Ok, this isn't going to be like last time where you suckers can just skip the story and go right to the pics. This is going to contain the pics throughout so you're gonna have to read it. Well, I guess you could just skim through and click all the links, but that wouldn't be nice of you to do. Besides, it's a pretty good story, so you should read it. It took me a good couple hours to write this story, so I would like some appreciation and feedback. And it's always fun to share stories like this with fellow enthusiasts who might relate in one way or another. So without further adieu, we begin the story:
Alright, here we are. Last week I finally picked up my new 240. After talking with the guy for about 3 weeks he finally got it in running condition and I finally got him down to a price that I liked. The story started a few weeks back when my girlfriend was driving to her house from somewhere and she must have caught a glimpse of a sweet red car with concealed headlights, she thought it might have been a Probe (bleh!) but she wanted to make sure so she turned around. She pulled into this little two man dealership and sure enough there it was: a 1991 240SX Hatchback. So she stopped and talked to one of the guys there and she got a little info on it. This was all probably around 6 pm or so, and I was at work until 10. So she text messages me about it and once I get off I meet her up at the place at like 10:30. I get my first look and I can tell it's an SE, I see those sweet seven spoke alloys and then I decided to inspect further (ususally if I see a 240 and it doesn't even have SE wheels I'll move on). It's got these stupid ass looking foglights that make it look like trash (which I ripped out post-haste since the weren't wired and were just preventing airflow to the radiator) along with a pitted front bumper and a cracked bottom lip (the little stock black one, not the sporty looking one) and the front passenger fender is a little dented. I check out the back. SE wiper, but no spoiler...AND *gasp* no rust holes! *swoon* It's a little cold out and I've given the exterior a decent look over, so that's that...for now. I go back a day or so later and inquire about it and the owner of the place lets me have the keys and take it for a spin. I do some more looking around on the inside and stuff and under the hood and checking for all the usual things I think I know to look for. The hatch actually did have a little rust, but it was bondoed over and repainted (the bondo is cracking a little bit). I check under the hood and BAM! This big ol silver thing is glaring at me from the left corner of the firewall. I think to myself, my other car didn't have that! (later on at home I check out the pics I had from the other 240 and sure enough, I didn't have that silver thing.) I take it a couple blocks up and make a U-turn and then come back. I immediately go inside to him and tell him the power steering is shot, cause it was damn hard to make that U-turn. He says, "OOOHH! No it's not, the hose is leaking. I've even got the replacement part right here (shows it to me) I just haven't gotten the chance to put it on yet." Sure enough, it was the hose, cause you can see the mess it made under the hood. So we talk a bit and he agrees to call me when he gets it fixed. Well a couple days go by so I go back there and he still hasn't fixed it cause that part didn't fit. I go back to look it over some more and stuff and I finally realize that the silver thing under the hood is special because I also noticed the little 'button' that says "HICAS" on it right next to the chipped off rear wiper button. (OMG SWEET! It's got HICAS! At this point I'm thinking that's what the silver thing is for cause I've never seen a HICAS 240 or owned any cars with ABS, so I didn't recognize at first that it was the ABS controller.) From his price and listing and stuff I came to realize that this guy didn't know he had a car that was so rare! He had no clue he had a HICAS car or what it did, so naturally I kept it on the DL. So they've got a broken down auto pignose in the back and they've even tried to 'borrow' the power steering hose from there. It didn't work, and then they even got in a DOHC 5-speed parts car and THAT hose didn't work either. He finally calls up his part supplier guy and says that none of the parts the guy keeps sending are working, and the parts guy asked for the VIN. Parts guy looked it up and told the dude, "Well that's why nothings working, you're car has 4-wheel steering!" So the next time I go back to him, he finally knows about the HICAS and what a rare car he has. I was pissed cause I was planning to take this little gem out from under him without him knowing what he truly had. The weird thing is...it doesn't say SUPER HICAS on the pinstripe. Anyway, he said it wouldn't affect the price. So we work on deals and talk a little bit of money. I plan on trading in my Civic that I have (94, 4door, automatic). I've done plenty of research on KBB and NADA and technically my car is worth about $600 more that his. Well I know a trade like that won't fly, but this guy wanted my car and 2 grand for his. I haggled a little more and I got him down to roughly $1700 and my car. I just kinda shook it off and told him I'd think on it and left. He called back a day or so later cause he 'really wanted to make me a deal on the car.' I had followed my dad's advice and acted dissinterested and the bait worked perfectly, plus he really wanted my Civic for his parents. He's gonna take the kit off and do some body work that it needs and repaint it for them. Well sometime along the way my dad ran a Carfax. Now everything is fine except for the mileage; the ODO says 113k and Carfax reported 246k in 2002. So I'm not really sure what the story is and I'll never be able to find out since the car is over 10 years old. But I've become really good friends with this guy through all this and he swears he bought it with 113k. We have figured a few things; either a guy or two before him rolled the ODO back, or there was a new motor put in and the ODO was rolled to match (or the cluster that matched the engine was put in as well), or the cluster was malfunctioning and