Technical When you have the money in your pocket

Fun to read others experience and know there is comfort on the bus. Fairly rare Morris Minor van.
Bought off eBay. Three pages epitaph of the supreme virtues. Shipped coast to coast. 18 of the 15 specifics asked did not exist. Armor Alled tires with tits outa date by 20 years, no horns, no windshield wiper motor, no glove box doors, 15 year old battery, on and on. WTF.
Must have been pro at photoshop, certainly bait and switch, and excellent at spewing in writing vomit.
I raised so much fucking hell he turned answering the phone / emails over to his son?
Then silence. Uh oh. Did he stroke?
I got a check for new tires and a battery.....go figure. (it didn't bounce).

Sent from my XT1710-02 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I'm almost positive I know who this guy was. He went to every swap meet, we used to refer to him as "grouchy guy". I forget his real name. I got the tour through his place once, he sold me a couple things but from what I've heard I was kinda the exception, most of his stuff was not for sale, but he loved to show it off, and he'd lure you there by telling you he had tons of shit for sale and that you just had to see it. If you started talking to him, he didn't want to let you go. He died a few years ago, if it's the guy who I think it is.

 

Figured he was known around the car scene.

 

Spot on. I found the Comet coming back from another long distance trip to Germany, this time somewhere near Dusseldorf where I had a look at a 64 Fairlane. The Fairlane had a very good body but wrong transmission (auto), engine (260) plus the power steering box was shot and the guy wanted too much for it. On the way back I had a quick look on the internet and saw the Comet advertised at a place a couple of miles from the border up from Salzburg. The next week I went there, saw the car and bought it...

 

Hello,
The title depicts the twenty something era, not the teenage era for us. But, with that mode in play, it certainly helped to have that extra cash, saved or earned. In our second 1940 Ford Sedan Delivery, we had plenty of things to take care of to get the sedan delivery road ready. My wife would not drive it until it was reliable enough to start in one click and run/handle well.


There were several items that needed replacing and this time, there was enough money to get a N.O.S. part, not a second hand part. But, the reliability had to be number 1, if my wife was going to be in the sedan delivery or even drive it daily. So, nightly work in the garage and searching for specific parts to make it look as good as it ran.

The hardest part was the front end handling. It just did not handle very well. (brakes, wheels, balance, alignment, etc.) So, I had a friend that was an expert front end mechanic look at it. We gave him total control to make it drive as well as it looked.

Finally, it was ready, including the similar look that I originally had from my first 40 Ford Sedan Delivery I owned in high school. Now, it handled as well as it looked, started with one click, and had power to go anywhere we desired in So Cal. It was so reliable that my wife drove it by herself many times, as it had her favorite power and A/C.

Jnaki
The feeling of money being available and secure was something else. After so many years of not purchasing stuff for my high school sedan delivery, it was not an open spending market. But, at least, we looked and bought what we needed for a cool looking, sounding, and driving sedan delivery. Since then, my wife started driving it more often.

We have been together for many years and she has come to rely on me for our daily drivers. Since the years of fiddling around with all of our old cars and daily drivers, she has the feeling of security in driving anywhere, in any weather condition…Yes…

Note: Just the other day, in order to appease the local fire marshal’s inspection approval, we had our contractor friend install two fire code approved, garage attic, drop down door/ladders. The odd thing my wife mentioned after the work got started was that the contractor never mentioned the price. My wife was happy in the background, that the money was available. She did not care what the cost was, we needed those two drop down doors to be fire rated approval ready. Insurance inspections come at the most odd times and now, it was safe and secure.


Her outlook was/is: If it is there, “What else are we doing with our lives?” We have already planned for our granddaughter’s future endeavors. (as well as our son) So, that is a relief, now, on with the living part of our lives.

 

"It's restorable." So is the Titanic...

 

Do these stories sound familiar?
If you are a car guy, you've experienced very similar adventures in the search for your next car/project.
It is a huge part of this hobby we all have in common.
I try not to hear what I want to hear, but rather to be skeptical of sellers descriptions with the knowledge that more times than not, they are exaggerating.
This is why I "talk" to the seller over the phone, rather than text..I get a sense of the persons character thru an actual conversation with pointed questions of my choosing, not the sellers rhetoric he's told so many times that he's actually starting to believe it himself.

 

^ I don’t think it makes much of a difference. The guy could be a good actor as well as a writer of fiction. I bet most of those stories were before cell phones even existed.

 

I sometimes wonder when i look at a misrepresented car if the seller thinks i'm blind or thinks i'm stupid.

 

Agreed, however my background is in sales (too many years) experience, so my personal experience has given me a good "read"/"feel" by first hand conversations either in person, or on the phone..it has never let me down.

