I was thinking of buying a car from a private party. Come to find out the car had the clutch replaced at 22,000 miles then at 24,000 miles the transmission was replaced. The car now has 28,000 miles on it. Should I be worried about this? It is still under the factory warranty. Glad the guy was honest and told me about it. Guess I could have found out once I took it to the dealer for service.

It is a 6mt btw. Any thoughts? Should I back out of the deal?

 

The 22k mile clutch change could be from driver error or inexperience with MT cars
or just driving on the track too often.

The 24k mile tranny replacement could be the syncro problem some earlier 03's
and some 04's have in the 4-5-6 gears. you might want to find out why the
tranny was replaced.

so far I haven't heard of gears sheering like on WRX's. you might want to run
carfax.

 

People have had problems with the transmission and had to get it replaced. I would check to see if the transmission that was put in was an 05 one (I am assuming the car is an 03 or 04). There are changes with the 05 and I'm guessing some of them were to fix problems like this. The new transmission should be fine, maybe you can use the fact that it was changed to talk the price down a little. I'm assuming you have test driven to make sure everything feels fine, if not, I'd go do that too.

 

5th gear stopped working. You would go to put it in 5th and it would not go into gear.

 

Car is an 03. Can I tell from the VIN how early an 03 it is?

 

That is the syncro problem then, it is commonly seen. Ask the guy what year transmission it was replaced with. 04 is a lot better with this problem in the event it is an 04 transmission. If it has an 03 transmission again, you may want to back out though because it likely wouldn't fail until after the warrenty is up (not saying it is sure to fail, but there is the chance).

 

Cool thx for the advice. Will check into what year trans is in the car.

 

Not abnormal for 6M/T's -- The warranty is a good one if that's any consolation. I doubt it covers clutch replacement tho, but that could have been due to abuse/misuse.
C.

 

Check the last 6 digits of the VIN. First digit of the serial number should be a 2. Being that ~28-29,000 cars were made that year, if the serial is for example 203564 it's an early '03, if it's 225630 it's a late '03.

 

Both 2003 G35's I have looked at are early 2003's then. Thx for the tip.