TA-Swede

iTrader: (4)

I'm sure all you guys have seen your fair share of "interesting" solutions on used cars you've bought. I know I have, and it's fairly easy to tell what kind of person owned the car before you.

So, lets hear some stories. I'll go first.

The previous owner of my current T/A was not mechanically inclined..
It had true-duals on it when I bought it. It was mig-welded in place, and rubbed against pretty much everything. Heatshields, panhard-bar and driveshaft for example. Also, only welding about 80% of the joints is not enough. It was leaking _badly_.

Also, today I found that the cable to the vehicle speed sensors in the front was held in place by a piece of string.

I've only had it for a couple of weeks so far, so I'm sure I'll find much much more on this..

The previous owner of my old V6 Firebird was actually mechanically inclined, but not so much with electronics.
Loose wires going no-where was all over the place. 22-gauge cables going in criss-cross over the engine (not in wire looms either). Electric tape was used plenty, and most of it had gone dry and was peeling off.

I'm not complaining, really. I enjoy fixing things on my car, and if the end result is that it's better than what someone else did, all the better.

So, what are your most interesting finds ?

67rsss

iTrader: (4)

I've worked on cars with wire nuts everywhere, coat hanger exhaust brackets, cabinet **** wedged in the tailpanel to hide the missing trunk lock, tin can wrapped around tailpipe and then run around with duct tape and bailing wire, spray paint to hide engine issues, panty hose stuffed between rattling pieces of heater duct, stickers to hide missing screws, glued on lug nut cover to hide broken stud! I am sure there have been a million more things (like goofy aftermarket fog lights held in place with tape!) but these are the ones that struck me off the top of my head.

wtomlinson

iTrader: (6)

when i got my z, the previous owner pretty much had someone else work on it. nothing was really fucked up (except for the bumper and a place where someone tried to use touch up paint, but got it on the black part of the roof panel). however on my old 1990 Silverado, the guy totally did some stuff half assed:

had a decently built 350 SBC with some corvette lt1 aluminum heads, a TH400, and a lot more. things wrong? never had the speedometer hooked up to the trans, never hooked up the cable to show what gear you were in (pretty easy to tell though, only 3 gears) had a dumped dual exhaust setup, but no crossover pipe, just 2 straight pipes, the really shitty paper header gaskets that kept blowing out, as well as the collector gaskets, oil pan gasket wasn't on all the way and was cracked, left the cruise control module in the engine bay from the previous fuel injected engine. all this and minor other stuff, and a baby 600 holley 4 bbl carb to top it off. that was the first thing i replaced (after fixing the minor ****) with a holley 750 4bbl vacuum secondary carb. never hooked the speedo up though.

S2K

Well with my Z28, it was owned by a high school kid who apparently did not want his parents to know that he was smoking. So one day when I took off the shift plate on my A4 there were 50+ cigarette butts down under it. I got most of it out, but it was nasty. There were also some sucker sticks, two pencils, and two pens. Lol, I also found the plastic that goes around a pack of cigarettes in between the intake manifold and the valve covers.

Blazingz28

iTrader: (5)

^ AHAHA.. I actually dropped some Cleareyes down there once, still to this date have not found them. Guess id have to take off the console.

Mean87SS

iTrader: (21)

Had a 81 Malibu with a Grand National drivetrain... EVERYTHING was done with speaker wire...

My 98 Camaro... strut tower bar just placed ontop, not bolted in

2002_Z28_Six_Speed

iTrader: (19)

I found a signed check for 400 dollars made out to some girl for her "birthday." LOL, yea right...

The check was made out for the same day the orginal owner totaled the car. hmmmm

9000th01ss

iTrader: (10)

On the Z28 in my sig I bought as a roller, it used to be a quick street car with a huge nitrous system. The guy swore it ran low 6's in the 1/8th on the stock rear. I did a lot of work to get it running stock. After a few days of the abs light being on I decided to bleed the brakes and found the bolts on the rear caliper brakets backed out.
Before I got it running I found the nuts missing on the upper balljoints, all the wrong bolts and loose holding the rear in. He obviously change the rear to stock before selling it.

I traded my C3500 to a dealer once, they couldn't give me the S10 I traded for on a sunday because it needed a safety check or some BS, so I went home and swapped the 4L80E I built up for a long tail TH350C, removed the check engine light. When they called I parked the truck and drove my new one off.

Few months later I got the truck back from a buy here pay here lot, got a few hundred off cause the speedo and CEL didn't work and it had no overdrive put the trans back in it when I got home.

Formula413

iTrader: (1)

When I bought my car it had a Moroso cold air intake already on it. It had NO hose clamps holding anything. The filter, the end that attaches to the MAF and the AIR hose were all just pressed on. And the plate that isolates the filter from the engine bay was missing. Whatever, it was $200 I didn't have to spend.

keliente

iTrader: (22)

The previous owner of my car jammed a computer fan in the intake in front of the MAF. No, I'm sadly not kidding.

TA-Swede

iTrader: (4)

^^^ ROFL

Now, that's a _low_ pressure supercharger.

Formula413

iTrader: (1)

Sweet, how many pounds of boost were you running?

AronZ28

iTrader: (2)

An old cadillac of mine had one of those electric trunk pull down thingys. Well if you pushed the button to pop the trunk, and didn't immediatly pull up on the lid, the little motor would then suck it back down and latch it again.

Also had a 2x4 in the trunk to prop the hood open.

Friend of mine had a 2 door Grand Prix GTP, bought it with the supercharger belt missing. Got a new belt for it, and he thought it was a rocket ship.

chitownracer77

iTrader: (1)

the guy never put the piolet bearing in when installing the 6 speed so the input shaft just wobbled around and ended up cracking my slave. oh ya the trans crossmemeber bolts were stripped

keliente

iTrader: (22)

I don't know but it sure felt a lot better when I took it out

When I first looked at the car I popped the stock lid off and looked inside, and I just thought it was a Tornado. I was like well there's a sucker born every minute. But when I bought the car and took it apart...I was just blown away that someone could be so freaking stupid as to actually cut apart a computer fan to fit it in there

Black02SLPSS

iTrader: (5)

That is classic.

FiredUpZ28

My 85 Celica had a spoiler on it not from a Celica. Dunno what it was from, but to make up the difference in height in the back section the owner used a block of wood CAKED in plastic filler.

My 93 Z (with NO modifications AT ALL) the previous owner rigged the coolant temperature sensor into a toggle switch near the radio. Figured maybe he lived in Antarctica and wanted the PCM to dump fuel into the motor during warm up?

jmm98LS1

iTrader: (28)

LOL, keliente wins...../thread

chrysler kid

iTrader: (14)

i traded my dsm for an 01 civic. i got there and he never even cleaned his car up our out. there was about 5dollars worth of chang ein the center console, i found like 3 necklaces under the seats when i was detailing the crap out of it, several nearly empty bottles of cologne, and the car had a "powered by deez nuts" and i support illegal streetracing stickers on it. that sticker was off teh car not even 5 minutes after i got it home

Formula413

iTrader: (1)

Did it actually have power going to it? It does run on 12V.