I have a nice, old 94 Mustang, cherry red, small V6...
It'll never be a show car. It gets me back and forth to work, 70 miles a day. Body solid, steering good, interior and AC still good, a good, solid piece of Dee-troit metal. It has 158,000 miles on it, is nice and paid for, insurance is nothing, still gets 25-27 mpg, and I get the pleasure, every single day, of sitting behind the wheel of a Mustang. For some of us, that is priceless.
Problem: This old stang is knocking a bit, and there is a hole in the cooling system somewhere that causes the slow drooling of coolant wherever it is parked. I just keep some coolant with me, and fill 'er up, plus put some stop leak in there from time to time. The only guy other than myself I trust to work on that thing says to fix it he will have to jerk the engine, $1600....
I have been on Auto Trader dot com, looking for a newer low mileage Stang but the prices for the newer ones are pretty exploitative and a lot of these things have high miles anyway... I just can't get excited about paying $10K for a ten year old car with 50 thousand miles on it, even if it is a Mustang.
So the questions are:
a. How good of luck have people had in replacing these motors? One plan is to keep doing what I am doing, and eventually get another motor/long block...
b. How much can I expect to pay for this? I will have to pay somebody to install it of course.
c. What if I get a little closer to middle age crazy and decide to replace it with a bit bigger motor (worse mileage, more fun)? Will the clutch/transmission on my current car (5-speed manual) fit a new one? What about exhaust?
d. Other suggestions?
Just looking for a bit of advice. I suppose if I were to try to sell it I would get $2000 out of it, being, like it is, a Mustang....
It'll never be a show car. It gets me back and forth to work, 70 miles a day. Body solid, steering good, interior and AC still good, a good, solid piece of Dee-troit metal. It has 158,000 miles on it, is nice and paid for, insurance is nothing, still gets 25-27 mpg, and I get the pleasure, every single day, of sitting behind the wheel of a Mustang. For some of us, that is priceless.
Problem: This old stang is knocking a bit, and there is a hole in the cooling system somewhere that causes the slow drooling of coolant wherever it is parked. I just keep some coolant with me, and fill 'er up, plus put some stop leak in there from time to time. The only guy other than myself I trust to work on that thing says to fix it he will have to jerk the engine, $1600....
I have been on Auto Trader dot com, looking for a newer low mileage Stang but the prices for the newer ones are pretty exploitative and a lot of these things have high miles anyway... I just can't get excited about paying $10K for a ten year old car with 50 thousand miles on it, even if it is a Mustang.
So the questions are:
a. How good of luck have people had in replacing these motors? One plan is to keep doing what I am doing, and eventually get another motor/long block...
b. How much can I expect to pay for this? I will have to pay somebody to install it of course.
c. What if I get a little closer to middle age crazy and decide to replace it with a bit bigger motor (worse mileage, more fun)? Will the clutch/transmission on my current car (5-speed manual) fit a new one? What about exhaust?
d. Other suggestions?
Just looking for a bit of advice. I suppose if I were to try to sell it I would get $2000 out of it, being, like it is, a Mustang....