Originally Posted by Toe Knee

Half the problem is people spend loads on tuning and forget about bodywork, most unless they had treatment in the early days will have rust in place you cant see and just gets worse.

I'm doing a complete resto on mine and knew there was some rust but when I took the rear beam off the chassis mount areas had started to collapse!!! Have now repair it and other areas and will be getting the whole underneath blasted and painted then the whole car.
When I bought it looked mint but over the years rust has come through and a lot of the places were where some one had a full respray and rust hadn't been sorted and kept going under the nice paintwork.
Got a long way to go but once it's done will be a clean example worth the money!!
If you keep finding good 4x4 ones have you not thought bout converting it to rwd?! With your budget you should easily have the spare cash to get all the parts?!!