I'm thinking of buying a 10 year old Nissan Micra that has just 22,000 miles on the clock.
The last time I bought a low mileage car (a Skoda Estelle!) the engine had been swapped.
I've found a list of Micra engine codes here:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_CG_engine
Does anybody know if it's possible to tell what year an engine was made from it's number? If not do they go up sequentially? That would give me some idea of its approximate age.
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>> The last time I bought a low mileage car (a Skoda Estelle!)
>> the engine had been swapped.
>>
Not surprising. Those things would overheat if the cooling system were not looked after. One usually fatal problem was the tiny bypass pipe, between the two large pipes running to the heater hoses, silting up over the winter while the heater was on all the time and there was no flow through it. Come spring and the heater being turned off.....BANG.
The engines rejoiced in the odd combination of an alloy block with an iron head. If they overheated to the extent of cooking the head gasket, it was often fatal to the engine.
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>> an alloy block with an iron head.
An alloy block with iron wet cylinder liners... the bottom seals could get disturbed when the head was taken off. Tell me about it - I ruined my best low-mileage Estelle 130 by doing that (unnecessarily too). Not a happy memory. Indeed one of my pinnacles of total idiocy.
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I have just looked at the registration details of an 1240cc Micra SE that will be 10 years old in July. The engine number is 066575. No letters.
I don't know if all engines were made at the same site and, if not, whether that would complicate things.
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It's OK - somebody else bought it before I got there!
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