94 Telstar V6 - Sell or Fix?

[TelstarHeaven]

Heya's, I've recently acquired a 94 Telstar with about 260k on it, sedan model with V6 engine. It goes great, but leaks a little bit of oil, my local mechanic guy said it's a bit of job to stop the leak cause theres lots of parts need to come out to get into the area of the engine where its coming from, how much $ i'm not sure exactly.

The body is rough its got a couple small dings and scratches. I'm wondering wether people think this is a good car to get the paint /panel work done? i've got a nephew in panel beating industyr said he would give me a good deal. And then go ahead and get the oil leak fixed up?

My last car was a 93 Telstar so I've got a bunch of spares to go with the car aswell.

Much appreciate any input.

thanks
Pete

[TelstarHeaven]

Update.. the Oil leak is from the main seal so its at least $300 to fix.

Any opinions??

[Russ]

Originally Posted by TelstarHeaven

Update.. the Oil leak is from the main seal so its at least $300 to fix.

Any opinions??

Is this the main front seal or the rear ? If it's the front seal and you go ahead with it then you would want to consider having the water pump and timing belt done at the same time, if it's the main rear seal and it's a manual transmission, then it would pay you to do the clutch etc... while it's all apart. Either way I would be prepared to do some serious dollar picking from the money tree

I'm not a mechanic but $300 to replace the main seal on one of these motors seems a tad cheap to me, allowing for an hourly labour rate of say $80 plus the parts I could see that job costing easily twice that. I can't remember exactly what mine cost, but when I had the timing belt done they discovered that the water pump was weaping as was the main front oil seal and it was a case of fix it properly if your keeping the car or be prepared to have to have it done later down the track. I opted to have it all fixed then and there as I was planning on keeping it for a while but I was unlucky with mine and it was one thing after an another kept going wrong, that's why I got rid of it after 6 months, my money tree couldn't keep up with the demand

[Mechan1k]

The V6's aren't fun to work on ... especially if a head gasket goes on it.

[Russ]

I owned a 2003 model V6 hatch about 10 years ago which I kept for about 6 months, nice car overall, modern, stylish, plenty of grunt but they are very expensive for parts and labour for maintenance. If you know the vehicle's history and it has been looked after with regular scheduled servicing being carried out etc.... then it may well be a reasonable car, but if it's just been driven and driven without the maintenance then I would suggest that with 260,000 k's on the clock it will soon be needing some work and as mentioned it's not cheap so be prepared :(