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I recently purchased an R32 GTR for $10900, which i thought was to good to be true.

The previous owner told me he had never had any problems with the car at all.

He took me for a test drive in the car and everything appeared to be fine.

He then told me a little bit about the car like: The rear tyres are 275 wide

The GTR is a 1991 model

The engine has never skipped a beat

All of which were lies.

The second time i went to look at the car i took my dad with me because he didn't want me to buy a car without his say so.

I then noticed that the tyres on the rear were only 255 wide. I didn't think too much of it because i realy just wanted to buy the car and the width of the tyres wern't going to stop me.

After my dad giving the OK, i purchased the car and drove away unsuspecting that the engine had a major problem and started to make a knocking sound.

I took the car to my regular mechanic and he told me the bad news.

The previous owner had put thick oil in the car to cover up the knocking sound just long enough to convince me that the car was running fine.

My mechanic then gave me my options: purchase a second hand engine for $4000-$5000 then he could put it in

take the car to Advan to strip the motor and repair whats damaged

I was thinking that a second hand engine would be a good, cheap option, but then i realised that the second hand engine could be on it's way to the same problem.

I went to Advan the other day and was told by the owner that i should allow atleast $6000 for the repairs.

What happend to the engine was, The RB26 in the R32 GTR's has an oiling problem where the oil is pumped straight to the top of the engine on start up and the bottom of the engine is starved and dry, therefore causing damage to the conrod bearings if the engine is rev'd hard in this state.

I've been told to also replace the oil pump with an N1 item as this will get rid of the oiling problem, but they don't give you much change from $600 without installation.

I just want to make everyone aware of the oiling problem and that even though the person you are buying the car off seem's like a nice person, you can't realy trust anyone.

Can i just say that the service that i recieved from Advan was great as they fully explained all my options and cost's.

Thanks for reading about my purchase and thanks to advan for the help.

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sorry to hear that man not good news... my advice go all out because in a year or two your going to want to anyway and if you do a stock rebuild your going to have to start all over again and spend double the money.

You get what you pay for. So I wouldn't exactly blame the seller, you should have had the engine checked.....

For that price, you should have been pretty suspicious.

$6000 would be a pretty basic rebuild, but is better than buying a 2nd handy.

And pray that nothing else goes wrong.........

While true it is highly suspect at that price, from what HKS t15r has written it would seem that the vehicle was still bought under false pretences.

Your mechanic should have no qualms testifying about the oil being used to cover up the engine noise, and the seller telling you false information you just might have something to work with.

look on the bright side, if you do end up paying 6,000 odd grand for the engine but the rest of the car is in good nick you haven't come out of it too bad, decent examples still fetch around high teens-20k+ just the hassle of getting the engine fixed. Get the car checked thoroughly to identify any potential problems in future

Sorry to hear about your bad luck, but for 11K, there was bound to be some problems with it. At least you got it cheap enough to offset the replacement cost.

I have a used complete R33 RB26 bottom end (with the wider crank drive) I am selling for $1500 that you could possibly swap into yours... Thread is in the for sale section.

You get what you pay for. So I wouldn't exactly blame the seller, you should have had the engine checked.....

For that price, you should have been pretty suspicious.

$6000 would be a pretty basic rebuild, but is better than buying a 2nd handy.

And pray that nothing else goes wrong.........

I'm not so much trying to blame the seller, just pointing out that he lied to me by saying that the engine was perfectly fine. my intention was to drive it for a year and sell it but now i can't drive it till it's fixed and i'm out of pocket atleast $6000. i know that they sell for more which should off set the cost of repairs but i didn't want to spend $16000 on a car at this time.

Thanks for the advice.

Mate if you couldnt afford a quailty condition R32 GTR you shouldnt be in a market for a cheap one specially for 10,990 cause for that price they are seriously bound to be problems that why it was so cheap in the first place it your own fault you ripped yourself off. The price is pretty reasonable for a banged up R32 GTR anyway

Hi Tye,

If I was the seller and told you that the engine was "fine" knowing that it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to lie straight in bed.

I hope that the seller can't lie straight in bed.

