Folks Of Interest "Buy one done!" Share your horror stories

From my experience you ether buy a chap ass wrack, sink a ton of time, money and labor in it (but you know it's done right - and of course you overdone it) and than loose a ton of money if you ever sale it, cause nobody gives a shit about the (expensive) extra mile you went with everything.

oooor.....

you buy exactly such a car, from exactly such a guy and have him loosing all that money/time/labor.

Everything in between is a bloody trap.

Like an okay car, drivable, halfway decent - but after a while you start "fixing things" - at the end you spend the same amount of money/time/labor as with the wrack, but you paid more for the car in the first place - you are an idiot.

Don't ask me how I know.

my ct2 - Frank

 

In all fairness many GM X frame converts are plated with steel bars for rigidity. Looks like ass but it's how it was done.

 

I don't have any stories....I never had any desire to buy one that was already done. Sorry.

 

Aww, C'mon guys...how soon we forget. A lot of us built "those" cars back before the 1-800-parts days... when we had no money, and were just learning building skills. Junkyard wiring and parts, marginal stick welding and doing "just enough" to get a rod running and driving.

 

no explanation necessary.

 

I'm glad somebody can remember that we were not "pros" when we got the first car to build into a rod. I missed many a great date thanks to saving my dimes for a damm accessory for my car. I recently sold the first "rod" i built, owned it 57 years. I went through it untold times, but ya know, i left a couple of beginner items as was, just to have the memory of those past youthful days when i saw them. Told the guy that bought it about them, he laughed and said they'll stay there long as he owns it.

 

I've dealt with cars that had tin foil with roofing tar covering holes in the frame, house and industrial wiring in them and baling wire holding about every part you on the car you can imagine. I always bring a buddy to view a car with me because it's always good to have another pair of eyes on the car. Many years ago I went with a guy for this reason to look at a later thirties sedan. We drove 300 miles to look at it and this guy was was over looking a lot of flaws due to wanting this vehicle badly. When the hood was open I couldn't believe what I saw. In order to route the steering shaft around everything he had 6 u-joints connected to one another almost in a complete circle till it reached the steering box. How he drove this thing I'll never know. We noped out.

 

My buddy is another one who is blinded by want-it-badly syndrome. He has an artificial hip and knees, so looking underneath is an impossibility for him, and he hates taking me along because I shoot down all of the rusted crap he wants to buy. Unbelievable to me the garbage people try to sell, but then again, they may not have a clue what is, or isn't, underneath. DO NOT BUY AN OLD ANYTHING WITHOUT LOOKING UNDER IT! There's more junk out there hiding under shiny paint than there are good ones, that's the truth.

 

For the most part, my unseen purchases worked out. However the one that advertised "Drive it anywhere across the US, problem free driver", I should've taken that as a warning.... drove about 400 miles one way to pick it up. The trip back home didn't go so well, after the first 100 miles, it the engine would cut out every mile or so, then maybe get 3 miles and start cutting out again.... Got frustrating as you might guess. Rented a U Haul trailer and brought it home. Should've taken it back, but I was so into it, had to have it..... found later that the wire feeding the distributor was pushed into a circuit at the fuse panel with a home made wiring end....... I did get the seller to pay trailer rental but that didn't make me feel any better.

 

I'll raise a right hand and say I've never risked safety in my endeavors. In my early finishing days I did some sketchy rust repair but it was on my own stuff, not meant as a pass-off for profit. I have a phobia I guess, that someone will see what I did and consider everything I touch from there forward as shit.

Unrelated somewhat, but years ago a car at Detroit Dragway went off the end of the track, over the sand hill, rolled bumper to bumper then sideways a time or 2. Why? That racer installed their master cylinder brace into the firewall with self tapping 5/16 sheetmetal screws. No seriously, they did. Pushed the whole works into the engine comparment, and not right away, had been that way for a few weeks. The rollbar broke away from every plate it was welded to but miraculously he wasn't seriously injured. 3 or 4 guys there said "...yeah and Jocko put that bar in." One of em ran away when I walked up, but I yelled to the crowd "The next motherfucker that says I did this car will be murdered on the spot. TRY ME FUCKERS!" I asked the guy who did do the car, "Do YOU KNOW who did this one?" He just slowly wandered off. Why did it break? Because the mill scale wasn't ground off the floor plates. And point of fact it was a full frame car and shoulda been welded to the frame anyways. 5 minutes. Maybe an extra hour to actually get it to the frame but just 5 more minutes would have held the bar where it was. Now, is this deserving of the break eluded to above? I think not. Some fuckers would do well to step away from the hot rod. And if you're local and raced the dirty D in the early 90s you might remember that night.

