GT4 project - engine issues. to buy or not to buy

[plox]

So I'm looking at buying a gt4 celica which is not running right. I'm picking it's either is going to need a new head or whole engine.

The story goes - It was brought by a mates brother under the assumption that turbo was stuffed, he limped it 200kms home with "no boost". I took it for a test drive before replacing the turbo and saw the boost gauge was reading around 6psi, but felt like you were going nowhere (almost like it had popped an inter cooler hose and had retarted timing or something), so we pulled off the waste gate hose to free boost it. Sure enough it was running about 16psi and felt a bit faster (almost what I would expect from a standard turbo car, but still on the slow side). But no smoke, idea issues or running rough from what I remember.
I believe he took it to a mechanic and they put a periscope into the head and said the head was buggered, corroded?

Would the head cause it to be slow but show no other signs (that I know of)?
Head replacement or whole engine replacement?

[allencr]

...said the head was buggered, corroded?

Would the head cause it to be slow but show no other signs (that I know of)?

Corroded? No. Never unless its damaged the combustion chamber seal, the fire ring, and is overheating puking out coolant & combustion gasses.

What's the compression?
Nothing can be seen that couldn't have been diagnosed first by bad compression or even pulling plug wires to see how equal they are. Detonation speckles can be seen when running well before it goes & fucks itself, other wise there is nothing to see but the aftermath of piston and/or valve failure. It's BS.

[blakeg]

sounds just like the timing is very retarded. does the turbo / exhaust get really fucking hot

[jfallen]

You're in NZ dude, buy something newer. Everything is cheap, don't waste time with busted GT4's, made that mistake too many times.

J.A

[dumbass]

I agree
don't go near a gt4
bloody pain to work on
if u ever need to remove box its engine all out type job

[Dan_k36]

You can get away with a skim with a grinder to the block and gearbox to get them back in, but only a skim

[thechuckster]

My GT4 barge came with rooted engine - turned out the thing had been overheated so many times that the head was soft - no amount of head work (except cubic dollars) was going to fix it or stop it repeatedly blowing head gaskets.. Ironically, previous owners had done everything to fix the overheat problem (replacement rad, thermostat, head off mutliple times, etc) but never checked the actual head as to why it was borking gaskets.

[Cuts]

Valid points here. GT-fours are a prick to work on sometimes. 185s are a bit slow out of the box because of the weight.

But they are cheap to buy (especially over there) get a mechanic to whip the head off and hardness test it.
If someone has redone the timing belt it's easy for noobs to get the timing wrong on the intake cam which makes the car feel doughy and slow. Look at the distributor and check the timing, if the dizzy is wound hard one way to get the timing correct the cam timing is wrong.