was replaced with a junkyard one or something. Anyway, the fact that the chance of really high mileage came into play and really helped out with the bargaining price. But the thing runs strong and just doesn't visually show (inside or outside) the wear that a 250k mile car would have, so I just don't want to believe it. Well, he finally got the steering fixed and my dad came to take it for the test drive this time. Ultimately it was my decision to get the car or not, my father had nothing to do with it. But I lead the guy on that it was up to my dad since he was the true owner of the Civic, he'd have to approve of the car before trading in the one that he owned. Anyway, we went out for a drive and I told my dad, "All you gotta do is pretend that you know your shit. He doesn't know you, I know you don't know shit about cars but he doesn't know that." I told my dad that the guy was gonna try and take advantage of me on the price because I'm just a kid who doesn't know any better, but he'd have a little harder time trying to pull one over on a guy who's almost 50 (especially if that guy knew (or pretended to know) his shit). So my dad takes MY advice this time around and comes back and says "Well there's this and this and this and this wrong with it. I'd say it's only worth 500 bucks." The guy says he can't go that low, but we'd talk. So we go in and the first number this guy pitches out now is "My civic + $825" (My dad and I were shocked that he lowballed himself that bad) I was hoping to get it down to at least $1k. So I agreed and then he fixed the little problems that my dad pointed out and I picked it up a few days later. Minutes after I got to the lot and began to clean out my Civic, I was already moving into my new car and making myself at home. I installed my S14 CD player, and I also took out some silly ass neon stripe shift boot and ricer knob and replaced them with my genuine leather boot from Redline Goods and my OEM knob that I stripped the leather off of. I am still 100% convinced that I got such a good deal on the car because my dad was there, if I was just working this guy by myself he probably would have laughed at my offer of $1k. Anyway, I'm driving it now and it's all mine! It's got a few perks over my last one: the NISSAN 'button' isn't scratched off (however the AC and circulate buttons are instead), the hooks for the privacy shield aren't broken this time around, and there's also no cracks in this dash. But its fair share of problems too (hood, taillight), but I look foreward to tackling those things and learning as I go along. The clutch pedal sticks, the timing chain rattles, the brake light stays on, there's a tear on the door panel and in an odd place on the seat, and the bushings are shot...but I'll fix all that in time. And no more wet parking lots with curbs! I'm not gonna ruin this one this time. Besides, I'm not even gonna do much of anything till I replace all my bushings. About the thing having lots of miles though, I dunno...I've given it a couple little tough runs and the VLSD seems like it's still pretty strong, certainly not showing 250k miles of wear. Anyhow, the guy is really nice and he couldn't give a written warranty but they said that if there's anything wrong with it just bring it by and they'd be willing to help out. They're really nice guys and they're working on opening up their own shop. He said if I ever wanted to go SR, they'd give me a great deal on the swap. and also his shop would sponsor me too, if I ever get into drifting or AutoX or whatever. So needless to say, I'm hanging out there a lot and they're like my new pals. They bled the clutch and it was good when I picked it up, but now it's sticking again. So this week they're gonna help me replace my master cylinder and I'm going to learn how to bleed a clutch! They said when it comes to things like that, as long as I pay for the parts they won't charge me for any labor. Plus I want to learn how to work on my car myself, so I'll be doing it too. They're going to show me all sorts of things, and I'm gonna take care of this baby!
Here are some more pics that didn't make it into the story:
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/01.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/06.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/15.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/19.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/22.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/26.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/27.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/29.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/30.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/34.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/35.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/36.jpg
I hope you guys enjoyed my little photo shoot. I took these pictures at the Regal Avenues parking lot and on my way home from this photo shoot I encountered a few funny things I'd like to share: This picture is pretty self-explanatory as to why it's funny. This one I thought was funny because the license plate says "FUNN," and all I could do was laugh and say "yeah, sweet ass FF understeer is SOO much fun!" And this was great, because its my first 'fingered Probe,' given to straight from within the sweet 240 itself. This is my first visual confirmation of my hatred for Probes. I will continue to take pictures like this and share them in an album. In case you guys haven't seen it, this behavior has been inspired by this website. I don't know how or why I came across it, but I just thought it was kinda funny. It's this stupid guy who goes around flicking off people who are sleeping and takes pictures of it. I decided to adapt this to my own style and flick off as many probes as I see, sometimes I hope to get the owners as well but my first one didn't have it.
So now we've finally reached the end of the post HOORAY! I've got me a sweet red RMKS13 for a great deal! Thanks for sticking with me and my super long story, I'm sure I left out a good bit of details but this is all I could remember for now and I didn't want to bore you to DEATH, just into a coma!
