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What is the best way to search for water damaged cars?
Try copart.com. They are auctioning cars stored at TWS in College Station. No personal experience with the process. There is a thread running on trackjunkies.org in which a few folks have inspected and bid on cars.
I have been tracking flood cars at Copart.com since the Hurricane. Just recently won a 2014 Boxster base that was restored to runable condition. It is supposed to arrive here in frigid OH sometime this week. It was the 10th car that I bid on in the last four months.
A couple of things to know:
When there were a lot of cars at TWS, many were listed as pure sale and went for whatever price. A yellow Cayman that had the hatch glass broken and was totally underwater went for $8200. The majority of the Houston flood Porsches have been auctioned already. The peak was mid-November. There are a few 911s left however) and the insurance companies are setting reserves or require approval and dealers are bidding the remaining Caymans and Boxsters up as selection dries up. They are not as cheap now as they were in November.
Some of the cars that I wanted to bid on, they suddenly dissappeared from the site. I assume either the owner bought the car back or someone made a deal with the insurance company and they removed it from auction.
To bid at Copart, on most of the cars you need a dealer license. However, Copart has permitted several other web sites to act as a proxy (for additional fees, of course). However, there are extremely short deadlines to pay the web site and get all the paperwork signed and arrange a transport. You also need to give the proxy site 10 percent of what you want to bid ahead of time. Copart charges $20 per calendar day (holidays are included) if the car is not picked up in six days after the auction ends. Both the Copart web site and the related proxy sites do not show what a car sold for after auction. The only way to know is to be there at Copart's site when it is up to bid. Both at Copart and the proxy sites will show the amount bid, so when the live auction takes place, the dealers on site will generally know what was bid and can run you up to your max, before letting the car go.
The Boxster that I bought had been auctioned in Houston in October (many of the cars have a yellow wax line where the insurance company estimated the water level in the car) and my car was marked about an inch below the door sill, so it wasn't too wet. It was moved to Florida by the winner, cleaned up and got running and reauctioned via Copart, where I won it. I went through uShip and due to the holidays, they couldn't get the car in six days and I had to pay the broker $150 to get it picked up Friday plus three days storage fee.
Finally, the mileage is iffy. My car was listed as 134 miles not actual in October. Then 10K miles not actual in December. I found a site that listed last service mileage and it was 25K miles.
My car was auctioned 'on approval'. After winning, the proxy site sent me an email stating that if the amount wasn't enough to get approval, how much more would I be willing to pay for the car (either the proxy or Copart will negotiate. I told them that the limit was what I bid (about $1700 more than what I won it for). It cost me $1000 more (plus additional fees) than what the auction ended for to get the seller's approval. All in all, it was an OK deal if the car runs and the engine cylinders are not scored.
There is a future GT4 sale in Boston on Copart, but the car took a good enough hit to strip the center out of both driver side wheels. The photos show it may have LWB seats.
Just for info: there were 4 GT4s on Copart, all with collision damage. One didn't sell this week and was relisted, the other was up for bid this morning and since I was not online at the moment it went up for sale, I don't know yet if it sold. Two more have future auction dates.
I received my Boxster a couple weeks ago. It was dead and the open hood via fuse box jumper tecnique did not work at first. The key was stuck in the ignition and when I got it out, the fusebox trick worked via key remote. I replaced the battery and found the car would run and drive. However there is some electronics damage from the flooding. The battery died because the fresh air fan came on max speed even with ignition off and key out of ignition. I pulled the fresh air fuse to prevent the new battery from being killed. The old AGM battery was put on charger and would not take a charge.
Anyway, there are a number of things dead including the hood switch next to the driver's seat, both power seats, the rear trunk release (even via remote) and the convertable top controller and door locking system in both doors. From reviewing the wiring diagrams, it appears all these things are on the CAN Comfort bus. I am operating under the assumption that one module is shorting the bus. After checking fuses, I will look at the power seat control modules and the rear body control module since they were under water. The rear BCM is partly working as the anti-theft system would prevent the car from being started and the car is only warning about the top controller.
Due to cold/snowy/wet weather, I haven't spent a lot of time on it, but will this weekend.
Making some good headway on getting this thing together! Much like most projects that arrive here, more work has gotten added to this build while it's in our hands. As recent as last week however the car returned from the body shop where the entire interior was sprayed with 2 Stage clear coat to match the exterior. The car now has air jacks, a roll cage and we are about to bolt the PDK trans to the engine. We are also in the middle of retrofitting the GT4 Clubsport brake calipers as well. The car already has the dual master cylinders. This car is the answer for people that want a road going Clubsport level race car that can be driven on the street and registered with a tag because it has a VIN.
PDK Transmission ready to bolt into the car. Mechanically, the parts are essentially a direct bolt in. Its the wiring and coding that are the tricky part, but this end will soon be handled!
Fancy new PFC calipers, direct from PMNA!
PCCB : BEFORE
Rear end about buttoned up!
- PMNA GT4 Clubsport PFC Brakes to clear 18" wheels
- MCS 3-way Coilovers
- Tarett Engineering Monoball Ends
- Tarett Engineering Motorsport Style Rear Toe Links
- Forgeline GS1R 18" wheels (satin race gold)
- MSI Wheel Studs
- AirJax Custom Air Jack Set Up
Enough for today. Finally made this thing a roller and got it off the lift for a few days. Finished the MCS install and got the front Clubsport front uprights & brakes installed. Had to throw the new Forgeline GS1R's on to get an idea how shes going to look here in the coming weeks before heading on track! Ignore the 4x4 ride height, we still need to adjust the altitude!
Tell your customer he needs the CF doors and polycarbonate windows to help offset the roll cage weight.
The cage gives better side impact protection, and the lack of head and thorax bags would be countered by the deep side bolsters and halo of a Recaro SPG.
The track shakedown was successful. The PDK works great and even the pit speed limiter works as intended. It never ceases to amaze me how well these cars respond to the bolt-on power mods. Between the flash, the filters, the IPD plenum and the full Cargraphic race exhaust, the car pulls like a champ relative to the stock powered Clubsports I've been racing. In the upper end of the RPM range, it's not even close. 170+ mph at Daytona with some good tires and slightly better track conditions would have been rather easy. I had a passenger in the car and it was still a shakedown for all intents and purposes so we were taking it easy. The 6 month old Pirellis are good for turning laps but after those slicks sit for a while, it's hard to get the grip to produce the lap time.
We still have to put some interior trim bits back in the car to pretty it up, flush some fluids again now that we have flogged it and then it's ready for PCA / SCCA / NASA endurance racing.
12-30-2017, 11:53 AM