 

Wicarnut’s statement about ‘pictures don’t lie’ actually not being a true statement should be taken for gospel. Pictures actually DO lie - especially when the person taking the pictures is a liar!

 

I was looking for a car for months. I was checking the usual For sale ads 2-3 times a day so I could be one of the first callers if I found something I liked. Had my budget in mind and had the cash.
As luck would have it, 2 cars that fit my requirements came up at the same time. They were aways away, the furthest being about 2.5 hours (one way) away and the other about 1.5 hours away. But they were pretty much in a straight line from my house.
I called the furthest one first as it was slightly more to my liking. I talked to the guy and we had a good conversation. He volunteered the information that I was the first caller and I said that's great and made a passing reference about getting "First Dibs" and we chuckled about it. I verified his asking price and simply said it sounded reasonable for the car represented, careful not to even hint and any kind of negotiation as I believe that's rude without physically seeing the car. We made arrangements for me to see the car the following afternoon. I asked him to text me his address (easier to click to navigation from text on my phone) and I told him I would text him when I was an hour away. he said great and looked forward to showing me the car the next day.
Next I called the about the car that was closer but slightly less desirable. Basically the exact same conversation. I was the first caller, etc. I made arrangements to look at the car in the early evening. I figured I would look at the first and if it was totally misrepresented I could look at the other on the way home.
I head to the first car and, as promised, I send the guy a text letting him know I am about an hour away... no response
When I am about 30 min away I send another text... no response
At 15 min out and still no response I call... it goes to voice mail and I leave a message that I was almost there.
I pull up and its a narrow street with no on-street parking and there is a gate closed on the drive to his house.
I circle the block while trying to call him. Still no answer, so I find a place to park and consider my options...
I decide to give him one more text and one more phone call and then I was heading out.
I send a text saying I was sitting in the parking lot at the gas station a block or two away and what was going on, I just drove 2.5 hours to look at his car.
I finally get a text back. Him: "Sorry man, I sold the car last night and I am out with the family at the amusement park."
Me: WTF!!!!! Really?
Him: yeah man, Sorry.
Me: Sorry?!?!? You let me drive 2.5 hours for nothing? You're a F'ing douchebag POS. I hope you fall off a f'ing roller coaster.

So I sit there in the parking lot and fume and devise all kinds of vengeful shit I could go do at his house...
Eventually I calm myself down and tell myself it wasn't meant to be and that car would have probably tried to kill me in someway and I am better off not buying it.
I get my emotions in check and call the second guy and ask if I can come over earlier as I found myself ahead of schedule. He says sure come on over. Great, I will see you about an hour. he warns me the house of off the beaten path a bit with a long driveway.
The GPS leads me through some nice country scenery and I am feeling better about the day and the prospect of looking at a car that might be mine in a couple of hours.
The GPS tells me I have arrived and shows a location dot back off the road about a 1/4 mile, but the only thing around is woods and fields. I call the guy and he tells me to drive down the road a bit further and I will see a gravel covered drain pipe on the right side that is the turn in for his drive way.
I make the turn in and no sooner does the truck and trailer clear the road and I am off the gravel onto what can only be described as a logging road... rutted, muddy, sloppy, tree crowded, I switch the truck to 4 hi as the traction light is pretty much constantly lit and I am really hoping there is a place to turn the trailer around at his house... then I see the spray of mud flying up passed the window as I slip through a particularly deep puddle (or sippy hole if you watch swamp racing) and I cringe knowing all the cleaning and detailing I did 3 days ago will need to be redone again tomorrow
I finally bounce/slide to a stop in front of his garage/barn/shed/lean-to combo and can see the front of the car inside the open overhead door and my mind makes note of the dirt floor...and I should have just turned around right then, without getting out of the truck.
But I had to look, I was 4 hours into this car adventure and by god I was actually going to look at a car today.
I hop out as he is coming around the side of the house. We do introductions and he leads me to the car.
Lets just say, he posted pictures of the best parts of the car from camera angles that didn't show the all the rest of the car that totally sucked... I start the "negotiations" early by saying it wasn't quiet what I expected based on the pictures I saw. His asking price was at the low end of "finished" car range... and this car was "finished" in the sense that all the parts required to classify it as a car were present and pretty much attached to the car.
I asked him if I could hear it run and if he would pull it out into the sun so I could have better look at it.
Grinding noise on start up
Uncorked headers hiding what sounded like a ticking noise
Grind and lurch into first gear... bad trans? clutch alignment/adjustment?
Shaking and lurching forward motion... clutch problem? Poor driving technique? both?
The smell that followed the car out of the garage suggested carb issue
No straight body panels
Piss poor door gaps
I ask him if he has the header plugs... he puts them in and that ticking noise gets much more noticeable and worse.
At this point its all I can do to not go off... I remind myself that this guy has nothing to do with the last guy.
I say "no thank you" through gritted teeth and turn the truck and trailer around and bounce and splash my way out of there.
I get back to the main road and look for a carwash that I can knock the chunks of mud off with and imagine I am washing away the whole day with that mud...
I got myself into a pretty good mood driving home and when the wife called to check and see how it was going we were able to laugh about it.
"No one enjoys adventures when they are happening" has long been our phrase to each other to playfully try and bring the other out of a funk about some event that was happening to us and, as a reminder that we would probably be laughing about this at some point in the future...
So by the time I got home I was feeling pretty good, all things considered...
And then my text goes off.
It seems roller coaster boy's deal fell through.
Him: Hey, that guy backed out of the deal, are you still interested?
Me: {laying $23,000 cash fanned out on the seat of my truck and taking a picture} Nope.
Chappy

