good stuff thank you much. i'm going to look at one locally hopefully sometime this weekend. it has 160K miles on it, but it is what it is. i dont really feel 100% comfortable with that high mileage, but if the engine goes i can always swap it out with another / get it rebuilt. the transmission is manual which is probably fine. i'm gonna search the forum to see what luck people have had with rebuilding an engine / transmission / rear end?