My old car got killed - a negative to social media

NickD said:

Professor_Brap (Forum Supporter) said:

The worst is when they find you and ask all kinds of dumb questions. 

I sold a set of FM/VMAXX coilovers off my Miata back in March and the guy I sold to them pesters me with questions at least once a month via social media. The most recent was "Do you have the original invoice? Because I think some of these are now blown and FM does free rebuilds for the original owner, so I thought I could remove them and have you send them back and get them rebuilt for me for free." Dude, I bought them 6 years ago, no freaking way in hell do I still have the original purchase receipt. 

Also, the V-Maxx is not rebuildable and even if they were we wouldn't offer free rebuilds for the original owner. ;) They're not Konis with a lifetime warranty.

I'm still friends with a couple of exes on social media. Just because we're not together doesn't mean we're enemies. I like seeing them happy.

I don't sell a lot of cars, so I never see what happens to my old ones :) It's one of the things preventing my wife from selling her Grand Cherokee - it's distinctive enough and our town is small enough that there is a 97% chance she will see her creampuff driving by as a battered off-road beater within a year.

Keith Tanner said:

NickD said:

Professor_Brap (Forum Supporter) said:

The worst is when they find you and ask all kinds of dumb questions. 

I sold a set of FM/VMAXX coilovers off my Miata back in March and the guy I sold to them pesters me with questions at least once a month via social media. The most recent was "Do you have the original invoice? Because I think some of these are now blown and FM does free rebuilds for the original owner, so I thought I could remove them and have you send them back and get them rebuilt for me for free." Dude, I bought them 6 years ago, no freaking way in hell do I still have the original purchase receipt. 

Also, the V-Maxx is not rebuildable and even if they were we wouldn't offer free rebuilds for the original owner. ;) They're not Konis with a lifetime warranty.

Good, now I can tell him that instead of continuing to blow him off. I wasn't comfortable with his plan to begin with, just because it felt fraudulent.

I sold my SVT Focus to a member here. He then sold it to another guy who posts on the Focus SVT Facebook group. New owner put up a post about a repair that I did on the car in my driveway on my back in winter (reattached an abs sensor wire that I never properly fixed). I had a chuckle and said yep sorry that was me. He then goes on to be a royal jerk and began lecturing me. Another time he finds something else with the car he doesn't like and posts a picture and calls the PO an shiny happy person. I'll probably unfollow that group when I remember. This was a car he bought for $500 and had multiple owners before I had it. 

Scotty Con Queso said:

I sold my SVT Focus to a member here. He then sold it to another guy who posts on the Focus SVT Facebook group. New owner put up a post about a repair that I did on the car in my driveway on my back in winter (reattached an abs sensor wire that I never properly fixed). I had a chuckle and said yep sorry that was me. He then goes on to be a royal jerk and began lecturing me. Another time he finds something else with the car he doesn't like and posts a picture and calls the PO an shiny happy person. I'll probably unfollow that group when I remember. This was a car he bought for $500 and had multiple owners before I had it. 

Focus/svt groups are the worst in general. 

Not social media, but maybe even worse.  Sold the car in my profile pic to a young(ish) kid.  Not a teenager, mind you.  He had to bring his mom because he couldn't drive a stick.  (No judgment, we all started somewhere)  I actually tried to talk him out of buying the car.  It was mostly prepped as an STX autocross car.  Just seemed a bit much for a young driver.  He kept fussing at me until finally I told him I'd sell him the car on the condition that he remove or at least soften the rear sway bar since it made the car surprisingly easy to rotate for a front-driver.  Second, I told him to put the winter tires/wheels on it and not to put the sticker tires (which, admittedly, were mounted on some sweet bronze NISMOs) until at least late April or May.  Finally, he was supposed to call me in the spring and I promised to take him autocrossing and pay his first entry fee.  He enthusiastically agreed and (his mom) drove off in the car. 

Fast forward a few months.  I get an email . . . from his mom.  "Jr. was showing off for his friend, the car spun out and hit a tree.  It's totalled."  Here's the part that gets me:  "Is there anything you can do to help him out with the ticket? (I'm an assistant prosecutor)  He got cited for careless driving."  Ummmmmm . . . no.  Let me guess, he never soften/removed the sway bar and he was running the car on the summer tires despite the fact that it's still to cold for them?  "Could be I'm not sure, but he can't get the points on his license."  Well, better get a good lawyer then.  BTW, if he wants to get a little bit of his money back, I can give him a list of parts that can be easily removed with hand tools and sold for decent money.  No reply.

RIP Spec V

EDIT for post-script: Sadly, an hour after I sold it, I got a call asking if I still had it.  Caller was an older/more mature guy who wanted to get into autocross.  Given our ensuing conversation, I'd have sold it to him without hesitation. 

My son gets his license in December. I figure my Ralliart wagon won't last long.

I had this happen with my e28.  Under a year of switching hands it went from:

To the owner shooting me an email with a bunch of photos I probably could have done without seeing...

His son put it through some trees and deep into the woods.  Thankfully he was unharmed - the e28 though, RIP.

In reply to kevin adolf :

Why the berkeley would someone send you those pictures?  What's wrong with people?

