If the guy takes what we offer, we may own a Miata fairly soon (will this make 2 of 3 of the GRM trinity!? Let's hope so...).
A quick google search (but not an exhaustive search here) says catastrophic failure in these cars is due to only a couple known issues - a crank sensor and an improperly done timing belt killing the crank pulley - anything else that I should look for? Arizona, so rust shouldn't be an issue.
Mostly looking for what it will take to make it run reasonably well after acquisition (thinking positive, see...).
Neglect also tends to kill them eventually, but they'll soldier on for quite a while.
No other tidbits to worry about? Not much time to do an in-depth GRM search, going to look at it in about an hour/hour and a half. I guess I'll take the wisdom above as not much to worry about if the car looks solid.
93 has a real oil pressure gauge so get the engine hot and check the pressure. Water temp should be center of the gauge.
Radiators wear out, if the plastic top tank is brown instead of black, expect to have to change it out soon.
Spark plug wires are a wear item.
Gear change should be rifle bolt slick.
Check the clutch fluid reservoir to see if it's got any in it. Slave cylinders like to leak and again are a wear item.
Handling should be sharp, but if it's still on the original shocks and has more than 40k on the clock, budget for at least new shocks.
There really isn't that much to them and faults should normally be pretty obvious.
I'd avoid buying one that has been modified with cheap parts, the good stuff isn't much more expensive but the results are very different.
A lot of them are badly modded, keep an eye out for that.
Well, first off, it was an autotragic. I probably should've asked, but assumed (and all that goes with it) that 99% of these things were 5sp's. Then, it had been in a wreck and the radiator support had been "straightened". The driver side fender was misaligned (not necesssarily indicitive of a problem), and he had four new tires on it. "we drove it for 500 miles before it stopped running". Salvage title (also not necesssarily indicitive of a problem).
On the plus side, it did have coilovers on it!
He says he bought it from a kid that had intended to make a track car out of it.
Since I abhor autotragics 99.9% of the time, that was a downer, but the "preponderance of the evidence" says that I'm better off looking for a cheap running driver if I'm looking to buy in at a low price point.
Thanks for the tips though, they'll be saved in the file for future reference.
