Thanks, Crzyhrse. He ended up buying it. 67k miles, $10k. Car's a little rough. Red paint has some fade, looks like it'll buff out. Few dings and rock chips. Seems to run out good, we kept hearing an intermittent squeak we couldn't trace, but it has the white isolators, so that seems to make sense. Car was at a used dealer who got it through an auction, so no way to check on the head tick or synchro. I pushed it pretty hard first through third and couldn't feel any shift problems; clutch is a little weak, but that's pretty easy to fix in the garage. Didn't notice any issues with a high idle (didn't look at the tach, but the ear says it was less than 1000). No signs of aftermarket anything under the hood.
Biggest concern was that it had some oil or power steering fluid on the front of the block. Too hard to trace on the dealer's dirt lot. That concerned me, but he's buying it for a summer toy, and the price seemed good enough that I figured whatever the problem might be was fixable and still made it a good deal (He REALLY wanted a Mach 1!). Looked like it might have a input seal leak on the rear diff, which makes sense, because it felt like someone had done a gear swap. First gear pulled about as hard as my 95 does with the 3.73s. Never driven a car with 3.55s, but would
guess it was running 3.73s or better. He's going to bring it over this weekend so we can get it up on jack stands and check it out better.
Took me forever to figure out that the weird looking thing sitting in the front of the intake valley was an alternator! :O Never did understand where they hid the pushrods...
Guess I get to learn myself up on mod motors now...
