Buying my second R-title vehicle.... because I didn't learn from the un-lubed posterior incursion with the first one.
Buying my second R-title vehicle.... because I didn't learn from the un-lubed posterior incursion with the first one.
In 99' I was buying my first car, an 81' Audi coupe for $1100 I in found in the newspaper ads. Drove to go see it, take it for a spin. Low oil pressure light was on, owner explained it was the sending unit and he'd replace it for me. So, a week later I picked it up, oil light off, paid cash. Drove it three days before the cam locked up in the head. Towed it to work, pulled the head off, cam journals were too scored to have cleaned up by a machine shop. I bought a rebuilt head, slapped it on and a new oil pump. Drive it six more weeks and it threw a rod. Sold it to a salvage company for pennies on the pound.
In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
Damn. A ralliart wagon? Thats a bit of a unicorn there.
Let's see.
The most I ever paid for a car was about $4500 for a 1996 Ford Thunderbird that blew a brake line 20 minutes after leaving the seller's house. On a Saturday. With a 10 hour drive home staring me in the face. So, maybe that one.
I also paid $2700 for a Town Car that was misfiring the whole way home due to a bad coil, then turned out to not have working A/C, and soon after that 2 of the window regulators broke. And not too long after that another coil went bad. And the tie-rod end came apart. And a weird glitch with the built-in carphone system that was no longer active caused a short that drained the battery and let to an unnecessary alternator replacement from the parts cannon. So, maybe that one actually.
OR...I took out a $5000 loan, paid off some credit card debt, and bought a $1500 Mercury Cougar with the rest. Took a train to Wisconsin, picked it up, and started having a really hard brake pedal within 2 minutes of leaving the seller's shop. (Yeah, me and brake problems, huh.) Turns out the weird 80s-design ABS system cuts out and causes a loss of power assist AND only the fronts are working when that happens. Fun. Drove it home to PA like that. A/C doesn't work on this car either. Driver's door handle kind of disintegrating. The headlight switch overheats and nearly catches fire not too long after that. Sooooooooooo maybe that one.
Then again...I've now paid $300 and $500 for two junky Ford Escorts to try to make one good one out of them, so maybe those ones.
I'm just full of mistakes. 
In reply to slowbird :
Someone may need to hide your wallet.
My second IS-F. Car itself was great, there was a brief bit of drama with it though.
There's an aftermarket unicorn exhaust that everyone lusts after. Was browsing the Lexus forums, guy on there wants to trade a stock exhaust (mine) for his unicorn exhaust, AND he's in the same town I am. We text back and forth a bit, he seems a little odd, but we agree he'll drive over to me, we'll spend an afternoon swapping the exhausts. I get excited and remove mine the night before to make the process easier. Despite the guy swearing he was going to help me, he shows up late, in church clothes.
What?
At this point it's apparent he's going to be completely worthless, but I forge ahead by myself anyway. Get his car up on jackstands, I go to loosen the 02 sensors, one of them rounds off. At this point I confirm that we've got the rest of the afternoon to figure it out. Nope, he says he has a family event 3 hours away and was expecting to be on the road in an hour. I put his exhaust back together, then get to spend the afternoon putting my stock exhaust back on.
What?
These should have been enough red flags, but I'm extra dumb. We agree we'll both drop our cars off at exhaust shops, let pro's do the work and split the bill. We go to to places, both refuse since the aftermarket exhaust is missing the first set of cats. He says he has a "friendly" shop that will do the work. Weeks later we meet up, drop our cars off. I get a call that afternoon from the shop. They said they sent photos of my stock exhaust to the guy and he said it was "too rusty" (car was in Houston its entire life) and he didn't want to do the swap. By the time I got there, guy had already picked up his car and left, they presented me a bill for a new 02 sensor for his car. Round trip was something nearing $500, for literally nothing.
I sold a non-rusty 1989 BMW 325i coupe with the LSD package for what I paid for it not long before the values started going up.
I bought a rebranded Ford Fusion (a 2011 Mazda6) which was an incredible piece of E36 M3 due to the water pump failing twice with under 100k miles on the car. The water pump is timing chain driven and dumps all of the coolant into the oil pan. There is no warning before it goes out.
KyAllroad said:Last year I sold my perfectly sorted and very nice NC to a forum member because I had too much money tied up in a toy car.
