My old 1988 Mazda B2600 4x4 - It was a good truck~

[goodfellow]

I rebuilt it, and then in 2021 basically gave it to my landscaping guy who needed a truck, but due to COVID financial pressures and family circumstances (he had a young family, with more on the way) he couldn't afford anything new or used. He was overjoyed to get it and loves that old truck, and treats it like a member of his family. It's still being driven to this day.

Kudos to Mazda! They engineered these things very well.

Back in 2014 my BIL and I hauled my trusty old 1988 Mazda B2600 4x4 truck out of a 10 year storage and put it on a tow truck back to my house. I mothballed the truck in an indoor storage unit in late 2002 and just let it sit. I never got around to making the truck an off road 4x4, so it just sat. Well it turns out that my wife's nephew needs some cheap wheels to get to work and back. He can't afford diddly, so we went and got the old 4x4.



It has 230K miles on it, but most of that was long highway runs, so the engine and trans should be in good shape. Today I changed all the fluids, filters, and pulled the plugs to see if the darn thing had frozen up. I filled the cylinders with a few squirts of marvel Mystery oil when I stored it and that seemed to keep the rings from rusting to the bores.

Here it's being disassembled and made ready for new fluids -- A bullet proof Mitsubishi 2.6 liter inline 4 is what's underneath all that 1980's smog spaghetti tubing.







This is what was left in the gas tank -- smelled like old gas, but looked like apple juice. It had lots of Sta-Bil in it, but I just pumped it out and filled with 5 gal. of fresh gas.



Finally I put in new filters and plugs, and she was ready to go. Started up with a bit of ether and kept on chugging. A little more advance timing and the old truck sounds like it used to.



Lastly it received a wash and a good cleaning -- that about was it for today. It still needs a lot of work to get it roadworthy, but for a 25 year old vehicle this truck is awesome. Mazda sure made some good little 4x4's back in the day. The driver's side mirror is totally rusted, which is strange because the passenger side is almost like new. Guess I'll have to hit eBay for a Mazda side mirror.