Hi guys, I recently stumbled across this forum while looking for reviews on VP's. I'm looking at buying a '93 VP. Everything seems fine with the car, it's a clean, well looked after example, under 200, 000kms on the clock and comes with rego and rwc. I need it to be reliable as it will be my daily driver, and I was hoping to get some opinions from you guys. Are VP's good reliable cars? When I go to inspect the car what should I be looking for? Thanks in advance.
I'm happy with my VQ, but that's mainly because I've owned it for 26 years and I've a lot of memories. Have you had a look at this sticky: https://forums.justcommodores.com.au/threads/vn-vp-faults.30556/ The only thing that would make me walk away from an otherwise perfectly good car is rust, and to a lesser extent bad paint . Mechanically these cars are robust and easily fixed although some parts are getting hard to find.
Unless maintenance and repairs have been kept up it will probably have a fair amount of worn components. Engines tend to be fairly solid. The rear mains often leak as does rocker covers and sump gaskets. Heads leak oil too but not enough to be any more of a problem than a little oil down the side of the block. Manifold gaskets often leak 4-5hr job, easy enough with a little skill and some basic tools. The two manifold coolant pipe adapter's quite often leak and they can often snap off when trying to replace them. Front one is fairly straight forward a piece of wire gets them out. Rear one is PITA and requires removing components and cutting it inside the manifold with a ground down hacksaw blade, then hooking it out with a wire or seal hook. Alternatively replace the gaskets at the same time and do them with the manifold already off.
Those links aren't working for me for those pages you linked. Thanks for the insight, I shall enquire about services and logbooks and see what's been done and how regularly.
Around 2005 I bought a 93 VP Lexcen wagon for $300. I had a few too many drinks at the time and woke next morning and said, oh krap, what am I going to do with this thing. It had been sitting in the neighbours front yard for over 12 months and came complete with red back spiders, BIG red back spiders, but once I killed them off and did a few repairs, brakes, speedo, tyres and rego it owed me about $850. Drove it for about 8 years and auctioned it on ebay for $760 and the buyer flew down from Cairns to Brisbane and drove it back. All I would say is how many k's and how much, but other than that, they are a good car as long as they are serviced on a regular basis like any other car should be, you should have no major problems. edit...My bad, just noticed under 200,000 k's so should be fine. Gees my VZ has done 180,000 k's and still goes like new.