Went out and bought a cheap turbo NA as it's replacement and have dumped piles of cash into it. I'm now further in the "toy car budget" hole than I got for the NC. SMH
And then I ended up selling because I never used it like I intended. I put 900 miles on it in the 11 months I had.
I believe the guy I sold it to slapped some fresh sticky tires and nabbed a few FTDs with it this year at the local AutoX. He's told me I can co-drive anytime, but I feel bad beating on someone else's car.
calteg said:My second IS-F. Car itself was great, there was a brief bit of drama with it though.
There's an aftermarket unicorn exhaust that everyone lusts after. Was browsing the Lexus forums, guy on there wants to trade a stock exhaust (mine) for his unicorn exhaust, AND he's in the same town I am. We text back and forth a bit, he seems a little odd, but we agree he'll drive over to me, we'll spend an afternoon swapping the exhausts. I get excited and remove mine the night before to make the process easier. Despite the guy swearing he was going to help me, he shows up late, in church clothes.
What?
At this point it's apparent he's going to be completely worthless, but I forge ahead by myself anyway. Get his car up on jackstands, I go to loosen the 02 sensors, one of them rounds off. At this point I confirm that we've got the rest of the afternoon to figure it out. Nope, he says he has a family event 3 hours away and was expecting to be on the road in an hour. I put his exhaust back together, then get to spend the afternoon putting my stock exhaust back on.
What?
These should have been enough red flags, but I'm extra dumb. We agree we'll both drop our cars off at exhaust shops, let pro's do the work and split the bill. We go to to places, both refuse since the aftermarket exhaust is missing the first set of cats. He says he has a "friendly" shop that will do the work. Weeks later we meet up, drop our cars off. I get a call that afternoon from the shop. They said they sent photos of my stock exhaust to the guy and he said it was "too rusty" (car was in Houston its entire life) and he didn't want to do the swap. By the time I got there, guy had already picked up his car and left, they presented me a bill for a new 02 sensor for his car. Round trip was something nearing $500, for literally nothing.
I can't imagine how livid I would be in a situation like that.
Bought a '77 Porsche 924 manual someone had taken apart for timing belt or something and hadn't completed the job. Put it back together and got it driving properly then got busy with other things. Never registered it and had 14-15 other cars at the time, 1/2 of which I kept registered and drove regularly. Another car guy came by and saw it sitting and offered me $2,200.00 for it (early 2000's) and I turned them down because I had more than that in it, besides my labor. It sat, and sat, looking worse each year and by the time I needed it to go away I took $100.00 for it from someone who wanted it for lemons racing.
I owned a minivan once.
I got better.
Mine was actually a failure to purchase.
My sophomore year of college I decided I didn't want to daily drive my 1962 Mercury Comet any more. It worked great in my small hometown never leaving a 5 mile radius of my home. Didn't work as well in city driving during my freshman year so I was ready to move on. Looking through a bunch of forum/craigslist/ebay ads I found a 2004 GTO with ~80k for $11000. It was about 6 hours drive away from Wilmington, NC out in Lavonia, GA. My best friend drove from Spartanburg, SC to Wilmington, NC on Friday night after class. On Saturday we drove to his home in Spartanburg then on to Lavonia on Sunday. I had my bank check in hand, and was ready to buy this GTO.
My friend and I took the GTO out for a spin without the seller. The 2nd gear syncros were shot. We also crawled around under the car and found that the front and rear under trays were pretty well torn up as if it had run over a fence or something. Crap. I went back to the seller and made a much lower offer based on it not having 2nd gear. He said, "nope, somebody will buy it at that price." So we left. I got back to Spartanburg that evening. My friend and I, both college students, had to be in class the following morning, but I don't have a car. I'm now freaking a bit about how I'm going to get home. I could have borrowed a car from my friend's family, but how would I get it back to them? I could have rented a car but I was only 19. Cheap flight from GSP to ILM? Thankfully I found out my roommate's GF was in Raleigh and was willing to wait around for me to get there on a Greyhound. So I took a 5 hour Greyhound ride to Raleigh where she picked me up to take me 2 hours back to Wilmington.
I really wanted that car, and if it was in good condition I could see myself still owning it today. But oh well. That was a LONG weekend and my friend still points out the Lavonia exit whenever we drive by it.