And if he's reading this post, I say to you, "I hope you can't lie straight in bed!!!!!"

Tez

Mate if you couldnt afford a quailty condition R32 GTR you shouldnt be in a market for a cheap one specially for 10,990 cause for that price they are seriously bound to be problems that why it was so cheap in the first place it your own fault you ripped yourself off. The price is pretty reasonable for a banged up R32 GTR anyway

I can afford an R34 GTR mate. I didn't lie to myself about the car. The owner lied to me. I know it was cheap and I knew I would have to spend some cash on it but I didn't want to be up for $6000 within 24 hours of owning the car.

Hi Tye,

If I was the seller and told you that the engine was "fine" knowing that it wasn't, I wouldn't be able to lie straight in bed.

I hope that the seller can't lie straight in bed.

And if he's reading this post, I say to you, "I hope you can't lie straight in bed!!!!!"

Tez

thanks for the support. If you've read the other posts you'll see that some people think I screwed myself but all I can say is that I didn't lie to myself. I know that the car was cheap and I should have expected a problem but the seller told me more lies about his reasons for selling the car.

Thanks again for the support.

you were not ripped off. you paid exactly what a 32 gtr is worth with an engine ready to blow up on you.

yeah I know that it's still not a bad price. It's just that the prick lied to me, that's what piss's me off the most.

Cheers mate.

This liar has done it before. His M.O. says he's done it before...

The trouble is:- he's still out there...

somewhere...

There should be a law that allows you to record conversations during Trade Negotiations.

In one of my 'Ratings' there's a reference to my being a negotiator for another SAUer - but really the point is...

Why do we have to be so 'Paranoid' during the process of Caveat Emptor ?

Why can't we have a 7-day cooling off period on private sales where the purchase price exceeds $5,000 whether it's a 2nd hand plasma TV or a R32? I guess it's because the new owner could abuse his new purchase and flog it to death. 1 day cooling off period then?

Yeh sometimes the new purchaser ain't so honest either eh?

Where's the justice?

Where's honesty gone to?

OH WELL, BACK TO THE SANITY OF MY BIBLE STUDY GROUP... :P

Well if you look at in a positive way, if you rebuild the engine, at least you know you will be trouble free, and you can customise it the way you want it :P

yeah that's what I keep telling myself to make me feel better.

your advice on R32 oil system problems is a bit off mate. it has nothing to do with start up. there are a number of well documented shortcomings in ALL RB26 oil systems. if you had looked at this forum before buying your car you would have known about them. it has nothing to do with the engine pumping oil on start-up and it is in no way solved by an N1 oil pump.

The only part of this problem that is unique to R32s is that the oil pump drive flats on the crank are narrower than later model cranks. this can become a problem if it causes wear and possible failure of the oil pump gear.

the RB26 does have a problem with having too much oil trapped in the head but not at start up. this occurs at sustained high RPM and it's not so much how much/fast it pumps but the fact that the factory oil return galleries are insufficient to return oil to the sump quickly enough. to combat this you should fit an oil feed restrictor in the head, and machine out the oil return galleries, and if you are considering track use even fit an external -10 or -12 oil return from the back of the head to the sump.

all model RB26s also have a problem with oil surge under hard cornering/high rpm. when you have a lot of oil trapped in the head, and not much in the sump, and you are pulling some decent corneing G then oil can be low enough that the pick-up is no longer sucking up oil, but air instead. it's then very easy to damage the engine in a second.

to be honest you must be mad buying a $11,000 32 GTR. It costs so much to turn an average (or more for a poor) GTR into a nice GTR that it really is worth paying extra for a nice restored R32 GTR to start with. to take a GTR and restore it nicely (new interior bits, replace all underbody bushes, replace suspension and brakes, do the diff, transfer case, rebuild engine, new turbos, ecu, wheels, tyres, maybe some bodywork, paint etc) will cost $50K +. but you can pick up a really mint 32 GTR with all that done these days for $35K or less.

GTR's are very expensive to run, modify and maintain. I would hazard a guess here and say that your GTR will be up for sale very soon....

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