In reply to Mr_Asa :

I don't know.  I owned the car for 11yrs, they owned it 11 months. :( 

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to kevin adolf :

Why the berkeley would someone send you those pictures?  What's wrong with people?

I was once sent a picture of a C130 that had a runway incident in the Middle East.  When I saw the tail number I realized it was one that I had worked on in AFSOC.  I actually shed a tear.

m4ff3w said:

My first X1/9 showed up @ PnP less than a year and a half after I bought it.  The car was megasquirted and ran great.  The person I sold it to destoyed the clutch, let it sit under a tree for a year, and then scrapped it.

I ended up going and buying the wheels/tires and getting the megasquirt off of it for X1/9 2.0

quoted for long-roof Nova content

Other than my Austin Healey 100-4, which emigrated to Austria after a subsequent owner's restoration, my cars get parted out. Usually by me, but my Elva Courier and Turner 950 went elsewhere first. The Lola 324 may have survived. Aircooled FSV, so I do not want it back!

I've bought and sold a bunch of cars with various outcomes, most of them vaguely positive. 

The one that sticks out right now is my wife's MK4 Jetta. I sold it cheap to a kid that gave me bad vibes, just didn't like him. But, I try to keep the herd thin so it had to go. Well, turns out he must have re-sold it immediately and I still see it once a week on my commute home from work. I always cheer when I see it because it's still serving it's duty, and dingus doesn't own it (although I'm sure he flipped it and made some money, whatever).  I really loved that car, if it was a stick I probably would have kept it, although if it was we wouldn't have bought it in the first place. 

I'm pretty sentimental about my cars, but ironically sell them cheap because I don't like selling them so I want the pain to be over quickly. 

I also teared up when I donated my Lincoln Town Car last summer. That one was tough because I knew it wouldn't be loved and it had served me so well. 

Selling a car is your first mistake.

Stampie (FS) said:

Mr_Asa said:

In reply to kevin adolf :

Why the berkeley would someone send you those pictures?  What's wrong with people?

I was once sent a picture of a C130 that had a runway incident in the Middle East.  When I saw the tail number I realized it was one that I had worked on in AFSOC.  I actually shed a tear.

E36 M3, I might have those pictures somewhere.  Pictures of an AFSOC C130 that had a runway accident, at least.

Indy "Nub" Guy said:

In reply to glueguy (Forum Supporter) :

Another negative about social media is you get to see your ex-girlfriends get "clobbered" too.

Reason # 3,649 why I'm not on social media.

I'm not on social media at all. Except here. But isn't this a part of social media? Oh well. 

Never felt bad about it. 

My first car, the Fox Wagon, I sent to a junkyard. I actually visited it occasionally until the whole yard was cleared and closed.

My 2nd car at 18, a Dodge Shadow, I ran into the ground, and the next owner (a 16 yr old) ran it further into the ground. 

My 240SX got turned into a drift car. 

The worst was the shady guy who I sold my Tacoma too. He stole my plate (i forgot to remove it) and when I asked for it back he badgered me about all the problem I told him about up front. I think he was trying to exceed the legal limit for car sales but also pissed that the truck wasn't worth the $5,000 he thought it was (I sold it for $3000) and when he did tallied up the repairs he made he lost money on it.

Exes - haven't regretted any of them, either. Some were kept well maintained, others show their age, but none have been restored or modified, lol. 

In reply to Mr_Asa :

Tail number 1212 iirc.

In reply to Stampie (FS) :

I'll have to dig them up again.  I wonder which external HD I have them on

For anyone curious, I sent the photos to Stampie and they were the same pics.

Irks me that 4 of my previous race cars are now garage queens.  Such a waste.

Sold my 89 mustang coupe to a kid in a local auto body program. Told his grandpa when he picked it up that the car needed brake work. Called his mom 2 weeks later to let them know I was coming too Lima and had the extra door panels for the car. She told me not too bother he had slid the front under a semi.

a few years before that I sold my 81 marquis 2 door to a guy for a decent amount of money. Rust free, 3.73 gears, IHC done on the engine. That summer I was at a demo derby and got too watch it get smashed. I thought I had priced it out of derby guy money but it turns out rust free and 2 door makes for a fantastic mod class car and they are worth more. 

Patrick (Forum Supporter) said:

Aren't message boards just OG social media?

That would be the Usenet.

When I was young, I built a Toyota Corolla by combining 3 cars together.  This was long before Social Media.
 

It had iffy brakes when I sold it. I had worked on them, and the truth is, I didn't know what I was doing. 

2 days after I sold the car I saw it sitting in a local gas station. It had been totaled, in a major front end collision. The engine was pushed into the passenger compartment. The windshield was badly smashed and bloody. It looked like someone had bodily hit it from the inside. It didn't look like a wreck someone could have survived.

I'll never know if it was the brakes.

my first car, a 1973 Superbeetle with a type 4 engine was one of the few cars I ever sold.  I didn't want it going to somebody my age (18) because I knew the car was blood thirsty and would try to kill the owner.  The older guy I sold it to had a beetle already, so I had good vibes from him.  He gave it to his nephew who had just started driving, a month latter the rear was flattened as it spun in a corner and went engine first into a tree.