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Wish me luck, I'm picking up a black '91 4eat today for a grand. I think it's a pretty good buy. I thought I felt slipping at one point in the tranny but I guess it was the power function kicking inI drove it twice and it seems to run well. I had Matt with me the second time I drove it and everything seemed alright. The guy put it on a lift for me and showed me a seemingly complete service log. It had a good amount of work done which is good in a way.

There were some tranny problems in the past but most of it seems due to a previous owner putting the wrong tranny in it. It needs to have some rust taken care of but overall it seems like a small problem. It passed inspection anyway.


The only thing I'm wondering about is if it's normal for the tranny to not have a locking function between drive and 3rd, anyone know???

Not just any '91 4eat but a '91 4eat Sport Sedan! Welcome to the world of boost my friend!

The car is well worth a grand IMO and I was going to try and buy it if Scott didn't. The only oil leak seems to be the driverside cam seal. The rear LSD was nice and dry and the underbody was in pretty good shape. The A/C isn't working right but it's supposed to just need evacuated, dried and recharged. The thing I thought was really cool is that the sunroof shade is vented. Is that normal? Mine isn't like that, it's solid. The interior is in fair shape and the body just needs a little love (fix the rust) and paint. It's black and looks very nice. The tranny seems to shift very well and when I drove it I didn't detect any tranny slip and I was nailing it WOT. You can shift between 3rd, drive and nuetral without having to push in the button on the gear selecter though. Like Scott asked, is that normal?

I almost think I'm more excited then Scott is about him getting it! I can't wait, I'm taking him to get it this afternoon.

Oh I forgot, brakes are good, tires are newer and have good life on em, wheels are in good shape (even though Scott has some aftermarket wheels to switch off the L), the engine feels nice and strong and didn't miss a bit.

Thanks Matt for all that you've done in helping me out. I know I'm a very skittish person when it comes to cars. I am excited about it. I just try to never show how I feel until the moment comes. I guess you could say that I'm a reserved person or stone-faced hard ass, whichever you prefer. I've cross-posted the tranny question in hopes it might reach the right person. I figure there's some folks who never look at the misc forum who may have the answer. It's not a toughy. Either it's normal or not. Thanks again.

No problemo my fffffriend!

Schweeet!

Yes, it is normal not to need to press the button to go between N, D, and 3.

Did you guys have a chance to verify somehow that RWD was working?

The A/C may need to be retrofitted to R-134a if it was last filled with R-12. When a car is retrofitted a blue label is attached somewhere conspicuous (usually the radiator support) indicating so. If this car doesn't have the blue label, you'll need to do the retrofit. I still have to retrofit my car too.

How exactly do you do that?

Do a search for Josh's post on it... he did a pretty good writeup.

If somehow you haven't done it by the time I'm ready to do mine, we should both do it at the same time.

If you're talking about the AC then he already set it up for R134a which I know little about except that it's more environmentally friendly.

As far as the awd goes the guy said that he would put it up on a lift engage the tranny and show me that it indeed works. He also mentioned that there's a pump that needs to be activated to send fluid to the rear before the awd can be shown to work and for that you need to have the car either running or at least on.

Oh, yeah, I thought you were talking about the air conditioning.

He's right that with a 4EAT you need the engine running to test rear drive; without ATF pressure the rear axle is completely decoupled from the transmission. So, yeah, idling in gear on a lift ought to be enough to demonstrate that rear drive works.

Right on, thanks again Vikash. You're the man.

From the previous post about the AC, are you saying you haven't converted yours over yet and to do it together? If so, I could do that if it turns out that it needs to be done. Nuff said, ttyl.

Yeah, I haven't converted mine. My system ran R-12 when I got the car and the compressor died a few months later. I pulled all the A/C relays so that I could use the defrost in the winter, and my car has been in that state ever since. It'd be cool to do the work together... Even if yours doesn't need retrofitting, the amount of work would be similar if yours has been sitting discharged for a long time.

Yeah, I agree, it would be cool. We'll see what happens once I get my hands on my new auto.