main is inferior to the 4 bolt main, but unless you plan on having "stupid" amounts of HP. I wouldn't worry about it too much. The stock boost guage is NOT accurate. It does not measure true "boost", but rather gets it's signal from the ECU of what the boost "should" be using a formula (I'm not exactly sure how it gets it's info) Never the less, it is not accurate. These cars stock boost somewhere between 9 and 12psi. You may have a vacuum leak, causing the overboost issue. You will need to build a pressure tester (with parts from a hardware store) to test for boost leaks. How to courtesy of Stealth316.