Hello all,

I know this is a Scooby forum, but I'm looking at buying an Evo III this week and thought this might be a good place to post for some general advice on performance imports.

The car is a 1995 Evo III, brought to the UK in 1997 with all owners since then (one of them and the dealer in question) easily traced.

It looks perfect inside and out, has covered 49 000kms, and they're looking for £12 900.

There's a couple of things that bother me, which I'm having trouble resolving. First, the dealer (one of the partners used the car last summer, so I've spoken to him at length) tells me it's been serviced by a Scooby / Mitsu specialist in the Scottish borders, and has a new MOT as of this month. However, it's been serviced every 6000 miles while I was under the impression that it should be 4500 for Evos?

Worst of all (that's right, that was the impending sound of DOOM!), the salesman tells me it's been run since they got it (now around 14 months) on normal unleaded with no problems. A reply to a post on the Lancer Register advised me, like I thought, not to dare put anything but SUL in it unless I really like engine rebuilds.

So how catastrophic is that? Should I gently re-educate the dealer? I love the car, but don't fancy replacing the engine in a few thousand miles.

If there's not likely to be a lot of damage done, would it be wise to accept a discount?

Personally, I wouldnt touch a jap car with a barge pole if it had only been running on normal unleaded fuel, unless it had been remapped to accomodate that.

The 4500 service interval is a recommendation by Mistubishi UK and generally only applies to 4,5,6 evo's because of AYC fluid changes. Unless the car has evident use of trackdays etc. then 6000 is fairly acceptable.

have a look on the LTR register to find out more.

Cem

Hi Oakley,

had a look on the Autotrader website and there are loads of Evo IV's for sale with low mileage for around £13k (should be able to bid 'em down due to the state of the market). Evo IV's are a good deal, based around the same car as the the Evo VI and offer the same performance too.

With the current market, you could even scrape an Evo V if you could cope with getting a white one. Check out Autotrader.co.uk and topmarques.co.uk.

Good luck,

MS