alexnds

My suggestion is to buy the car. I had a 1992 that I had for 11 years and the 3rd Gen in particular (1989-1994) seems to be car that is designed for 15-20 years, and some newer models are only designed for 10 yrs at most. I recently wanted a car for my wife to learn to drive on, so I went ahead and bought a 1993 with 146k miles on it!

My situation was I needed to completely replace the exhaust system, because even stainless steel doesn't last forever. I also needed to replace the injectors. The cost of new injectors is about $125 each, so 6 injectors and O-rings and gaskets will run you about $800, plus labor. Rebuilt injectors, from Vendom, or Bosch run close to $400 for a set of all 6. Please look at my post regarding "air-and-fuel" and you'll see many URL's related to cleaning the existing injectors off the car, if running a cleaner in the fuel line doesn't solve the problem. I was lucky to be able to buy used injectors and fuel rails, send them out for sonic cleaning and then get them installed in the car, for less than the cost of even rebuilt injectors!

The GXE model has a timing belt, which needs replacing at every 60k miles and the SE in 1993-1994 model, as I recall, had a chain, not a belt, so that needs not to be replaced. In your case, you'll need to do that pretty soon again. A good idea when replacing your timing belt is to also replace the water pump. You don't necessarily have to, but it's a good idea to prevent heat related failure. In my case,since I didn't know the car, if the car was driven in a lot of stop and go traffic, the transmission takes a toll as well, so I added a transmission cooler in series with main transmission lines in main radiator. You can get one done at U-Haul as part of a "towing package" install, without getting the towing hook installed at all. It's cheap $40-$75 insurance to getting longer life out of any transmission. Also, this generation of cars has no transmission filter, so a flush with a machine, not just letting the old fluid drain out, is not a bad idea.

The other possibility with these cars is exhaust manifold coming loose. Yet another possibility is window regulators letting the windows drop into the door frames.

Overall, these cars are very, very good cars. You don't find an American car at that age with anything worth saving. In my case, I spent some money up front, but I have a pretty nice car. I added transmission cooler, water pump, all other belts and new exhaust and new injectors. (actually, cleaned OEM) injectors. I chose a performance exhaust, not muffler shop route, because I wanted the better Y-Pipe.

My advice is buy the car. The owner did all the work that is common for an aging car and at the purchase price suggested, you can put a little extra cash into it and have yourself something that easily last until 200,000 miles.
I bought a nearly 13 year old car, and I have no regrets doing it.