Hello all.

Im brand new to your awesome forum. Im also brand new to the Mitsubishi world. I have been a Toyota Land Cruiser guy for a while and am thinking of making a change. I have located a 1988 Montero diesel for import. The truck has 163,000KM on the dash. The engine is built with the intercooler option.

My plan is to purchase this and modify it slightly to be a family off road/camping truck.

I have seen several photos of the truck and its in amazing shape. Are there any known issues with this truck that should be thought about seeing that it is 25 years old ?

Any feedback would be great !

 

I owned a 1987 Montero before my family got too large. It stands to reason that a vehicle that old would have electrical issues. I chased down a few worn wires (reverse lights, sensor leads, etc.), and the wiring on these is pretty basic and easy to work on. The only thing that I would say to watch out for would be any gauges that do not work. This is because the back of the main instrument cluster looks like a circuit board. All of the wiring comes into one main harness and runs through a flat board with the wiring run across it.
This is a picture that I grabbed from the internet; it is from an old Mazda, but it is very similar. The black ***** are light bulbs, which are easy to change and pretty easy to find NOS. But I have never had any success in re-soldering a broken connection (The light green lines act as wires). This usually means that if one gauge goes out, you need to find an complete working instrument cluster (Good luck on that). I have even heard of these boards cracking and breaking several circuits at once.
Also, most of these came with a second set of gauges in the center of the dash that had a volt meter, oil pressure gauge and tilt/inclinometer. Bonus if yours still has these; they are very cool and very hard to find.