Aside from the Mitsubishi L200, I have another vehicle which is also more than 2 decades old. In fact this one is 2 years older than the pickup. It is a Nissan Sentra 1992 model and it's been with me for a year now. I believe this is also called Series II here.
A little bit of background
I had a motorcycle accident around May 2015 wherein I was almost ran over by a van. Fortunately, I survived but I've been having lower back pains since then. For several weeks after the accident, it was such an ordeal. I can still ride my motorcycle though but I was in pain so I said to myself, why not try driving a car again? So I bought this car for a price that can pay for a 3-years-or-older 150cc motorcycle . Not a bad deal I guess.
This Sentra is powered by 1.6L GA16DE ECCS engine. It is a fuel injected mated to an automatic transmission. Aircon works and just like any other Nissan, it cools the cabin really well. This car gives me about 12km to a liter which is not bad for car of this displacement. At 100kph crusing speed, engine spools at about 2500rpm. Since this is an A/T car, I don't expect to win drag races. I'm happy driving sedately going from A to B while my left foot is doing nothing. The car has independent suspension on each wheel which I find nice specially on curves.
Being an old machine, issues are expected. Water leaks on top of the windshield on both driver and passenger sides. Carpets needs to be replaced as it smells oil and not so pleasing to look at. There is no stereo so I installed an el-cheapo but it retired after the first month. Found out that there was a lot of non-stock wiring for some reason. The trunk is also not in perfect alignment anymore. The car has overheating problems specially when running idle and even when running at high speed since it is required to operate at higher engine revs. One of the windows won't go down. It turned out that the motor is gone. Etc..etc.etc. At least the engine still cranks and the car runs. :)
What I've done so far
1.) Tidy up the wire jungle underneath the dashboard. There was a lot of unnecessary wirings possibly for remote entry and alarm which was just left there tapped to stock wirings.
2.) Went to a shop to have the radiator overhauled. Fabricated brackets for one of the fans. The fan is not stock and the blade is too close to the radiator.
3.) Rewired the cooling and auxillary fans such that it is now much closer to stock. Previously, it was tapped to fuel pump wirings such that as long as the pump is running, fans are running too. Makes sense but not not ideal.
4.) Tidy up the wirings in the engine bay.
5.) A/C wiring is now closer to when it was still stock.
I hope to keep this car for as long as I can. I'm actually thinking if this lasts three years, it is more than enough for what I paid for. One thing I'm quite happy about is that I'm learning a lot tinkering with this old buggy. I wish I have more time fixing stuffs and write about it on this blog.
