I'm looking at a 1997 850 GLT Turbo wagon with 118k miles on it. I have seen it posted that the 140k maintenance is pricey. About how much is it? I'm going to take a look at the car tonight. He is asking $6500 for the car. Does this sound right or is it a little high. Any thoughts and opinions are greatly appreciated.

 

Sound like he has it priced right where it should be. 140K is a timing belt change primarily and you need to have that done. It should have had one done around 70K also. If the car is in really excellent condition that is a good price. In GOOD condition it would be around $6,000. If it's not in at least good condition I would not buy it. Good luck.

 

Thanks Jim. I PMed you last week did you ever get my responce? How is the R running? Are you still putting your foot into it?

 

I'd say somewhere in the neighborhood of $500 or so. More if you're going to replace parts while the car is apart like the hydraulic tensioner, water pump, cam seals. It's also a great time to replace the serp belt and tensioner roller if its making noise.

 

Rush, yes I saw you PM and thought I responded. Maybe something happened to the response. As far as liking the Sedan or the Wagon better, I like having both. We have two Golden Retrievers and w/o the wagon they would not get to go anywhere. No way are they getting in my almost black interior in the R. As far as driving there is really no difference between the wagon and the sedan. it's just looks and the utility value of a wagon. With the back seats folded down in the sedan, it will haul quite a bit too. As far as the problems I'm having with the R, you can read everything right here in the forum, that's for sure. I'm getting back from the shop tomorrow and hopefully it will be fine. We put quite a bit of work into it, but it's a great looking car that I really want to keep for quite some time.

 

I bought a '94 850 Turbo Wagon with 136k on it about 3 months ago. It's in great overall condition, yet had little issues here and there like the seat back cables being too stretched, recently broken odometer gear, and needing new tires. I paid $3450 for the car and it had all of the maintenance records (very thorough) from the day it came off the dealer lot, including the original window sticker ($34.8k new). Things like the rear main should have been replaced around 80k or so, as well as timing belt at 70k (for later belt style). Turbo oil seals, etc. should also have been addressed at some time. Since I bought it, I replaced the seat cables ($78 for the two), tires ($280 for Falken Ziex 512's from DTD online), and the odometer gear ($50 through IPD, although you can find them cheaper).

Now, I did my own timing belt, idler pulley, tensioner pulley and tensioner (some don't do the tensioner, but I thought it was smart for piece of mind). That combined with plugs, thermostat, upper and lower radiator hoses, water pump, serpentine belt, etc. ran my just over $300 through www.eeuroparts.com, and the job although somewhat time consuming, wasn't too bad.

I've put about $750 or so into the parts, so with $4250 in the car, it's a cheap car. Granted, I will only used it to cart around the dog for about 10k a year or less, but compared to other cars out there, they are inexpensive to maintain, as long as you stay away from the dealership. - AB

 

Don't mean to jack the thread but how bad was the timing belt to replace? Kinda of nervous about messing up the timing or the way the tensioner goes in. Is it worth taking it to my indy?

 

The 850's with the hydrolic Tensioner's are cake.

It gets more complicated when you have a manual tensioner.

The hydrolic tensioer can only go one way.

 

It's not hard, just requires some patience. - AB

 

The hard part is finding the timing mark on the crank. Don't screw it up! Make sure you turn it over by hand twice before trying to crank it with the key. Learn from my mistakes. I had to take the head off and have two valves replaced because I cranked it when it was out of time because we thought we saw the mark on the crank, but didn't.

 

That's exactly what I'm afraid of. Save $300 at the risk of spending $3000. Maybe I'll remove the timing cover and see if the last mechanic painted the timing marks or something. Hopefully I'll get lucky.

 

The mark isn't really hard to see once you know what you're looking for (it's a miniscule 'v' cut in the inside of the gear), although there is a very easy way to ensure you are good to go. Unless your car is out of time already, once you get it to what should be top dead center, mark the points on the crank, intake and timing gears. Then even if your marks are off, the car will still be in time. Just ensure that the gear don't move upon re-assembly. - AB

 

What do you think about the IPD tool that locks the cams in place. That seems to make it pretty foolproof.

 

The IPD site is closed but if it is the tool that goes between the gears it is not needed on these cars.

The only time you really need that is on the newer cars that have VVT.

While you are messing with taking the belt off and all the cams can move some but make sure you reposition them again.

 

Tech's right. As long as you have the smaller portion of the timing cover, you can reposition the cams by aligning the marks with the cuts in the cover. Moving the crank would require enough effort that doing by accident would be next to impossible, although it can be realigned too with the mark on the block. - AB