What other online sources for used cars?

ebonyandivory said:

I share your Korean love but have you considered Focuseseseses? In New England, there’s a ton of Mk 1 & 2 for cheap. 

No more Fords for me. No Mopars. No German cars. I have a personal hatred of all things toyota and after 10 years slinging Honda parts I have no love there either. So.... that leaves me with RWD GM's and Korean cars. But I'm picky... no early Kias or really early hyundais and NO Daewookis.

John Welsh said:

I have added this Cleveland IAA car to my Watchlist.  It has not yet been assigned an auction week but I will now be notified when it goes up.  I can easily see it in person before the bidding.  

https://www.iaai.com/Vehicle?itemID=30828883&rowNumber=45&loadRecent=True 

Here is my suspicion from pics...

The actual grill took some impact.  This part with the emblem: 

If you look at the IAA pics the grill seems to have separated from the bumper cover in the area at the bottom of the grille/top of the lisence plate.  

Further then, the body shop was likely paid a couple hours of labor to take off the whole front bumper cover.  It generally looks like it has been intentionally taken off and that the bumper cover would go back on.    I don't see what looks like radiator damage or top core support damage. Reattaching the actual grill could be as easy a few zip ties.  A genuine replacement is probably cheap and some black painted mesh grill, hand fabricated could be cool too.  

 

I will guess that it might take $750-$1k all in to buy this from IAA.  That then still means you have to rebuild the title and continue to carry that branding.  

The one with engine trouble may represent a better challenge value.  

Sorry John, this got lost in the melee..... The upper portion of the grille on that car is also the upper radiator support cover. So once the hood closes the black part is all hidden. When it's open, the latch and radiator is covered. 

I think John's point is that there's a chance a shop pulled those pieces to figure out the damage, came up with a price... which totaled the car, and didn't bother bolting them back on.

the price to fix was probably based on NOS replacement parts and paint

whereas John frequently buys these up, and slaps the bumper back on, and drives.  you might consider some superglue... because concourse

I suspect the silver car needs nothing to repair, just like my Mercury Milan

In reply to John Welsh :

I think you're right on that. The down side is that car may not have AC and it for sure won't have cruise control. Looks like manual windows so if lightweight racecar is what you want, this one is the PERFECT starting point. 

is it hard to add cruise to these?

https://huntsville.craigslist.org/cto/d/meridianville-2008-hyundai-accent/6803031439.html

Thanks for the heads up.  What are the thoughts of this little daily beater?  Tiger Mom is thinking she wants something little and economical to commute in.

In reply to KyAllroad (Jeremy) :

DO a timing belt on that car and check the compliance bushings

sleepyhead said:

is it hard to add cruise to these?

Only option would be something aftermarket as far as I know. Different harnesses, made into the steering wheel all kinds of stupid crap. Luckily that gen still has a throttle cable. 

In reply to bobzilla :

Too bad something like the Atlas Throttle Lock for motorcycles couldn’t be added to the throttle linkage.

https://www.atlasthrottlelock.com/

Off on a tangent...

There is an "interesting" car coming up tomorrow at my local IAA...

2008 Suzuki SX4 Sedan  This is not the cool 4wd wagon but rather just a 2wd, fwd manual trans, crank window, total price leader stripper model.  

Seems its only issue is the front bumper cover is cracked on the passenger side.  Quickly searched aftermarket, black, unpainted version can be had for $250.  Not much out there in the JY world for this car.  I think this odd, bare bones car will sell ultra cheap.  State Farm give it a pre accident value of $3,020 but really who is going to buy this unknown and discontinued model.  

I did not get to the inspection day today for tomorrow's auction but I might throw in a blind, super cheap bid. 

Car & Driver actually said some nice things about the car back in 2008.  

Appleseed said:

Govdeals.com

There are non-police cars.

Can anybody bid? Are the cars decent ? 

In reply to John Welsh :

I liked them. They were actually built by Suzuki. I’d rock it if it had ac. 

Back on topic.... or something.... that $500 tib I can get coilovrrs, header, cat delete, catback and intake for just over $900. 

mr2s2000elise said:

Appleseed said:

Govdeals.com

There are non-police cars.

