One of my managers at work has a 83 300D turbo with 154,000 miles. The body is perfect, and the interior is close. When he lived in Florida, he drove it across town just fine, and as i understand it, the car was parked after that one drive. Since then he has moved to Ga, towing the car. He then began to work on the car and replace vacuum lines and the such. At first he said that the car had no power up hill, then he messed with it some and it went up hills good, but not down hills.
Currently he says that the car starts good giving off one good puff of smoke on startup and then going away. When the car is cold it runs good, getting around town just fine. but, when it warms up he says about 80C is where it tends to sit, it wont get above 20mph. He also says that the engine will occasionally stumble when warm for a matter of seconds, then it will go back to a perfect idle. similar to what i saw in diesel giants injector nozzle video.
He is not running a thermostat whatsoever in the engine, and the vacuum hoses have been absolutely molested. The power door locks work good, even after sitting all night. the car will not shut off by the key, which i believe is going to be the shut off valve on the IP.
Basically, i am not afraid of the mechanicals on this car at all, but i am just wanting to see what the consensus on the strength of the motor might be. I have not done any compression tests, but the fact that the car starts up and idles well until warm makes me think it is a problem in the control system.
I have gone through my lil miata front to back, so being dirty and nasty doesnt scare me, but i would like the fix to be more about tuning/ perfecting what is there, not buying large parts like a new engine.
Do you think that this is a car that needs some attention, or does it seem like it is on its last legs?
Thanks for any help folks, and this forum is great.
Andrew