Hey all - Newbie vista owner here. Picked up my car late last fall. Never knew the even existed until I saw it for sale (got it for $400!), and I'm excited about it! More than a hatch, but not quite a van, and AWD to boot!
A few photos:
https://docs.google.com/folder/d/0BziDt ... sp=sharing
Van is a 92 5 spd, AWD, 2.4L with all the bells and whistles (A/C, crusise, etc) and they work! It's in clean shape body/interior wise. I bought it off a guy who had done a bunch of work to the motor (also replaced driveline carrier bearing) and was tired of it. Long story short, it had a rebuilt bottom end with the head off a different engine. The head was bad, I had the original head rebuilt and just got it together a couple weeks ago and it's running pretty damn good now! Also threw in a new starter and A/C compressor since those are buried, and were easy to do with the head/intake off.
I had it on a lift to have a small exhaust leak in the seam of the rear resonator zipped up and found that the sway bar links were bad (that noise was driving me nuts!) so those are coming in the mail this week along with new cap/rotor/wires and hydraulic clutch line components (master/slave/braided line) and new A/C receiver/drier.
Plans are to throw a yakima rack into the factory tracks for all the toys and drive the piss out of it!
A few issues I'm experiencing at this point:
Couple drivetrain noises on deceleration in gear (stops as soon as you push in clutch or put any power in). I get a low pitch wahhhwahhhwahhwahhh. Thinking prop shaft issue (out of balance, u joints...) Accompanying this is a grinding noise (again, only on decel). Thinking wheel bearing maybe? Need to have someone else drive it while I sit in the back and listen....
Driver's automatic seat belt is dead. Wondering about converting to a conventional style shoulder belt and ran across this vfaq http://vfaq.com/mods/CDNbelts.html. Anybody have advice on this? Was there a version of these vans that had normal belts that could be swapped in?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
