16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/4/13 3:51 p.m.

It's been converted to a 5 speed and rear wheel drive! For only $900! I wonder what kind of rear axle they used and what transmission they used to swap out the 4 speed FWD trans?

http://evansville.craigslist.org/pts/3712034995.html

Or maybe the person is just retarded.

JohnRW1621
JohnRW1621 PowerDork
4/4/13 4:00 p.m.

The statement of rwd may be because the engine sits north/south like a typical rwd car.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/4/13 4:03 p.m.

Yeah, I kind of figured that. That's still pretty dumb though.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/4/13 4:11 p.m.

Oh, and a friend just sent him/her a text asking for a pic, and judging from the pic the car is actually a '91-'93 Fox. How do you go about trying to sell a car and literally know nearly nothing about it? I'm kind of surprised that he knew it was a VW at this point. At least the '91-'93 Fox was available with a 4 speed or a 5 speed, so he might have been right about that one after all (although it doesn't look like a wolfsburg edition in the pisc, so he's probably still wrong).

neckromacr
neckromacr Reader
4/4/13 9:11 p.m.

If he knew anything, he'd know it's worth more in parts than a whole car. Every Fox is like that.

ValuePack
ValuePack SuperDork
4/4/13 9:24 p.m.

EDIT: I'm dumb, didn't notice that pic isn't from the ad.

The Fox pictured above is pre '91, later cars all had halogens, etc etc

Random Fox story:

A recent coworker had a fairly clean '93. Said it got fantastic mileage but was the slowest thing he'd ever driven. I popped the hood and found enough slack in the throttle cable that the secondary in the throttle body never opened. I'd estimate it made about 30hp at "WOT" like that. Sure was fun to drive afterward!

N Sperlo
N Sperlo UltimaDork
4/4/13 9:59 p.m.
16vCorey wrote: How do you go about trying to sell a car and literally know nearly nothing about it?

You say this after posting a link from CG? I thought we knew you better than that, Cory.

SyntheticBlinkerFluid
SyntheticBlinkerFluid UberDork
4/4/13 10:10 p.m.

My ex's dad had a '91(?) Wolfsburg 4-door. Sure it was nothing fancy, but it was still a descent car. He bought it used in 2002 and had it for another 10 years before it finally fell apart.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/5/13 8:26 a.m.
N Sperlo wrote:
16vCorey wrote: How do you go about trying to sell a car and literally know nearly nothing about it?
You say this after posting a link from CG? I thought we knew you better than that, Cory.

No kidding. And I work in auto parts, so I deal with people that have no idea what they drive on a near daily basis, but somehow that kind of ignorance takes me by surprise every time.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/5/13 8:50 a.m.
SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: My ex's dad had a '91(?) Wolfsburg 4-door. Sure it was nothing fancy, but it was still a descent car. He bought it used in 2002 and had it for another 10 years before it finally fell apart.

They're definitely no-frills transportation, but they're seriously hard to kill! I had an '87 wagon that I got from my mom (for the sole purpose of the BABE rally) after she finally replaced it. It had been wrecked two or three times, had rust holes in the floor, 300k miles, and never let us down. After the BABE it went on to compete in three demolition derbies, and finally threw a rod. That didn't even kill it, I drove it off the trailer running on three cylinders. It eventually met the crusher.

nocones
nocones GRM+ Memberand Dork
4/5/13 8:56 a.m.

I had a Wolfsburg 4 door for a while. Loved that little car. Was quite fun to drive and never really gave me any problems in my ownership wich spanned from 120K to 200K miles. Sold it to a Freind to sold to to a Freind and my understanding is it is still rolling strong at 250K+ miles. One strange thing is when you turn the wheel far enough at parking lot speeds that it just turns sharper on it's own and will never "unwind" the steering.

pres589
pres589 SuperDork
4/5/13 9:24 a.m.

The wagon version looks super-useful as a junk hauler / DD, is that accurate? I kind of want to like these cars although I rarely see them out anymore. Are they reliable in a Honda sense, reliable for a VW, or not that reliable?

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/5/13 9:49 a.m.
pres589 wrote: The wagon version looks super-useful as a junk hauler / DD, is that accurate? I kind of want to like these cars although I rarely see them out anymore. Are they reliable in a Honda sense, reliable for a VW, or not that reliable?

I'd say that's very accurate. That's what my mom used it for until she got a REALLY nice '90 Subaru Loyale wagon (which is actually parked next to the fox in the first pic) to replace it. I'd say they're slightly better than VW reliable. You can't kill the engine or trans. They're non-interference engines with a north-south configuration and nothing in front of it, so even if the timing belt breaks it takes about 30 minutes to get you back on the road. The original clutch lasted over 200k miles, and that's with a part time teen age driver. There will be plenty of little piddly stuff that will break, but if you're getting it as a beater/junk hauler, none of that will really matter.

pres589
pres589 SuperDork
4/5/13 9:53 a.m.

In reply to 16vCorey:

Piddly like "the factory radio is unreliable" or "hope you like pulling door panels if you want windows that go up and down"? What's the MPG like with a 5 speed? The engine bay did look like a great place to do business.

I don't want something horrible to spend time in, so "beater" isn't exactly what I'm thinking here, but if I need to make a run to the hardware store or bring home some other large chunk of something, these look like a great compromise package.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/5/13 10:06 a.m.

Piddly like some of the door moldings will probably fall off, the interior plastics will break, the factory radio does totally suck. But as old as they are all that stuff has probably already happened to all of them, so if you look at one you'll probably see it. In the 15 years and 150k miles that my mom had hers, I think the only thing that ever left her stranded was a dead battery and a drive axle, and the only "piddly" problem that I had to fix that was semi-crucial was the headlight switch. The drive axles are so easy to change on them I swapped it on the side of the road, and it probably took about as long as swapping the battery did. The broken headlight switch operated the headlights, but the interior light dimmer was messed up, so sometimes you'd have to hit it to make the gauge illumination to come back on. Other than that is was all pretty much normal maintenance.

pres589
pres589 SuperDork
4/5/13 10:53 a.m.

In reply to 16vCorey:

Understood. Now I have another car to watch for on local CL.

mattmacklind
mattmacklind UltimaDork
4/5/13 12:02 p.m.

Love that rear side glass on the wagons!

ValuePack
ValuePack SuperDork
4/5/13 12:18 p.m.
16vCorey wrote:

I had forgotten about this. Most awesome thing I've seen all day!

cwh
cwh PowerDork
4/5/13 3:30 p.m.

Interesting tires.

16vCorey
16vCorey PowerDork
4/5/13 4:59 p.m.

Dirt bike tires on Mitsu Lancer donut spares FTW!

Streetwiseguy
Streetwiseguy UltraDork
4/5/13 9:06 p.m.
SyntheticBlinkerFluid wrote: My ex's dad had a '91(?) Wolfsburg 4-door. Sure it was nothing fancy, but it was still a descent car. He bought it used in 2002 and had it for another 10 years before it finally fell apart.

A descent into hell, I should imagine.

bearmtnmartin
bearmtnmartin GRM+ Memberand HalfDork
4/5/13 10:13 p.m.

The car in my gif punting me off the track is a volkswagon fox.

Just saying.....

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