Elise and mileage, problems?

[mikey g]

Looking to get one in the near future and a few are coming into my budget, but ive seen a few up in the 60-70k mile region, am i likely to encounter any major problems at this age?
And i know about head gaskets...

Cheers

Mike

[mister kevlar]

hi in answer to the question-ive been elise owner for 5 months now, in reading this mad crazy forum daily...i can say the gneral trend is that even a new s2 has its fair share of problems and generally ive seen the idea talked about that low low milegage cars are indeed a bit of a no no!....

[Arno]

mikey g said:

am i likely to encounter any major problems at this age?

Well.. Most of the niggles and problems should have been solved/fixed in 'well used' cars.

As long as the chassis is not damaged or repaired and it looks like it's well maintained then you probably have a good one. 'honest' damage like stone chips and such are pretty much unavoidable on these cars.

A re-chassied (complete new chassis after damage) car could actually be a bonus as you get pretty much a car that was re-built from the ground up and often results in a better car than from the factory

The tradeoff of a higher milage car is that you will need to allocate some budget to replace 'consumables' or 'wear items' like brakes, wheel bearings, balljoints, bushes and such.

Some mechanical aptitude would come in handy as a lot of these things cost little in parts, but take some time to change so labour costs would get a bit high..

The Elise is basically a very simple car, so working on it is not a very big job. Just invest in a service manual and parts list and you should be fine.