Very low mileage Merlot
Discussion
Just seen this on Autotrader. Seems like a once in a lifetime chance to buy a great mark 1. Reckon it's a fair price?
http://search.autotrader.co.uk/es-uk/www/cars/MAZD...
http://search.autotrader.co.uk/es-uk/www/cars/MAZD...
That's less than 600 miles a year.
I would want to see the service history and it had better have had a full service every 12 months. I'm guessing it's had far fewer than 12 services.
In my experience, start driving a car that has been laid up doing nothing and things start breaking.
If the oil has been changed infrequently it will have the worst HLAs ever.
I bought a low mileage MX-5 (77k kms at 14 years old), at one stage it wasn't serviced for nearly 4 years because it only did 10k miles in that time. Oil must have been like treacle. I paid out to have the HLAs completely replaced last year.
IMHO, go for a similar car with 60k miles that has been driven and serviced, and pay half the price
I would want to see the service history and it had better have had a full service every 12 months. I'm guessing it's had far fewer than 12 services.
In my experience, start driving a car that has been laid up doing nothing and things start breaking.
If the oil has been changed infrequently it will have the worst HLAs ever.
I bought a low mileage MX-5 (77k kms at 14 years old), at one stage it wasn't serviced for nearly 4 years because it only did 10k miles in that time. Oil must have been like treacle. I paid out to have the HLAs completely replaced last year.
IMHO, go for a similar car with 60k miles that has been driven and serviced, and pay half the price
Hydraulic Lash Adjuster. I won't pretend to understand them in depth, but basically it's to do with the hydraulic tappets on the Mk.1. If the oil is old they get gunged up and they don't work as they should. You get a loud rattling from the top end.
It's not damaging anything, but it sounds awful and I couldn't bear it (imagine it, a nice day, you're out for a run with the hood down and it sounds like you're driving a clapped out Renault 5
)
They all do it for 5 or 10 secs on start up as the oil takes a while to get up there, and sometimes they do it after a run (mine still does occasionally) - but if they do it more than that there may be a problem.
Sometimes it can be fixed with a flush and oil change, sometimes with Wynns Hyrdaulic Lifter treatment, but in my case it needed a new (second hand) set of HLAs fitting. New it's expensive as there are 16 of them at 40 quid or so a pop, plus labour, but mine came out of a known good second hand head. You can clean them too, there is a guide on miata.net I think.
The Mk.2 replaced them with non hydraulic tappets IIRC.
ETA: have a read of this:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gSt-E_m1zssC&am...
It's not damaging anything, but it sounds awful and I couldn't bear it (imagine it, a nice day, you're out for a run with the hood down and it sounds like you're driving a clapped out Renault 5
)They all do it for 5 or 10 secs on start up as the oil takes a while to get up there, and sometimes they do it after a run (mine still does occasionally) - but if they do it more than that there may be a problem.
Sometimes it can be fixed with a flush and oil change, sometimes with Wynns Hyrdaulic Lifter treatment, but in my case it needed a new (second hand) set of HLAs fitting. New it's expensive as there are 16 of them at 40 quid or so a pop, plus labour, but mine came out of a known good second hand head. You can clean them too, there is a guide on miata.net I think.
The Mk.2 replaced them with non hydraulic tappets IIRC.
ETA: have a read of this:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gSt-E_m1zssC&am...
Edited by NiceCupOfTea on Thursday 27th August 11:43
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