When selling a car does something always have to go wrong!

Someone just drove off in the hot rod and I swear deep in my heart something is going to catch of fire.

It almost never happens but man do I feel like it every time I sell one. I drove the thing up to LA ~120 miles last month without a tick. My F150 had something like 70K miles it with nothing but maintenance and it chucked the EGR on the ride home though. Which puts me on edge.

Something about selling a car to someone with neck tattoo's puts me on edge as well. But cash is cash.

All vehicles break something right after being sold. I assume they liked their old owner and are going to punish the new one. Every vehicle I have ever bought has done this to me.

I daily drove a Samurai for about two years with nothing but oil changes... A guy bought it off me with lots of extra parts... Broke down once he was across the state line. He was able to fix it on the side of the road but man did I feel bad . Much worse than he did.

I felt like such a jerk When my 98 Jetta GLX developed a noise in the rear wheel bearing literally the day the new owner came to test drive it and I told him that it was sitting for awhile and it was honestly the first time I've heard it do that. He drove it all the way to St. Louis from WI before the wheel bearing exploded and he slept in the car overnight because he couldn't drive it any further and nobody was open to fix it. Oops! Said he was still happy with the car and liked it a lot though.

wearymicrobe wrote: Something about selling a car to someone with neck tattoo's puts me on edge as well. But cash is cash.

Stripper looking girlfriend contacts me to buy our well used and hated by me 1995 Lumina - we meet at the local grocery store and Mr. giant left side neck tattoo and I test drive and talk - then blondie stripper girlfriend and I do a test drive. We head over to Chase to deposit the cash and I proceed to walk the 1 mile home. Then I realize they had my title with my address so they could come over and kill me if they wanted to.

In the end giant neck tattoo guy was a really straight up guy to deal with and blondie ended texting me 1 month later telling me her family was so blessed and thankful that I gave them such a good deal on a decent car.

I was a high bidder on a sealed envelope truck auction from our local school district. 1985 Chevrolet 4x4 tool box bed that had a plow frame and setup. I proceed to put it in the Autotrader for an immediate flip to make a quick $1,000 profit.

150 phone calls later I realized that selling it to the first guy that came over with cash was a mistake as my price was too low. He buys it and shows me his cop badge because I didn't even have time to flip the title properly and I sensed a scam with him. We ended up going to the DMV and I signed the title over properly and sold it to him inside the DMV lobby.

He calls me later asking if I knew the front was all shakey when he drove it at highway speeds. I had no clue because I never drove it more than 5 miles all at 35mph.

Sorry about that.....

I flew from Philly to Atlanta to buy an ACR after lots of emailed pictures, discussion, etc. Seller met me in the airport and we go to the car. I fire it up and go to back out of the parking space, and the clutch goes straight to the floor the moment I put my foot on it. Broken cable. Must have been on its last fiber on the trip to the airport.

The radiator on the BMW you are buying will need to be replaced within 72 hours.

Duke wrote: I flew from Philly to Atlanta to buy an ACR after lots of emailed pictures, discussion, etc. Seller met me in the airport and we go to the car. I fire it up and go to back out of the parking space, and the clutch goes straight to the floor the moment I put my foot on it. Broken cable. Must have been on its last fiber on the trip to the airport.

heh.

bought a dump truck 200 miles from home. i saw it run/drive as it belonged to my buddy's dad. sent him cash, he sent me title and said it would be ready. get there, truck has not moved since i saw him park it 8 months earlier. flat tire, locked up caliper, he's not home. i walk to the corner store to see if anyone knows how to get a hold of him, and he's in there. we filled up the tire, fired it up, and at the end of his driveway the rear brake line blew. it was fine for 2 pumps, then boom brake fluid everywhere. vise gripped it off and hit the highway. alternator died 75 miles from home. kept driving. lights started dimming 20 miles from home, kept going. made it into the driveway, truck finally gave out from dead battery, radiator explodes and steam pours out from under the hood.

i sold a caprice to a guy. before he hit the end of my parents driveway one of the rear shock bolts snapped off. i saw the line from the shock dragging through the gravel.

so plenty of stuff goes wrong as soon as you buy or sell something.

The people I sold this to for $650 threatened to sue me. I mean a Michigan car with 230000 miles on it definitely isn't going to have some slow leaks(It didn't leak anything on the ground), completely shot suspension(I told them about the bad, loud, ball joint they of course found much more wrong with it) or any other typical old car problems.

I do my best to make sure my cars are 'ready to go' when I put them up for sale, even if they are tired or complete turds. There's just a part of me that wants people to feel like they met a good seller.

So when I sell my wife's A2 Jetta GLI 16v, I'm thinking it's going to be one of the easier ones because I've serviced it for the last 4 or 5 years and know it intimately. I'm just tired of it being a VW and dropping stupid little plastic parts onto the road (like the shifter assembly). Nice young guy and his girlfriend show up, drive, and decide to buy. They leave and I feel good about the sale.

They call less than an hour later, telling me it's in a parking lot and has no oil pressure.

Let me tell you, convincing the local notary to just give me back the title so I could cancel the sale was a difficult and worrisome experience. I'm pretty sure the seller believed I intentionally sold him a turd, but I took it back and refunded his money. Pulled the pan, cleaned the oil pump screen which had some hard crud partially blocking it and it seemed fine afterward. Still have no idea why that day the thing decided to act up. Wound up selling it to another young guy and never heard another word about it.

I still hate VWs.

I sold a Chev Blazer a few years ago and the radio crapped out before the young lady got out of our subdivision.It had never acted up before that. I gave her back $120 and told her what model radio to get at Best Buy.

some of you are too nice and worry too much about unimportant things... i sell cars "as is".. if something breaks after i have the cash and they have the title, it's not my problem. i also use the same philosophy when buying- if something breaks right after i buy a car, it's officially my problem.

i like having a half-kidding/half-serious conversation with people while we're singing the title over, that if the car breaks in half on their way home, they own the front half and the back half.