docmirror

Jeez,,, at that price this is GTA. I just spent $100k on a new house. My wife won't let me have another car, dammit. No cash right now.

Buy - this - car! grrrrrrrr

TJQuill

I'm happy to crank it if someone who knows more than I do either takes a look at it and tells me the timing belt tension is close enough that I'm not going to do any damage or says that based on the facts which led me to park it that I should be fine.

From an email I sent earlier today:

It was running fine when the timing belt light came on. I was in traffic in the number two lane on the 405, so I couldn’t immediately stop and turn it off as I probably would have in an abundance of caution if I was on a neighborhood street. By the time I got off the freeway, it had been running fine for ten minutes and more than a mile, so I stopped picturing the pistons shooting up through the hood and drove it gently the mile I had left to the house.

I parked it in the garage and fully intended to have USAA tow it to a shop and get the timing belt light dealt with in relatively short order. But it’s my third car, I have a 60 hour a week job plus a startup on the side, and whatever little time I had left always got prioritized to taking the dogs up into the Santa Monica mountains or keeping the 13 year old Range Rover on the road or fixing whatever was falling apart in the 80 year old house. So it sat.

So all that said, I’m pretty confident that if I hooked the battery up this afternoon it would start and run. I can’t imagine after sitting for three years that it would run smoothly right off the bat, and based on my experience bringing it out of mothballs when I originally bought it I assume that some rubber bits have dried out and will leak or fail in pretty short order.

I wouldn’t crank it myself unless I had someone who is much more mechanically inclined and experienced than I am either do whatever checks can be done to make sure the timing belt tension looks good enough to do that safely, or give me the assurance that based on the facts surrounding the light coming on to begin with they think it is safe to do so.

hlee96

How's the electronics in the car? Radio, speakers, AC, etc
Brakes?

Wife tells me she can tolerate this gold better than the Weissach gold

thanks-Hoi

dr bob

If I had some garage space I'd be all over this one. Known the car and mike for over a decade. He tells it like it is, no worries. At 4500 this a no-brainer. Someone buy and enjoy this car!

TJQuill

Electronics have been a non-issue with this car. I had two relays go bad in the 14 years I was driving it, both easily diagnosed and replaced. Never any trouble with lights, wipers, windows, etc.

Radio is the aftermarket Alpine you can see in the first post which was put in by the original owner. That has always worked fine. When I replaced the windshield at Sharktoberfest a few years ago, the glass they had did not have the antennae. So it receives just fine while I'm in LA with a strong signal, but I'm sure if I was out in the sticks I wouldn't pick much up. If I was doing cross countries I would figure out a wire antennae I could run under the dash or up the A pillar (or swap out the radio for a unit with bluetooth, aux in, etc.).

Speakers are about what you might expect with 30+ year old technology and cones. They all work and were fine for what I was using them for. I had a bazooka base tube wired into the luggage compartment (don't judge - I was in my 20's and people did that back then), but took it out in favor of more space for cargo as I aged out of the thump-thump phase. I'll certainly throw that in if a buyer is interested just to get it out of my store room.

AC has always worked fine. I had the refrigerant topped off once (or maybe twice) during ownership to get it back to full freeze. Note the bullet in the first post about the heater core valve or vacuum line issue which I never got around to trouble shooting and replacing.

Brake system was also a non-issue during entire ownership. I replaced the brake pads twice; discs are still the ones in there when I bought it. The braking was fine, but I definitely planned to swap in new discs the next time the pads needed replacing.

Speaking of wipers, some of the plastic fittings on the lines to the washer nozzles got brittle and broke in there with all the engine heat. I have the parts, I just parked it before I got around to putting them in.

zekgb

This is ridiculous, how is this car still available?

hlee96

Jeez....So another $2500 (transportation to East Coast and WP/TP done by local legend) would get someone a reliable, '86.5 auto with decent paint and interior and a working AC?!

C'mon! I am dying here.... I already have a 32V keeper, and I told myself that I am concentrating on the OBs...

Buy this already, someone please

TJQuill

I have accepted a deposit, so everything seems to be coming together. Thanks all.

docmirror

That's great Mike. I feel a bit bad for not following through last fall. I hope it works out well. Is the car coming to N TX? I hope, I hope, I hope.

BC

I think it will stay where the sun shines, at least for a while.

docmirror

Hehe, enjoy CA SB1 new fees. Suckers,,,,

BC

Your schadenfreude is showing through.

Its 75 bucks. Im not concerned.

hlee96

Congrats! Nice score-hoi

docmirror

"...lawmakers pushed through the largest fuel tax hike in state history without bringing it before the voters. Instead, they cobbled together a two-thirds vote in both houses of the Democrat-controlled Legislature with no votes to spare."

“The California voters were absolutely left out of the loop,” said Mr. Allen. “There was certainly not substantive buy-in from the California people, who, according to all of the polling data, are overwhelmingly against raising gas taxes.”

43% hike in all gas taxes. Existing high polluting diesel big rigs except, pork for everyone(half a BILLION for a commuter rail in Merced!).

Nice democracy you got going out there. $75 is just the beginning. You can own it, but you can't drive it.

BC

Its crazy. A democratic majority. They pass laws and moon beam signs them and it has no basis in reality.