[dme123]

They are strong and will withstand abuse and neglect well, up to a point. I think that's often the problem with people buying old ones, they hide poor treatment.

Our 2003 car was run up to 170k odd by my ex wife in a brutal fashion, booted from cold to the redline most days and she would only put oil in when the pressure light was flickering. We sold it on to a friend for buttons who has continued to thrash it without mercy and it's now on over 200k with rental car treatment for most of it. It uses a fair bit of oil now, but still pulls as hard as ever.

I'm sure one day (soon) it'll die horribly, but right now we could tart it up and sell it on as a carefully owned and fully serviced example if we spent 10 minutes with a rubber stamp. You'd have no idea it had been so abused until you had to put a litre of oil in every 1k miles, by which point it's too late and you think these engines are crap!