 

I've had a couple.

In 2003, I won an internet auction for a really nice '61 Falcon. Per the ad and the owner, this car was perfect. No rust in the floor, solid trunk, runs great. Just needed hood hinges (don't know why they were missing). BTW, this car is in Oklahoma City, I am in Northeastern IA.

I grab the money, score a set of hood hinges because, why not?, and haul a trailer 11 hours 1 way to find a '61 Falcon that runs like shit, has no trunk floor, has a rotten floor that allowed the bench seat to fall thru.

Turned around and went home.

I took my Dad. He never missed an opportunity to give me grief about it. "It's bonding" I said. He woudl reply, "I am gonna bond your face to the windshield."

Ahh, I miss those days.

 

Dreamers, truth stretchers can be on both ends. Some of the best wanted my son’s 68 Charger project. A guy had the money in hand but wanted me to meet him at a US/Mexico border crossing(I live in MD). A guy begged me to take payments or some kind of trade. Five minutes later i get a call from the guy’s grandfather begging me not to sell it to him. Seems he was recently married and a father to be with no job. The one that pissed me off was the guy that spent an hour questioning me about the car on the phone and then did not show up for the appointment. He did call a few days later and apologized with a very dramatic gut wrenching excuse. Then the SOB did it to me again. I was pissed at the guy in the mirror for that one. Didn’t talk to myself for a month.

 

I've come to the conclusion that pretty much everyone's work is trash and the people's who's isn't, built cars I can't afford.

 

Thats kind of how I found my current O/T 68 C10 project. Pictures were terrible and looked like it was full of rust, but it was super close to home so decided to look at it. Truck had zero rust, had a brand new motor, shocks, lowering springs, ball joints, etc. Family dumped a bunch of money into the truck for their kid to drive and he didnt want some old chevy pickup, wanted a little import car. His loss was my gain, lol.

 

Took a 3 1/2 hour ride with a trailer to checkout a fellow H.A.M.B er for sale machine that was misrepresented even though I asked specific questions about the rust I saw in the pictures.

Yes folks they are here also !

Oldmics

 

Hadn't been to a car show in yrs,my buddy got me to go to one @ Patriots Stadium in spring. A guy there had a nice blue 34 Plymouth coupe,he was trying to sell for a dead buddys wife.He wanted 47K,my buddy offered 40K,guy got all insulted,and mouthy said you tire kickers can come back when you save up the rest.Joke was buddy had 50K in cash in his pu truck to buy it,but the guys meltdown stopped the deal.Car was still for sale come fall.

 

I'm beginning to see that not often having the money in my pocket may have helped me to avoid some of the pitfalls you guys have experienced.
LOL
But not all of them.
I know for a fact that time and effort expended remorse isn't quite as bad as buyer's remorse.
As soon as I hit the gravel roads, that poor old car body seems like it wanted to bounce off the frame.
In fact, that's kinda what it was doing. LOL

Sent from my VS835 using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

I think every car guy alive has been on the wrong end of one of these wild goose chases. Here's a couple of mine.

I met a guy through a buddy of mine who always talked about all the cars and motorcycles he had and how they were all stored at different locations. It had gotten to the point that he just seemed like a bullshitter but we both had lowrider trucks and had struck up a bit of a friendship so I wanted to believe. (I found out later that he did actually have all the cars he told us about, it's just that most of them were rusted to death garbage) So I'm talking to him one day and he mentions that he has a red/red 1964 Corvette coupe, 327 & 4-speed that he wants to get rid of. I ask what kind of shape is it in and how much? He says the car is really nice and he needs $10,000 for it. I give him my best poker face and we set up a time the following Saturday to meet at a rental house he owns which is where the car is stored at. I run home and tell the wife I don't want to argue about it, I'm buying this Vette on Saturday it's game on.

