expensive mistakes! internet hotrods

Just wondering if people want to share some stories of what they have bought over the net, i myself bought a car from a reputable builder. thinking i'll just buy one to enjoy until i finish the build on my own for our summer.
Being told yeah everything is perfect i build cars for a living,,,,blah,blah blah... mine for example had different length pushrods, brake lines that look like they were bent with a hammer and get squashed when the rear end hits the chassis, distributor is hard up against the firewall , poor welds, leaving bolts loose because the holes don't line up........the list goes on and on , in all honesty i just wonder why some people bother building hot rods, you can build a sweet ride out of junk and be safe and look cool, but there is a massive differance building a sweet ride that looks cool out of good parts, and doing an awful job. Anybody can buy the good parts but the pride of building a car is how you do it, think aboput this when you make your next bracket or your setting something up.

 

I was looking at a homemade airplane at Hershey this year. It was pretty rough, not a project I would want anyway. Two other guys were also looking and they told me about "lifetime liability" for the builder/designer of a plane. They said the builder is responsible for the quality of his work as long as the plane exists. I don't know if there is any truth to this but what a concept! If such a law existed for cars, some crappy builds might not make it on the the market.

 

Fuelrod from somewhere in Australia, you should do an intro before coming here to start a bitchfight.

 

My neighbor owned a successful excavation company. He built his own ultralight airplane,several people commented on his overall lack of skill in the construction process. People just talk some times for various reasons.
Anyway,,something happened to one of the wings and I heard from others that they felt that he did a poor repair and that they were very concerned.You know the kinds "Not me!",,"wouldn't catch me in that thing",,"not now".
Later on,,He took it up and at 300 feet the wing collapsed/folded at the repair. He died as many of the concerned just watched.

 

Alot goes into building a car .Some cars are laid out better than others.People should really go see the cars that they are thinking about buying especially over a computer .I don't feel sorry for these guys that do.Everything looks better in pictures .and talk is cheap

 

God! I know what you speak of!
Mine looks awesome, but when you really start looking, I found so much crap fucked off by the builder, and most of it is stuiff that could have been done correctly for the same amount of money and time. I just dont understand why it was done in the first place.

My fault 100% for not looking over the truck better before I plunked down the green instead of seeing how cool it looked when I first saw it.
I guess thats part of "making it mine", safe to drive in instead of cool looking while its sitting.

 

I think Turboroadster probably hit it on the head. There is an element out there that is throwing together vehicles (rods in this instance) expressly to make a fast buck on that don't take the time or don't care to do things right.

Then we have the guy who actually puts together and drives a rod who didn't have the skill or knowledge to do things right before passing the car on to someone else.

Many of us can think back to things we did on our first rods many years ago that just flat don't cut it now.

I can list a half dozen things on my truck right now that don't cut it in todays world that I did years ago and wouldn't do again. But the truck has never been for sale to someone else and has been reliable until I wore the engine out and quit driving it. The worse, no C notch over the rear axle and a broken frame because the axle pounded the frame until it cracked and broke. Add to that a pair of prime candidates for the ugliest set of motor mount brackets of all time. The held up fine for 100,000 miles but they are butt assed ugly and crude.

 

CAVEAT EMPTOR,, HRP

 

And to help these people flourish ,,you have the NU breed of hot rodder,,who wants it now so they can be cool/hip now and its all about looks !!

and with the proper catch words in the ad,,the car sells..its a shame,,but its also been going on forever

better education of what to look for and what questions to ask is the solution

 

Caveat emptor comes to mind regardless of what you are buying....

 

Many have made the same mistakes in person because they didn't know anything about cars, or old cars, but wanted one and it was shiny, or flat black primer, yada, yada yada. One of my favorites rip-artist shortcuts was the headlamp buckets siliconed to the adjuster plates on a 34-35 Chevy a guy from Houston bought at the NSRA nationals years ago. That wasn't the only thing wrong but it was shiny and only $25K or so. What a deal!

 

Yeah, well try having this conversation at a 'club' meeting when some of the members do this kind of work! Ha It is swept under the rug so to speak and either ignored or down-played to the point of being invisable.
The whole issue here is to teach better building techniques! This keeps us as a group of mostly home builders off of the radar of the polititions. They would like nothing better than to use a crappy build done by an amature, (or someone who doesn't care) as an example of why these things should be outlawed/illegal. These concerns should be thought about everytime you build car parts or an entire vehicle. That goes for motorcycles too!

Dan Stevens
dba, Steelsmith

 

Actually, I believe an airplane homebuilder is exposed to the same liability period as a manufacturer like Cessna, Piper etc: 18 years.

 

I remember looking at a '58 Biscayne for sale in Wisconsin. Looked good until you realized that the rocker panels (for the ENTIRE length of the car) had been carefully sculpted out of chicken wire and bondo. Seller was a sculting artixe, but he should have stuck to making pinatas, not stucco Chevies!

 

Nothing NU that "gotta have it to impress" mentality has been around forever. My dad did repairs on a couple rich brothers purchases back in the early 60's, they only wanted whatever was the latest/greatest. All it took was daddy's money, these two brothers went through 10 - 15 cars in their junior/senior years of highschool.

