New guy old truck.

Hi, I'm Jason. New to the forum, and new to Mazda B Series trucks. Just picked up a 1987 Mazda B2000 2wd 5 speed for 100$. Runs and drives, but shakes a bit more at idle than I'm used to (never owned anything so small or with so few cylinders before, lol) Trying to figure out what I can about my truck. It's just a 25 year old beater that will hopefully do a bit better than the 16 mpg I'm getting in my F-350 lol.

Here's a vid of it after I got it running with a bit of patience and a good battery.



a couple pics







and hiding behind the 350 LOL

few questions while I'm at it. What can I expect to get MPG wise out of this? I have no problem driving like an old man... lol. Is that much shaking normal? What are things I need to look out for/ stay on top of for this to be a reliable daily driver?

Drive It like u stole it.. not a whole lot to break plus if anything breaks, its super cheap to fix.. enjoy and welcome to the scene..

the only time mine shakes is if a valve is way off witch is unlikely i jus messed it up lol. but the other reason is that egr valve and you could probly replace the plugs wires ect but when that egr gets clogged with carbon it makes it run like crap. mine would shake real bad and sputter in the low rpms as it progressed. id check things like that first the egr is on the intake under the carb. 3 10mm bolts. and a metal gasket. made a world a diffrence for me. if its clogged it probly wouldnt hurt to check your cats too but they take longer to clog than the egr valve.

i ment to ask if your motor or front end shakes. if its your front end, check for missing weights on wheels, missing lugs baljoints allignment, and see if maybe you got a not in the tire.

Definitely the motor. It's bad in low RPMs (at/near idle), if I rev it up the shake goes away and it sounds fine. Well fine for a lawn mower. lol

yea its gotta be the egr or somthing with emissions cause that stuff always clogs up with carbon. or if your distributor is points instead of electric u could swap it. my contacts wore out on my points under the rotar so i just got the one that didnt have points. i think it came off a 1990. sorry for my lack of vocabulary. lol

Ok thanks. It runs quite a bit better with new fuel and some seafoam (it was on e with 5 month old gas in the tank) but still could be better I think. The shakes are better now.

Is a decent bit of valve train noise normal? That's what the seller told me. Also, do I just fill the radiator directly with coolant? Is the degas bottle supposed to only have on line going to it and one venting? The rad has to be low because I had the engine too hot to touch (eek) but the rad and both hoses were cool. Temp gauge read just over dead bottom though.

Thanks so much for the help.

most of the time there is a nice tick under the valve cover even when set right i hear. mine has a tick that comes and goes. and yea jus drop some antifreeze or water down in the rad especialy if you cant see fluid when you open the cap. and im not quit sure about the gas bottle. do you mean evap canister. (big black cylinder lookin unit?) cause i think both hoses are supposed to go somewhere not sure. these trucks generally run pretty cool even with a good thermostat. mine temp only goes up about a third of the way max and thats with a box on the rad to block air and make it warmer.

Yeah, this has a tap/tick that is especially noticable when increasing rpms. I'll buy a few jugs of 50/50 to dump in there. I guess I do mean the evap canister. I'll probably use the wrong terminology a lot, as I've done nothing but diesels over the last few years. I didn't think it made sense to only have one hose run to it and another hanging down, I'll have to figure out where that goes.