Can anybody bid? Are the cars decent ? 

You have to regester, but it looks open to all. Occasionally, there are fully equipped squad cars that are only sold to other municipalites, but that comes up rarely, and they are upfront about it. Some non-cop  cars look like meter maid and inspection vehicles, others are definite seizures. So are they good? That depends.

So I haven't even mentioned this to the finance manager yet. Probably should soon. I can get a pair of 2.7 heads for $70 at the local u-pull it. Heads can come off easily in car, gasket set is $50 from ebay. I really need to stop looking at this. I have a truck... I need to focus on that. 

yeah, get the truck running first

Well, it is. Still need to adjust the carb, set the idle and timing. Then get the hood back on and get the seats fabbed in. Then she's ready for the year. Mostly. I've got another $10-15k and 5 years of stuff for the truck. It ain't going to be done any time soon. 

On that Suzuki above...

I put in a blind max bid of $275 which all in would be $483 keeping with my goal of having less than $500 at risk.

I just watched it live, on-line sell for $325 -> $533 all in

I am still glad that I did not raise the bid.  It's likely a deal but as a flip car, who are you really going to sell it to?  No one buys manual trans and the few who do might never even look at this unknown model.  

The $483 was just the beginning.  Still then tax, title fees and inspection fees ups the investment by another $110-ish or $600-ish.  It then may need some re-investment or improvement of another $400.  That makes it $1k all in.  

Had I seen the car in person, I might have gone higher.  

OK, serial question. Say I bought an Elantra for $900, then I bought a Tiburon for $400, took the knuckles, brakes and suspension and front seats and swapped them from one car to the other then sold the Tib for $400. How does that go into the Gastropod accounting system? I ask because the Elantra has tiny brakes and an odd boltpattern for wheels and no options for decent pads. The tib has normal bolt pattern wheels, decent sized brakes and a real drivers seat. IT takes away all the things I dislike about the Elantra and gives me a nice daily 4-dr sedan that is completely different than all the others. 

I started checking out www.cargurus.com, they have a pretty decent searcher.  

bobzilla said:

OK, serial question. Say I bought an Elantra for $900, then I bought a Tiburon for $400, took the knuckles, brakes and suspension and front seats and swapped them from one car to the other then sold the Tib for $400. How does that go into the Gastropod accounting system?

It sounds like you have $700 and a free set of 250+TW tires left in your Gastropod budget, and an extra $400 in your pocket to pay for hotels & tacos

I thought the tires were to be included in the price for the GP class. I know for normal challenge, I could get that $400 back to budget and then have $1319 left to go.

The positives to this, the Elantra gets 17x7 wheels with the swap and real brakes over the 15x5.5 steelies it normally comes with so no need to purchase wheels. I found a header and intake for hte Beta in the Elantra for $100 and with hte Tib struts I can use a set of H&R springs for another $200 to make it handle. So that leaves $400 in cleaning it up and making it look nice. 

Gastro is only one way to play.  If it were me and for what you want to have after The Challenge, I would stay away from the Gastro-restrictions. 

https://grassrootsmotorsports.com/forum/grm/2019-gastropods-come-join-us/143978/page1/

True $2000 budget. We're not going to hit the recoup game hard. You spend money on it, you put it in the budget. This includes tires. Edit: normal challenge rules for tire costs. Four tires free in the budget. This was done to de-emphasize tire choice as much as possible and let us focus on the cars themselves. 
250TW and above for tires (EDIT: this was 300TW. Iy was changed to 250 to be more inclusive while still excluding the current crop of 200tw tires which was is it's intent). I want you to be able to sell the car to you niece at the end and have her be able to put 25k miles on them as she finishes high school. Only four tires for the event. 

There was some back and forth, so I decided to go back and look.  Emphasis added.

Just seeing this now. For Gastropods you'd be on the hook for the whole $900+$400 so $1300. You can recoup up to $200 but that can only be applied to maintenance items like belts and hoses and what not. Tires are out of the budget but limited to 250+tw.