93 SC fixxer upper question.

I owned a 89 SC 5 Speed 2 years ago an i must say, when these cars run right their awesome. Head gastet blew on me. (Lack of dad maintaing it)

Anyway, i have a buddy that owns a 93 auto omething is wrong with it. I figure i can get it for about 500 bucks but i dont want it if it needs 1000 worth of work.

Ok, heres what i know. He not much of a car guy so heres the best discription i can give ya, its what he told me. Head gaskets were replaced 30,000 miles ago.

"I was driving home from work and the car started acting funny. I couldnt go over 60 mph and i was losing speed pretty fast. It wouldnt speed up much at all. The supercharger started whinning loud as heck, and i didnt have any boost at all."

The car will run, the vaccum acts weird. Im hoping that it is a vaccum problem. A sensor or something easy to fix.

Hmmm... Maybe the supercharger plenum gasket?

No steam or anything was comming out of the exaust.

Has anyone been through or heard of this before?

Tanx in advance, i know i didnt gve you much to work with. Im gonna go look at it this weekend and start it up and see what i can see.

Need more info....

Could be caused by a whole list of possible suspects... First thing to do is get a code reader and see if any fault codes from the various sensors are present in the computer's memory. Also, check to see if the tach is "jumping" while driving around. Let us know what you find out

Thx, ill check it out saturday or sunday.

<BUMP>

Depends.....

The SC is in what's called "limp home mode." This allows you to drive the car home hopefully without damaging it. I don't recall right now what causes this, but it is repairable.

If the engine is running and there is no white smoke out of the exhaust or the exhaust doesn't smell like coolant, the HG job should be ok. There are quite a few variables that cause this mode.

Consider the rest of the car -

how is the body and interior? clean, straight, minor work needed?

how is the rest of the engine? all there? hacked up wiring?

how's the transmission?

how is the suspension? tires?

what recent work was done?

For $500 it would be worth it. If your friend has maintained the car and it was running properly until this happened, you'll get a good deal. Even if the engine is shot, youu can replace it with one - just check the classified board to see whats available.

It's a shame I don't live closer, I snap it up in a second at that price.

Good luck.

Mark
'93 SC