I figured, if I could keep it up, that it might be fun (and informative to the local SoCal folks who are also trying to find cars to buy) to post up the ads and my impressions of the cars I'm looking at. Most people can't write an ad to save their life, but I stay pretty open to looking at local cars even if they seem to not have that much potential.
Also, this might be a good way to pick up advice on what to offer, etc.
If anyone thinks it's too rude to post the actual ads with my descriptions, or cramping the seller's style, give me a holler and I'll reconsider. But this could make life easier for other shoppers.
So I'll start with this one:
This guy asked me to meet his brother, who was "perfectly capable of showing the car." Fair enough. We met at a church in Pasadena because he's had trouble with people stealing shit from his house. Also fair enough.
His brother turned out to not answer his phone, and was 20 minutes late. Not so cool, but whatever. It was evening though, so starting to get darker than I was comfortable with. The brother was the mumbliest little mofo I've ever met. Knew nothing about the car, was barely able to utter actual words. OK.
After the car was "imported" from Oregon, it does indeed look as if the paint remained pretty well taken care of. There are some dents and dings, as expected for the price. The passenger side B pillar has an unfortunate dent in it. You can see in the photos that there's a good sized gash in the driver's rocker that would need to be covered by side skirts. By and large though, the body looks nice enough.
As stated, the tires are about done.
The interior's OK, but the seats and floors are dirtier than the photos show. The dash is beautiful, though. There's an aftermarket deck with a subwoofer in the trunk.
The shifter is one of those beat to hell, used-E30-standard ones that barely feels attached to the car. No biggy, easy enough fix.
Car starts right up. Temperature gauge stays normal. Quietest E30 I've ever driven, so that was interesting. Even my just-wrecked 90K mile one was louder in the exhaust. Clutch engages just fine, and off we go...ohhhhh. That's a pretty serious miss! The "3.6L straight six"
feels as if it's running on....well, somewhat less than the ideal 6 cylinders, for some of the time. It's missing all over the place throughout the rev range, and I have no idea how it just passed smog on Tuesday. The turn signals do not self cancel, but that shoudld be an easy fix. As can be expected the car is not smooth to drive, and is very slow, even taking into account that "It is a 325 model (not 325i) which means its has something like 130hp instead of the 160hp that the 325i model has."
Seriously, if you don't know, is it that hard to look on the internet and find out the basic numbers pertaining to your car?
Anyhow, I cut the drive short and got back to the parking lot. I told the kid the car was pretty, but running terribly. He mumbled something about spark plug wires. It could be that, or could be any number of other nasty things. Add to that the fact that someone who let spark plug wires go for long enough to make the car run this terribly probably hasn't kept up on other major maintenance items, either. In fact, when I asked the owner on the phone if he'd had the water pump/tbelt done, he said the water pump was done 16,000 miles ago, but not the timing belt.
I told him it was usually a good idea to do both at the same time, since as far as I can tell, you'd have to remove the tension on the timing belt to get the water pump out very easily, and after you do that you're running on borrowed time. He said the timing belt was done 60,000 miles ago, so it should be fine. 
So. For me, it's a walkaway. It was $2200 when I saw it the other night, now he wants $1900, and I would suggest he keep up with that trend. It's not a basket case or anything (unless that miss is more serious than claimed - last time I checked, no compression in one cylinder was a lot more expensive than new spark plug wires), but it's gonna need some stuff!
Also, this might be a good way to pick up advice on what to offer, etc.
If anyone thinks it's too rude to post the actual ads with my descriptions, or cramping the seller's style, give me a holler and I'll reconsider. But this could make life easier for other shoppers.
So I'll start with this one:
This guy asked me to meet his brother, who was "perfectly capable of showing the car." Fair enough. We met at a church in Pasadena because he's had trouble with people stealing shit from his house. Also fair enough.
His brother turned out to not answer his phone, and was 20 minutes late. Not so cool, but whatever. It was evening though, so starting to get darker than I was comfortable with. The brother was the mumbliest little mofo I've ever met. Knew nothing about the car, was barely able to utter actual words. OK.
After the car was "imported" from Oregon, it does indeed look as if the paint remained pretty well taken care of. There are some dents and dings, as expected for the price. The passenger side B pillar has an unfortunate dent in it. You can see in the photos that there's a good sized gash in the driver's rocker that would need to be covered by side skirts. By and large though, the body looks nice enough.
As stated, the tires are about done.
The interior's OK, but the seats and floors are dirtier than the photos show. The dash is beautiful, though. There's an aftermarket deck with a subwoofer in the trunk.
The shifter is one of those beat to hell, used-E30-standard ones that barely feels attached to the car. No biggy, easy enough fix.
Car starts right up. Temperature gauge stays normal. Quietest E30 I've ever driven, so that was interesting. Even my just-wrecked 90K mile one was louder in the exhaust. Clutch engages just fine, and off we go...ohhhhh. That's a pretty serious miss! The "3.6L straight six"
feels as if it's running on....well, somewhat less than the ideal 6 cylinders, for some of the time. It's missing all over the place throughout the rev range, and I have no idea how it just passed smog on Tuesday. The turn signals do not self cancel, but that shoudld be an easy fix. As can be expected the car is not smooth to drive, and is very slow, even taking into account that "It is a 325 model (not 325i) which means its has something like 130hp instead of the 160hp that the 325i model has."Seriously, if you don't know, is it that hard to look on the internet and find out the basic numbers pertaining to your car?
Anyhow, I cut the drive short and got back to the parking lot. I told the kid the car was pretty, but running terribly. He mumbled something about spark plug wires. It could be that, or could be any number of other nasty things. Add to that the fact that someone who let spark plug wires go for long enough to make the car run this terribly probably hasn't kept up on other major maintenance items, either. In fact, when I asked the owner on the phone if he'd had the water pump/tbelt done, he said the water pump was done 16,000 miles ago, but not the timing belt.
I told him it was usually a good idea to do both at the same time, since as far as I can tell, you'd have to remove the tension on the timing belt to get the water pump out very easily, and after you do that you're running on borrowed time. He said the timing belt was done 60,000 miles ago, so it should be fine. So. For me, it's a walkaway. It was $2200 when I saw it the other night, now he wants $1900, and I would suggest he keep up with that trend. It's not a basket case or anything (unless that miss is more serious than claimed - last time I checked, no compression in one cylinder was a lot more expensive than new spark plug wires), but it's gonna need some stuff!
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