 

When I worked at the IH dealership the owner would discount any mechanical repairs I would want to make to a used truck & say "The Best Money I Can Spend Is To Make It Look Good" and he meant it.
One my buds just bought a '57 Chevy 2dr ht from up in Arkansas, it was shoved rear 1st into a container & that's how it was inspected & purchased. When he got it home found it needed a rr quarter panel. When he cut the old one off he discovered it had the original Underneath!

 

Funny thing is, that quarter-over-quarter would have been considered an ok repair in some regions back in the day. Remember this, if it's too much trouble for the seller to get the car out so it can be properly inspected, it just might be too much trouble when purchased. Do not be too embarrassed or afraid to take along someone who KNOWS what to look at and to look for in an old car or truck, your wallet will thank you later.

 

I'm one of those nightmare wiring guys that get bitched about here, but with a difference. My jobs are neat, and soldered with the proper connections and fuses/breakers. However, I use only one color wire for the entire car. I look at it as offering the future owner a unique(to his car), learning experience. Plus it gives him something to bitch about, which makes any buyer happy.

 

I’ve relayed the shit that was done to my Lincoln before I got it here before, trans pan sitting on wishbone, rear trans mount not even bolted down, two driveshafts welded together out of phase, holes torched out of a 5 on 5 wheel to fit a MII 4 lug 8” too narrow rear end. Lots more I forgot about. I knew it had problems going in, and bought it anyway. Nothing a little work and a few dollars couldn’t fix…

 

Just bought early jeep had the custom power steer shaft slide out of one u joint into the other on the way home loosing steering at 65 MPH on 101 in CA. sun around tree times but did not roll it .

My 57 vette had phone line wiring going to the rear tail lights and caught on fire the second day I owned it . Car was running in the 10's buy the guy who built .

My Dads model A PU had a IRS in it out of a Datsun and it was 1 inch out of square and wheel cambered in so much it was only using a 1/4 of the tires . it crabbed down the rod bad . I have been trying to buy it for 10 years .

 

Lost my whole brake pedal assy on my 40 Ford p/u, hit it hard when a bus pulled out in front of me, it fell out of the truck, had to ride the curb to stop.

Same 40 Ford P/U 4 in droppe axle, 4 in shakles and 5:50 x15 tires in front left the pitman arm about 2 in off the ground so a friend shortened it 2 in welded it up. Drove it about a year like that. Pulled in my driveway after coming off the freeway and a clunk I heard made me look under the truck and I found the drag link and bottom half of the pitman arm laying on the driveway. Took it off and had an certified aircraft welder redo it with a big "V" cut in both sides and a ton of weld, it held up well after that. My friends weld was a butt weld and ground off to look pretty , very lucky it lasted a year.

 

I love that phrase blinded by want-it-badly syndrome. Perfectly said.

 

Just like buying any other used car. If you don't know what you are looking at, find someone who does or walk away.

 

That makes me nauseous.

 

I've been documenting my journey with my 61 Olds Super 88 here. https://www.jalopyjournal.com/forum/threads/the-consolation-prize-61-olds-super-88.1267254/



This car was a fresh build from top to bottom that went from needing a fuel sender, to needing a complete mechanical overhaul. It was honestly death by a thousand cuts when I got the car. Some of the problems I encountered,
-The engine had abysmally low oil pressure and was in desperate need of a rebuild
-It had an electrical draw that would kill the battery in a couple weeks of sitting
-the overtaxed stock fuses would blow if you had the wipers and headlights on
-new Vintage air unit worked, but the heat was cold and the AC didn't cycle
-wipers would not park properly
-tires would constantly go flat
-exhaust had to be reconfigured since it was built to hit the pitman arm
-belt drive was cocked and would eat a belt in about 3000 miles, and throw rubber dust all over the engine compartment
-heater hose bulkhead had no barbs on it and would occasionally blow off and spray the engine compartment with hot coolant
-multiple items in the engine compartment were mounted in interference with the hood, including the air cleaner, the radiator (which was too tall) and the alternator. The latter so much so that when someone closed the hood, it dented the hood from the bottom up and cracked the candy paint.

After playing whack-a-mole with a couple issues, I figured the best course of action would be to blow the whole car apart and start over from scratch. That project lasted 2 years.

Now it's waiting to go to a friend's paint shop for some repairs, including fixing a few cracks and sags, some poor finish work on seams, and for a complete respray to cure some bad scratches in the base of the candy. I'm hoping to have the complete project done sometime this year.

I get the idea of starting with a "done" car. In this case, if I were smart, I would have sold this car as a project and taken the loss. Instead I fixed it, at the cost of a shit ton of money and worse, a lot of time. I'm looking forward to moving on. My New Year's resolution is to stop working on projects I don't truly love. I don't have enough free time to work on stuff that isn't on my my bucket list.

 

I don't got the money to buy a "done" car, so I buy the cheap ones that have all this crap underneath them and more, but at least I paid cheaper for it.

