Tell me about - 1986 Isuzu Impulse

I've got an oddball i'm looking at GRM.

I joined a facebook group of Isuzu owners right around the same time a different member posted for "for sale" posting for one of these. It's a 1986 Isuzu Impulse Turbo Automatic, described as being in complete condition- but with over 260,000k on the clock and needing electrical work. He is asking $1,000 for the car and all his spare parts, described as being quite a haul- but I am still waiting on pictures of the interior and a better picture of *what* he has for spares.

I'm real conflicted GRM- it's super weird and I like the idea of saving it, but I have NO idea what it will require. Worse, the car does have some quarter panel rust and it will take some time and coin to transport it from Pittsburgh to Nebraska. Rockauto still shows parts being available. Do ya'll think I should pull the trigger on this for the appeal of restoring something so strange and rare?

Worst car I ever owned.  The only one I was ever glad to see hauled to the junkyard.

I put three cylinder heads on it and they all cracked.  One of them lasted long enough to get me to the emissions test center and back, and then it cracked partway home.  I ended up driving the car a grand total of five miles.  It was the car that made me swear off piston engined cars and turbocharged cars for a long time.

Physically, it's a Chevette with a 4 link instead of a torque arm rear suspension.  So the front half of the chassis is pretty much the only good thing about it..

First person I ever saw die in my presence was after he rolled one and flew out the window into the neighboring driveway.

He was fleeing police when he crashed (and almost killed me and two friends.)

Does that help?

I have two of them, both 88 manual turbo models. one has a 4ZE1 swapped in.

I'm baffled by the hate/fear people have for these things, especially here of all places. It's a light rwd car that can be made to handle & has lots of engine/drivetrain parts in common with trucks sold until 1997. 

perhaps if it had some sort of distant obscure relation to something from mazda then it would be sooo super cool, right?

if you have to ask for group-think approval then it's probably not for you.

impulsive said:

I have two of them, both 88 manual turbo models. one has a 4ZE1 swapped in.

I'm baffled by the hate/fear people have for these things, especially here of all places. It's a light rwd car that can be made to handle & has lots of engine/drivetrain parts in common with trucks sold until 1997. 

perhaps if it had some sort of distant obscure relation to something from mazda then it would be sooo super cool, right?

if you have to ask for group-think approval then it's probably not for you.

I'm not looking for groupthink approval- I'm looking for opinion on how it runs and drives, because if I bought it it would require a complete restore.

I'm not a complete fool . I know that Chevette comment is false, and I know that the latter generations really had some impressive handling capacity. I'm just looking for opinions on a car that aren't "I haven't seen one is years!" and aren't from Isuzu groups on facebook.

Knurled. said:

Worst car I ever owned.  The only one I was ever glad to see hauled to the junkyard.

 

I put three cylinder heads on it and they all cracked.  One of them lasted long enough to get me to the emissions test center and back, and then it cracked partway home.  I ended up driving the car a grand total of five miles.  It was the car that made me swear off piston engined cars and turbocharged cars for a long time.

 

Physically, it's a Chevette with a 4 link instead of a torque arm rear suspension.  So the front half of the chassis is pretty much the only good thing about it..

I had a similar experience with a first gen rx7, but people keep telling me it was a fluke. 

If you're looking to truly restore it then that's going to be a tough chore mostly due to interior parts. lot's of plastic that doesn't age well. mechanically should not be tough to sort. seals & gaskets are common to the 2.3 & 2.6 used in the trucks so readily available.

cooling system must be kept up. all the 4Z engines do not tolerate overheating very well.

no experience with the auto trans.

88-89 has a different ecu & efi than 85-87. earlier ones use hose fed injectors while the latter are rail.

to the best of my knowledge all the turbo models came w/LSD rear.

the turbo is an IHI RHB5 variant w/square bolt pattern. undersized but responsive, rebuild parts still out there.

the "Lotus" swaybars from 88-89 are larger and can be swapped. poly control arm bushings for a Fiero fit, as do Koni sport shocks for the Opel GT.

plenty of performance options just have to learn to cross reference part #s and get creative.

I’d buy it and slap a sr20 or 4age into it. Unique looks, tons of fun. Decent chassis. 

Didn't someone on here have an Impulse rallycross car that baffled the E36 M3 out of them until they unloaded it?

disclaimer: I have no experience with Impulses.

I am, however, a former of a p'up. It was a very basic '86 model 1.8, 4 speed. I beat the living E36 M3 out of it. literally, and metaphorically. A college room mate put gravel down the oil intake. I found out some 5000 miles later, when it blew up. The last several months, it burned so much oil, I never changed it, simply added it, a quart at a time. After it blew, I pulled it apart, had the head surfaced,  crank cleaned up, emptied the gravel out of the pan, and threw a dingleball hone, bearings and rings at it. It ran like a banded steer until we parted ways. That is the same basic engine as the Impulse. My Mom also had a 4cyl. Trooper that was great. 