In reply to slowbird :
Try buying a Chevy lol
buzzboy said:Mine was actually a failure to purchase.
I identify with this so much. I originally got in to E30s almost 15 years ago. You could still find nice E30 M3s for less than $20k.
So much regret I didn't pick one up.
ShawnG said:I owned a minivan once.
I got better.
Minivans are GREAT at doing what they do. I will die on this hill and take all of you with me.
In reply to Brett_Murphy (Agent of Chaos) :
I'm sure they're fantastic at what they do. I have no issues with their practicality.
They are the past-the-knee cargo shorts of the auto world.
They're the most useful dorkmobile ever invented.
In reply to ShawnG :
Now that my doors slide, I've concluded every vehicle should have sliding doors. Doors that swing open are stupid.
Aaron_King said:Everything worked out in the end, I got this almost 2 years ago and it is much nicer than the first one.
That's hot. Such a shame those were end game cars.
Japanese designers, take note: THAT is how you proportion and detail a car.
In reply to lnlogauge :
Until you have to get out in an emergency situation
buzzboy said:Mine was actually a failure to purchase.
I feel seen. Current regret is not purchasing at least one NA Miata when they were like 3k for a nice one.
I've sung my sad tale over and over. I've only been burned twice, but both in Michigan because while I am physically capable of seeing rust, it just does not compute about how bad it makes things.
In 2004 my 88 Volvo 750 wagon blew its head gasket died in Ft. Meyers, FL while visiting my mother. My ex & I were still together(she didn't work so money was always tight) & our daughter was only 3 at the time.
My mother offered to let us drive her truck back to IL, but it was her only transportation so I declined & instead decided to shop for a cheap car to get us back home. Of course I found a low-end Eurotrash shop near the sketchier parts of town & they had an 85 Audi CS 4000 Quattro. So obviously I bought it.
In hindsight the fact its battery needed replaced the next day should have been taken as an omen, because it delayed our departure by another day(and I was already out of vacation time for work), but I pressed on & we left for home the next morning.
We made it about 2-hours before the car developed a miss, lost power, and eventually died on the side of the road. I was able to get it restarted & made it to the next town, and eventually had to rent a truck & trailer from UHaul to get us home to IL. Of course that put us far enough behind that we had to stop & get a hotel overnight in TN.
So the whole ordeal ended up costing about $1500: $1k car(plus I left them the keys for the Volvo) + ~$300 UHaul + ~$100 hotel + ~$100 for the extra fuel that v10 used. Not to mention since I had no money I had to put it all on the credit card, which took a year or two to pay off. Oh, and I still didn't have a running car when I got back home.
If I'd known mom would be dead in 2-months & I'd be making another hurried trip back down between two hurricanes to retrieve her stuff - including the truck - I would have just driven it back to IL.
bonylad said:In reply to Floating Doc (Forum Supporter) :
Damn. A ralliart wagon? Thats a bit of a unicorn there.
A perfect example of how rarity doesn't always confer value.
Nonetheless, it's been reliable (there's that word again), and fun to drive for years. I even left home the Miata and did surprisingly well at an autocross recently.
The other mistake I made associated with this car was when I traded in the 95 accord wagon that I owned before it. Dealer gave me $1000, sold it for 3500. Stupid move on my part.
I've missed a bunch of cool cars that ended up greatly appreciating and instead bought a bunch of cars that depreciated quickly just to appreciate once I sell.
The only thing I did real bad was probably the 66 mustang. After looking at like 20 and seeing massive rust in weird places, I bought one that didn't have rust in those places but had the rust in all the normal places, and I didn't know how extensive it was making a much bigger project than anticipated, after about 6 months of ignoring it, I finally started working on it last week. I'll get there but I should have just bought a nicer one
In reply to z31maniac :
I wasn't pleased. As an interesting post script, about 6 months later I was talking to one of my car buddies, telling him the entire saga. I start to describe the guy and he stops me:
"Was his name XXyyxz?"
"Yeah, how did you know?"
"I work with him, he's a total douche canoe."
Made me giggle. Also taught me a lesson. If you're going to wrench on someone else's vehicle, always set expectations beforehand.
If the faux pas is "cars I didn't buy when I had the chance", I've got a litany of 'em...
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