mitsi delica... advice / opinions?

[rollaholic]

i know its not a toyota etc, but anyone know much about these things? looking at the usual suspects.

got a mate interested in one, 2.8 turbo diesel in manual. he wants to do a few road trips around NZ in it, and its been set up as a camper - bed in the back, gas stove etc. downside being its done 295kms... apart from the obvious wear and tear stuff, anything else to look for on these buggers?

i have driven a couple of 2.8DTs at work, and two delicas with this engine in particular. they seem to go pretty well, apart from your odd oil leak, but were lower km examples.

share me your wisdom / advice / BS / whatever

[fuel]

The 2.8 Diesels are marginally better than the 2.5 diesels, but they still crack heads, it's just they are now of the age that these faults start surfacing. Just like the 1KZ-TE over the 2L-TE, as the KZs got older they started exhibiting the same issues as the older 2L-TEs did.

Like the Toyota diesels, keep the cooling system up to scratch and don't let them overheat as that's their downfall. They aren't a bad engine at all, they have a timing chain as opposed to a belt to replace.

The van itself is pretty sturdy and are a big step up over the older L300 Delica in terms of safety and features (ie coil sprung rear end over leaf sprung). The automatic transmissions in them are actually an Aisan Warner unit, which you guys would know as the A340, so they don't tend to fail like the rest of the transverse Mitsubishi automatic transmissions. The manual boxes are just as good too, they don't tend to give trouble. A negative is that with the engine being up front you lose a great deal of interior space, but that's a good trade off for frontal impact safety I feel.

Compared to a 4x4 Hiace for the same money you can get a much newer 4x4 Delica, and the 4x4 Delica is far more capable off road and nearly as reliable.