should i stay or should i go now

[BrandOmatic]

^-- yeah, thats a song. Theres a 1989 mazda B2600i 4x4 for sale near me. I\'ve been driving the same 89 dodge ram d100 318/904 for about 2 years, winter and all, no 4wd. It\'s got about 150,000 miles on it now, and whoops my ass with the amount of gas it chugs. about 11mpg, which is horrid on my meager budget. plus its slow. This Mazda is fairly decent... not a whole lot of rust on the outer body. The underbody and what not is somewhat rusty, but so is my dodge. It has a leaky power steering line, so when we test drove it there was no power steering. May have to replace the pump if its been run dry, but oh well. 31\" tires, kinda nasty aluminum rims. This truck only has 84,000 original miles which is awesome, and its a 4 cylinder 4x4 which would get me mpg and be fun in the soon nearing winter.. shifts nice (5 spd manual), shifts into 4x4 nice, bells and whistles work good. My mom will buy the truck for me (hes asking $1500) and expects me to sell my dodge to pay her back promptly. My dillema is that the dodge has never let me down, but it sucks in the winter, and i\'m sick of all my money going in the gas tank. I know where the dodge stands, many newer parts, do my own maintainence, etc. I\'m afraid of getting something else that could be junk.. but i don\'t think i\'m going to find a truck with low miles that is a 4x4 for that cheap. My dodge isn\'t going to last forever.. That is my story. I know most of you guys hate jap cars/trucks, and have no love for chrysler products either. But what is your opinion.. what would you do if you were me?? thanks a million guys.

[s10rodder]

Well, in my humble opinion Ford makes garbage. (my parents have always bought Fords and they\'ve had more problems than I could count - even when they were purchased brand new.) and in case you didn\'t know ford and mazda are affiliated. A lot of the newer mazdas use ford motors. I\'d check out whether the motor in that truck was built by ford. Mazda makes some decent stuff but I wouldn\'t get it if it\'s really a ford with mazda badging.



Consumer reports is always a great place to check out reliability on used cars. They\'ll tell you which years and makes and models to stay away from.

[BrandOmatic]

someone told me mazdas weren\'t made in the usa until the early 90\'s... and theres a factory sticker inside the driver side door that says \"made in japan\", so i doubt it\'s ford. it\'s a 12 valve 4 cylinder. liters? cubes? i don\'t know about that.

[327Isuzu]

That\'s basically a Ranger and I believe that \'82 to \'92 Rangers have a V8 conversion available. So, there might be some options there for fun down the road. If mileage is important, don\'t get four wheel drive. If four wheel drive is important, don\'t worry about mileage. The Consumer Reports suggestion was a good one. It always pays to do your research. And it\'s a 2.6 liter, the model gives it away. http://www.s10v8.com/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

[speeder]

I have built or swapped an 87 Mazda B2200 with an 89 Ford T-bird 3.8 and AOD. The Mazda is not bad, but it will eventually die. They do run strong for a 120k min. I would just go with the Mazda and check out <a href="http://www.grannysspeedshop.com" target="_blank" target="_new">http://www.grannysspeedshop.com</a> they are into the mazda scene. But yes there is a place in Canada that sells the kits to swap a chevy or a ford into the Mazda. We had to get a new cross-member and the motor-mount had to be custom fabbed.

Anyway I think that you should keep your bigger truck, for when you swap all your goodies into the little truck. Man those things are tiny! It is like the LUV on the inside. I am 6\'2 and 210, but I have to roll the window down when someone else is in there, so we do not rub shoulders.