I'm sorry but all the wiring in the car is to my own color scheme, but at least each circuit has its own color. Thankfully the car doesn't have many circuits, Napa only have about 10 colors of wire...

 

Man I'm starting to think I'm the only guy on here that bought a nice complete car! Lol. I built my previous cars but for personal reasons didn't have time to build and wanted a 50s car quickly. I wasn't impatient, I kept eyes out for a while, but as soon as I pulled in to look at mine I knew it was coming with me. It was priced good enough I didn't mind turning a few wrenches if needed, but it's been a great car so far. Everything was pretty much done how I would've done it, very cleanly, all the right parts. I was pretty lucky to get it imo...

 

I made deliveries to a fairly well-known South Carolina custom shop and one afternoon the manager there stopped me and said "Hey you like Falcons, right?"
Of course I do, so he shows me this cross-eyed red-haired stepchild of an abortion-gone-wrong built from a sweet, straight '61 Tudor... to "Make it a V8 car the RIGHT way" he'd chopped the entire floor out from toeboard to the rear axle and was welding the body to a frikking S10 pickup frame.....
The floor, and most of the running gear was outside the shop, looking absolutely perfect.
In order to actually SIT in the car, the front seat was reclined back so far you might as well take a nap in it.
He "ALWAYS welds the body to the frame; that's how it's DONE..."

 

Even the top drawer stuff gets infected with error.

This cute kid ran decent, but why it got stuffed into a museum was discovered when we woke it up. These engines have no rear main seal. That's right, no seal. They use a slinger, the oil goes into a big groove in the rear main, then that drains through a piece of ⅜ pipe back into the sump. We noticed a bit of oil trailed in when it got pulled out and into the shop. Short story, a bit of research showed that it still needed a gasket but that wasn't the issue. That ⅜ pipe? It was about ½" from the bottom of the oil pan. I'd run the car and in less than 5 minutes it was running oil out the rear. Seems the pipe would be at the full oil level at rest, no? Am I just that logical or was this a huge miss. I made a shorter pipe, we did a pant load of cosmetics under the hood, and being inside the motor showed all new and rebuilt. It turned out to be a win without too much expense in time and $$$$$ but there were other foibles along the way too. Wiring, floor mat, top was looser than a Sat night hooker, but nothing just a little give a fuck couldn't fix easy. That manifold coating is 2000 degree ceramic to mimic cast iron. They were delivered bare when new.

 

My own '57 210 had the same thing going on, original front mounts on a small block with a trans cross member added to use a tail shaft trans mount and nothing in between. I asked on here if that was OK, some people said they'd done it that way and held up fine, others said it's too much distance.

Another HAMBer ended up offering me a set of bolt-on mid mounts and I put them in but I left the extra cross member, and I didn't tighten down the studs on the mid mounts very tight, they're basically just there as twist limiters. Other people told me that might not be the best way to do it, as too many or too rigid of mounts can be a bad thing.

Never had a consensus on what the right way to do that was. Center motor mounts and a tail shaft mount obviously works but not every block was drilled for side mounts.

 

But they're sure as hell 'done' when you get through with them. And they have good heaters and lighted hood ornaments, too!

 

I had 2 cars that needed to have some major wiring done to them and I had little money. First up was a '64 Caddy I bought from a neighbor for $60, it had a burned up harness under the hood and was wired with brown lamp cord and speaker wire. The next was a '68 Mustang with a good chunk of the engine harness torn out.

Both times, I was able to find harness pieces at the local 'yard and I found schematics at the library reference section. I took my time with both, the Caddy was a chore. But both cars were neatly done and charged and everything worked. I wrapped all the splices with 3M tape and it looked factory. I drove the Mustang for a few years and sold the Caddy for $200 after driving it all summer.

 

I have bought two “done” cars but my budget can’t afford nicely done cars. The first was a pretty decent 52 Chevy that had been rebuilt and updated quite a bit. The work wasn’t terrible, but I did have to go back and fix lots of things that weren’t done quite the way I might have done them. The first problem I found was when the transmission went out a few days after I got it. When I pulled the driveshaft, it was shoved into the transmission so hard that I had to pry it out. No free play at all on the slip yoke... That was the first of many things to be fixed.

The second was a 63 Corvair convertible that I somewhat bought on impulse at a swap meet since it seemed cheap. It looked ok overall, but was the most hacked up pos I have ever owned and the only old car that I have ever lost money on when I finally sold it. Those two are what make me seek out survivor cars now that haven’t been hacked up by anyone but me.

 

This post should get a sticky it's so accurate.

That in-between car is the worst of both worlds; you pay for a running, driving car that looks good, but you get all the same work and expense as if you started with a rotted, non-running pile of junk.

 

i bought my shoebox 12 years ago, and, of course, the steering had the usual slop in it. found out that the steering box was only held in by one (out of 3) bolt...