I see no reason that you couldn't bolt a truck 5 speed in, and rock out. YRMV

Not my actual truck, but extremely similar.

It really is based on the same chassis as a Chevette.  This is not entirely a bad thing.  Chevettes were great rally cars in the early 80s before the 4wd revolution, as were the mechanically similar Opel Ascona and Manta.

It was just so Kafka-esque mechanically in how everything was in everything else's way.  I do remember that I got so fed up with the power steering pump bracketry that I just yanked the pump off entirely.  Pulling the head required removing the head with the manifolding as you could not access the manifold fasteners in-chassis.  I forget if the turbo (an IHI RHB5) came off with it or not.  All for only 140hp from a 2 liter.

Supposedly the head from a 2.6l Trooper was an upgrade, but most 2.6 Troopers that I had seen also cracked the heads because of the EI-IE-EI-IE valve order, which concentrated a lot of heat in the center of the head.  Which is also where the turbo on the 4ZC1-T was, tiny log manifold with the outlet right there.

Electronically, the engine is Bosch L-jet (LH jet maybe?  Forget if it had a flapper AFM or a hotwire MAF).  Couldn't tell you if it was genuine Bosch or licensed from Bosch.  Either way, stone simple.

Didn't someone on here have an Impulse rallycross car that baffled the E36 M3 out of them until they unloaded it?

I think that was a 2nd gen (Geo Storm platform). but I do remember way back reading about a rwd rally Impulse that was mostly stock & kicked some ass. this guy:

I am, however, a former of a p'up. It was a very basic '86 model 1.8, 4 speed.

That is the same basic engine as the Impulse.

not quite. that is a GZ engine, as was the 2.0 non-turbo pre 88 Impulse. definitely direct lineage w/some parts in common but not exactly the same. turbo 2.0 = 4ZC1T, 2.3 = 4ZD1, 2.6 = 4ZE1.

I see no reason that you couldn't bolt a truck 5 speed in, and rock out.

They are the same transmission - MSG5, however the trucks are cable clutch & the Impulse uses hydraulic. they don't have removable bellhousings but the entire front half of the case comes off and once you have an Impulse box/case you can swap them onto the truck trans and have all the provisions for hydraulic slave.

As for Chevette, yes it is based on the global GM T platform.  Saying the Impulse is just a Chevette is the same as saying a Fiero is a Chevettte. The upper control arm, upper balljoint, bushings, & shock is about all that is the same. lower arms use a strut/torsion rod that goes to subframes(51781) tied to each other & mounted to chassis under the rad.  not the same.

so Kafka-esque mechanically in how everything was in everything else's way. 

aren't all compact Japanese cars like this? cruise control & factory EBC system for the turbo added to clutter but all that crap can be binned.  heads come off no different than any other I4. 2 or 3 long studs prevent the lower intake manifold from sliding straight out but you just double nut them and unthread from the head. or just pull it off in 1 piece... not sure how that is a problem?

a trooper head has larger cc and would make such low compression it would be undrivable. never heard that as an "upgrade". 

it uses a Hitachi hotwire MAF. 93-95 EFI trucks used a larger housing matched to higher flow injectors. however the injectors changed to high impedance so can't use. Toyota 22RTE injectors are low-z and about same flow. I'm running 4 360cc injectors from a 3000GT 6G72T with the large Isuzu MAF & the 88-89 ecu controls it just fine along with .6 liter of extra displacement from the 4ZE1.  only up to 13psi at this point but log everything on a ZT-2 it it looks just peachy.

fuel pumps are same as Nissan 240SX, I installed an Aeromotive Stealth 340 that is listed as a 240SX application. the optical distributors are very similar to the Nissans too.

this makes me miss Curmudgeon, he was the only other dude on here w/Isuzu knowledge.

In reply to GIRTHQUAKE :

I had a friend with a non-turbo one back around 90-91. The interior still seems cool to me, but it was somehow slower than my 2bbl 70's land yacht. 

I had a turbo stick one a number of years ago.  One day it stopped running.  I put it up for sale on an isuzu forum, guy wanted a mechanic to check it out, so we did.  He proclaimed it needed wires, which it did, but he missed the cap and rotor being bad too.  Personally I think I drove the car about 100ft.  I had purchased it to be a donor for a Locost builld that never materialized.  I paid $500 and sold it for about the same.  I never did learn how to drive stick, but my brother did enjoy it.

Isuzone had a wealth of information on them.  I seem to recall swapping in the 2.6 and keeping the turbo setup as being the hot ticket.

Nothing to add, other than when I was in high school I thought they were really cool in a "Japanese Scirocco" kind of way.