Early Saturday morning I'm outside the rental house address he gave me which has a tall wooden fence around it and a locked gate. Meetup time comes and goes. Multiple calls go directly to his voicemail. Now it's a fking quest. I gotta get into this yard to verify it even exists. Climb the fence and yes, there's a 64 Vette sitting there. Sunk to the frame in mud with 4 flat tires. I guess it was red. There's little bits of crazed red paint here and there that hadn't yet fallen off. The rear part of the frame has holes you can fit your fist into. I'd known about birdcage issues in these cars but had never seen this before. The metal inside the A pillars had rusted so much that it had split them open along with areas around the door openings. Total loss.

One more. Years back I had the hots for a 63 Catalina when a buddy tells me he know this older guy who has this really nice one right in town he'd sell. White hardtop/blue gut. Even though it's pouring rain I tell him lets go over and look at it right now. Body looks nice, interior decent. bend down to look underneath and big pieces of frame are rotted away. The seller sees the look on my face and says "Y'know, these early Cat bodies will bolt directly onto a late model Cadillac Sedan de Ville frame". Needless to say, didn't buy that one either.

The thing is, ya gotta look at the duds to find the good ones so it's hard to stay mad.

 

Yeah, I drove there in '99 I think to 'buy' a 41 Olds fastback. The pix and description all looked great. Had it sitting in the driveway with someone in the drivers seat with his arm out the window. My brother and I drove 16 hours straight through, and found the place. He still had it, sitting against the back fence with flat tires, broken grill, missing pieces and no driver door window. Must've been sitting there for 10 years.

 

A friend was looking for a car, a DD.. He found a '57 Chevy that fit his wants/price. So I went to look at it with him.. I was surprised we were looking at a 4dr. Friend says to the old guy selling the car that the ad said 2dr? The guy points to the driver's side of the car. Don't know if he was serious or not, we left.

 

About 3 years ago, there was a 55 Chrysler Newport 2dr hardtop for sale about 1.5 hrs away. The body looked pretty nice. It's not that I REALLY wanted that particular car but because it looked pretty nice and could be an easy on the road car I decided to go look. Turns out it wasn't near as nice as the pictures showed (a fair bit of hidden body filler), so I didn't buy it. I did however buy 5 other vehicles from him.

 

Several years ago on the auction site was a 57 Chevy Handyman Wagon for sale for 12K. Supposedly had new paint, and new 383 motor. The owner wanted $500 to deliver it as the wagon was about 3.5 hours away. The pictures looked OK and I thought I just might buy it sight unseen as for 12K as I didn't think I could get hurt too much. Thankfully, I came to my senses and decided to go and look at it. When I got to the guys house the car was in the garage. Had it been outside I would have kept on going. What a POS. It rougher then a night in jail. It had fresh paint all right but it was over all kinds of dents and rust. No paint is better then bad paint. Buying that wagon would have been the worst mistake I'd ever make. Since then I've told myself I will never ever drive any distance to look at a car. If I can't look at a car locally or at a show I'm attending, I don't need it. I've also read too many accounts of buyers of sight unseen cars being screwed by unsrupulous sellers.

 

Guy about 2.5 hours from me on mountain roads, advertised having 300+ cars for sale. Parents come out for a weekend. We make a plan to go look. Get there with $$ ready. Everything was for sale, county cracking down on his old cars, needed to clean up. had some pretty decent stuff, strung out, no ryhme or reason to placement. Damned near every car we were interested in was his brothers, the rest werent for sale.

Many times been on these trips, they are all a little different, but all a lot the same

 

Love it. Think I will try that , not talking to myself for a month .

 

a friend of mine in Iowa emailed me a facebook ad this morning for a 56 Bel Air 4 door in Nebraska that looked nice, even had a phone number in the ad. I called and the guy answered all my questions, sounded like he knew what he was talking about so I told him I would take it. Loaded up the wife and dog and headed to Nebraska. Got there and the car was just like he said, he had another 20 plus calls from people wanting it and he kept it for me like he said he would. Sometimes people are pretty darn great. That's kind of the other side of this. Thanks Kent.

 

You got my attention when you started in about a ‘62 Ford. I don’t know why but I’ve really been wanting one lately, a Galaxie, 390, just sounds like fun. Too bad this one went south for you.
Sometimes those “misrepresentations” do pay off though, I answered an ad for an old custom ‘50 Stude pu but when I got there it was about 1/3 buried in the dirt and rotted out everywhere. It was a nice old custom truck at one time but there was virtually nothing left. Next to it, buried in leaves was a fiberglass body. A Kellison sports car. I asked if it was for sale, nope. I left my number. A week later it was sitting in my yard, $400 delivered.


Sent from my iPad using The H.A.M.B. mobile app

 

Iv'e said this before,and i'll say it again......... Someone who's on the board and a member, or Some shithead using the classifieds to sell a car because it was free.........?

 

If you don't want screwed, don't go to the white House!!!