 

I bought my '52 off eBay, it was in a town about 200 miles away with a mountain range in between. I talked to the seller on the phone extensively before committing. He said he mostly just took it on short drives around the trailer park (Red Flag #1). I asked if he really, really thought it was up to a drive over the mountains (and down). He said it would probably be "prudent" to tow it home and check the brakes.

When I went to look at it and pick it up, it was 25 degrees, blowing about 30 mph. When I pulled into the trailer park, the guy was trying to jump start it off a modern 12v/(-) ground truck. He had negative to ground. It wouldn't start, thank god. I did a quick lookover, as much as I could stand in the cold, but honestly I wasn't that familiar with these trucks.

Towed it home, and gave it a good look. The flatty had car-style water pumps, with no motor mounts! The engine was laying on the drag link. The wires to the ignition had two strands of wire left. The crankcase was 1/2 gas from trying to start it. The 6v battery was hooked up neg ground. I called the guy back and bitched, asked how it could be driven like this -- basically called him out. I was able to get a fair amount of money back, but if I'd done a proper inspection, I'd have passed on it and been money and time ahead.

 

Never had any problems, well other than one of the fellas owes a C-note and his buddy owes me some rotors. But they'll probably wake up some day and say daaaaamn(sic) I missed a lot of life in my stupor.
Life goes on.

I never ever buy anything from a "Pro" builder. There are just too many folks out there that become shop owners because they can't hold down a job.

There are some exceptions to that rule, I know some fellas down around Austin that are pretty jam up. But they are not Internet guys they have names and faces, and integrity.

Here's my whole take on it and I have stuck by this with success for a very long time. Anything that you buy used needs to be rebuilt. it doesn't matter if you buy it from me or a stranger. If you go into any transaction with that attitude you'll never get burned because you will prepared to add some sweat to it. If you have to sort it out you won't be disappointed and if its good then you be happy as a duck in mud.

More often than not I am happy as a duck in mud.

 

Indeed, and not heeding this warning cost me. I 'won' the bidding on the popular dumping ground known as ebay on a '48 Plymouth. Pics looked great and a phone conversation with the seller convinced me that this was a decent buy. Bottom line: $1500 for the car and another $800 to ship it from New Jersey only to be able to put my fingers through the rusted frame rails; that was the least of it's troubles.

I ate the deal and chalked it up to a lesson learned the hard way. I will never buy another car sight unseen, or at least until I have someone I trust look at it first.

 

That's what I do too....of course it works best if you are capable of rebuilding stuff yourself....

 

My Brother -in-law is an EAA and FAA licensed inspector and "Ultra Light Aircraft"are the Rat Rods of aviation to these guys there is no inspections required for Ultra Lights as well as no Pilots license needed a true home built Expiramental Aircraft gets dozens of checks during the build which must be signed off on.I have been to several of his EAA group events and I learned NEVER talk Ultra Lights!You get an ass frying worst than ya get here for saying Rat Rod!

 

How can you buy a car (home built or pro.) and not crawl under it and look ????

Funny how paint and upohlstry is all some buyers see.

 

Build it yourself...or plan on re-building it when you get it

 

I even change my own oil. Too many idiots doing THAT that ain't qualified. There's too many commercial builders employing idiots that can't get a mechanic's job anywhere else.

Would I buy somebody elses without a concentrated look of all moving chassis components up on jackstands where I can eyeball it? Never.

That said, new legislation, club rules, or whatever, that some suggest to restrict the idiots from selling junk, none of that would change anything.

If it came to legislation, I would support a law that wouldn't allow for anybody to sell a homebuilt car, as it is with homebuilt aircraft, where, for the life of the aircraft, it can only be licensed to be flown (legally) by the builder.

 

Whats that?????????

 

latin

 

Squirrel there is a lot to be said for building it yourself.

Here is a lesson to be learned, if you don't know how to do it find out. There is a lot to be said for natural ability but the bottom line is non of us woke up one morning and discovered that we were experts. All of us had to learn to do what we do.

 

What SQUIRREL and PORKNBEANER said. I, personally, would be MORTIFIED if I did crap work on any of my cars ...and then had others see it with MY name on it. Your car is a personal Statement to others about who you are, and what your about...

 

I've been stung buying sight unseen over the internet but chalked it up as a life experience and never really expected the car to be as described. I knew what i was getting into and took full responsibility for my gamble.

If you dont want to get stung, look over the car with a magnifying glass in person so that you've only got yourself to blame if you realize that something is wrong later. If you don't have the technical knowledge to know what you are looking at, take someone who does...that way you can blame them.

 

Anyone who would buy a car / truck without looking at it ( sight unseen ) deserves whatever they get and have no right to bitch.

 

I'l tell 'ya what....... racingjunk.com has really live up to it's name for me on a couple of occasions now and has really put the brakes on me doing long distance car-buying. I bought what was supposed to be a rust-free '65 Chevelle project car from Southern Texas for $2500 and I can't believe what showed up in my driveway a week later with the transport fellow. This car looks like it came out of a river. Now I know not to expect a refund but I tried to call the seller to express my........grief, but he wouldn't even answer the phone. He knows what he did. Guess you just gotta take the bad with the good. Everybody has a different opinion of what "nice" is. I've developed a question that I'll always ask before I go to look at something...."What am I gonna see on your car that I'm not going to like?" and most of the time a spinter of honesty will come out. Not always.......but sometimes.