A good friend of mine is looking for a cheap commuter car that's good on gas. In the running is a 1993, '94 or '95 Protege ( I can't remember which year) with the 1.8 liter engine and 4-speed auto. I know the chassis on these cars are solid, at least that's what I've heard. And I assume the engines are pretty solid. Is the trans. a likely trouble spot? Not sure of the mileage, but I'm sure it's like 150k-ish.

i just did a trans from one of those cars, the troubled car had 86k miles on it, car seemed to be well taken care of and it was a female driver. trans was wasted tho, onc eit got hot it would slip forever.



i dont see too many of them coming in on a regular basis for a trans tho, but then again most people dont bring older cars to the dealers.



kevin.

they also have problems w/ massive carbon build up in the intake. usually clogs the IAC or EGR valve causing a lack in power and a shitty idle but yeah dont see to many like kev said

james

I had one of them a while back and my sister is currently driving it. It has around 180K with no major issues ever.

those are good cars, fuzzy drove his for like 250k and never touched it, he changed the oil when it started making noises...



i know rick weldon also drove a sohc one for 300k, and upgraded to the dohc a couple years ago



i also dont remember selling a lot of transmissions for them, there was a point in time where you could walk the 30 feet across the parts dept on transmissions too...



they do need timing belts, and axles and oil leaky stuff though



on the plus side, 35mpg is nice, and 135hp goes ok