Considering to buy a '93 ST202 Options

[Ashstar]

Hello everyone,

I want to start off by saying this forum is such a nice place for 6G lovers to hangout and it's so informative!

I've always liked the 6th Gen Celica ever since I was buying my first car 10 years ago but alas it was too expensive here to own one back then + wasn't practical for a first car which has to serve as the only car in the family too.

Fast forward to date, I've got a zippy compact for city driving, a sedan for family trips and couldn't help it but to be starstrucked again when I saw this ST202 for sale in my area - a 93 JDM ST202, 2.0 3S-GE auto (nothing beats a manual, I know ). Went to check out the car with my mechanic bro, took her for a spin and here's the initial assessment:

The goods:
- body in good shape, no front/rear collision, handled well on the road too (no wobble/pull to either side)
- smooth engine despite having 190k+ KMs on it


The bads:
- worn-out/about to wear out weatherstrips and rubber seals all-round
- patched-up radiator
- signs of water in boot (could be due to worn weather strip?), no rust on body but one of the rear lights turned into a mini aquarium
- non-working left side electrical mirror

Dealer's asking for RM24k for it (approx. US$8k) and wasn't keen to budge on lowering the price despite the bads we pointed out, had to walk out of it earlier today coz my biggest concern was availability of replacement weather strips & rubber seals for lamps, etc. Bro said we could obtain parts from scrap yard but I'm wondering would it do much good if I were to replace old, worn out rubber parts with slightly less worn out parts.

Tried researching on the net but seems like this is not a popular thing for 6GC owners to fix, therefore reaching out to the (IMHO) friendliest community here hoping someone with experience could shed some light on this please? I would really love to take that beauty home and fix her up real good and restore her glory - if only parts availability is not such a huge pain

Thanks for hearing me out and looking forward to learn more from the gurus here, hoping I'd be able to report in with my own 6GC one day!

This post has been edited by Ashstar: Aug 11, 2014 - 11:15 PM