early '91 vs '92 Delica, important?

[Weasel]

I'm looking at a '91 Exceed Highroof, the only Delica I've found locally(Victoria) that A) isn't sold and B) the seller answers the phone!

It has a good maintenance record, a bunch of extras(winch, hitch, roof rack) and a seller who's tolerating my unceasing flood of questions about everything I can think of... at least so far.

It lacks the 3-point seatbelts in the rear, which I think means it was built before August of 91... Here is the specs of the exact model number. If I look at the same model # post-August 91, I see a number of small differences; 3 point rear belts, side impact bar, and a tiny difference in power density and bore size.

I'm somewhat concerned about the lack of rear 3 point belts, and I have no idea if I should be concerned about the other differences. Am I going to find, down the road, that expensive, hard to find bits of this Delica aren't quite the same as the flood of 92s I see for sale all over the bloody province, except Victoria? How important are side impact bars?

Any input would be appreciated, since I'm shelling out to have the van inspected tomorrow, and hoping to make up my mind in a similar time frame...

[patty]

Not totaly sure but the 91 should have sliding rear windows and 92 have stupid pop outs..something that angers me daily

[loki]

From other posts I learned that the older ones that don't have the shoulder belts have the holes to mount them under the trim as they where available as an option, and also that you can put the sliders in vans that came with pop-out windows but you can't put the pop-outs in a van that came with sliders.

of course I could be totaly off my rocker so take everything with a ounds or 2 of salt :)

[Weasel]

Hm, good to know about the shoulder belt mounting spots.

I'm pretty sure it has pop-out windows in the rear, which I've been loathing for some godawful eternity in my caravan... TBH I was totally overwhelmed by all the crap I was trying to pay attention to; test drive/viewing I did last sunday was the very first time I've been up close to one!

Anyone with experience with the guts able to tell me if all the bits are interchangable between the '90 revision and the '91 revision?

[Mystery Machine]

Not totaly sure but the 91 should have sliding rear windows and 92 have stupid pop outs..something that angers me daily

Pop-out windows came as standard on L300's post 1990. Sliding windows were a factory option from this year, so any L300 after 1990 could have either pop-out or sliding windows.....most tend to have the pop-out ones.

[Mystery Machine]

....which I think means it was built before August of 91...

Hi Weasel, without meaning to sound rude, you can ignore some of the specs from that site because they aren't 100% accurate (a lot of the data is good - but some of it isn't correct)

If you want to find out the true manufacture date of the vehicle, get the seller to check the label on the seatbelt. It gives the true date of manufacture, not the model year...



This one is September 1992; the 9 is a little blurry, but it certainly pinpoints the manufacture date fairly accurately.

Early nineties Japanese vehicles were built with JIT manufacturing processes, so the date the belts were made corresponds with the date the vehicle was manufactured (+/- 21 days)

HTH?