Alright, here we are. Last week I finally picked up my new 240. After talking with the guy for about 3 weeks he finally got it in running condition and I finally got him down to a price that I liked. The story started a few weeks back when my girlfriend was driving to her house from somewhere and she must have caught a glimpse of a sweet red car with concealed headlights, she thought it might have been a Probe (bleh!) but she wanted to make sure so she turned around. She pulled into this little two man dealership and sure enough there it was: a 1991 240SX Hatchback. So she stopped and talked to one of the guys there and she got a little info on it. This was all probably around 6 pm or so, and I was at work until 10. So she text messages me about it and once I get off I meet her up at the place at like 10:30. I get my first look and I can tell it's an SE, I see those sweet seven spoke alloys and then I decided to inspect further (ususally if I see a 240 and it doesn't even have SE wheels I'll move on). It's got these stupid ass looking foglights that make it look like trash (which I ripped out post-haste since the weren't wired and were just preventing airflow to the radiator) along with a pitted front bumper and a cracked bottom lip (the little stock black one, not the sporty looking one) and the front passenger fender is a little dented. I check out the back. SE wiper, but no spoiler...AND *gasp* no rust holes! *swoon* It's a little cold out and I've given the exterior a decent look over, so that's that...for now. I go back a day or so later and inquire about it and the owner of the place lets me have the keys and take it for a spin. I do some more looking around on the inside and stuff and under the hood and checking for all the usual things I think I know to look for. The hatch actually did have a little rust, but it was bondoed over and repainted (the bondo is cracking a little bit). I check under the hood and BAM! This big ol silver thing is glaring at me from the left corner of the firewall. I think to myself, my other car didn't have that! (later on at home I check out the pics I had from the other 240 and sure enough, I didn't have that silver thing.) I take it a couple blocks up and make a U-turn and then come back. I immediately go inside to him and tell him the power steering is shot, cause it was damn hard to make that U-turn. He says, "OOOHH! No it's not, the hose is leaking. I've even got the replacement part right here (shows it to me) I just haven't gotten the chance to put it on yet." Sure enough, it was the hose, cause you can see the mess it made under the hood. So we talk a bit and he agrees to call me when he gets it fixed. Well a couple days go by so I go back there and he still hasn't fixed it cause that part didn't fit. I go back to look it over some more and stuff and I finally realize that the silver thing under the hood is special because I also noticed the little 'button' that says "HICAS" on it right next to the chipped off rear wiper button. (OMG SWEET! It's got HICAS! At this point I'm thinking that's what the silver thing is for cause I've never seen a HICAS 240 or owned any cars with ABS, so I didn't recognize at first that it was the ABS controller.) From his price and listing and stuff I came to realize that this guy didn't know he had a car that was so rare! He had no clue he had a HICAS car or what it did, so naturally I kept it on the DL. So they've got a broken down auto pignose in the back and they've even tried to 'borrow' the power steering hose from there. It didn't work, and then they even got in a DOHC 5-speed parts car and THAT hose didn't work either. He finally calls up his part supplier guy and says that none of the parts the guy keeps sending are working, and the parts guy asked for the VIN. Parts guy looked it up and told the dude, "Well that's why nothings working, you're car has 4-wheel steering!" So the next time I go back to him, he finally knows about the HICAS and what a rare car he has. I was pissed cause I was planning to take this little gem out from under him without him knowing what he truly had. The weird thing is...it doesn't say SUPER HICAS on the pinstripe. Anyway, he said it wouldn't affect the price. So we work on deals and talk a little bit of money. I plan on trading in my Civic that I have (94, 4door, automatic). I've done plenty of research on KBB and NADA and technically my car is worth about $600 more that his. Well I know a trade like that won't fly, but this guy wanted my car and 2 grand for his. I haggled a little more and I got him down to roughly $1700 and my car. I just kinda shook it off and told him I'd think on it and left. He called back a day or so later cause he 'really wanted to make me a deal on the car.' I had followed my dad's advice and acted dissinterested and the bait worked perfectly, plus he really wanted my Civic for his parents. He's gonna take the kit off and do some body work that it needs and repaint it for them. Well sometime along the way my dad ran a Carfax. Now everything is fine except for the mileage; the ODO says 113k and Carfax reported 246k in 2002. So I'm not really sure what the story is and I'll never be able to find out since the car is over 10 years old. But I've become really good friends with this guy through all this and he swears he bought it with 113k. We have figured a few things; either a guy or two before him rolled the ODO back, or there was a new motor put in and the ODO was rolled to match (or the cluster that matched the engine was put in as well), or the cluster was malfunctioning and was replaced with a junkyard one or something. Anyway, the fact that the chance of really high mileage came into play and really helped out with the bargaining price. But the thing runs strong and just doesn't visually show (inside or outside) the wear that a 250k mile car would have, so I just don't want to believe it. Well, he finally got the steering fixed and my dad came to take it for the test drive this time. Ultimately it was my decision to get the car or not, my father had nothing to do with it. But I lead the guy on that it was up to my dad since he was the true owner of the Civic, he'd have to approve of the car before trading in the one that he owned. Anyway, we went out for a drive and I told my dad, "All you gotta do is pretend that you know your shit. He doesn't know you, I know you don't know shit about cars but he doesn't know that." I told my dad that the guy was gonna try and take advantage of me on the price because I'm just a kid who doesn't know any better, but he'd have a little harder time trying to pull one over on a guy who's almost 50 (especially if that guy knew (or pretended to know) his shit). So my dad takes MY advice this time around and comes back and says "Well there's this and this and this and this wrong with it. I'd say it's only worth 500 bucks." The guy says he can't go that low, but we'd talk. So we go in and the first number this guy pitches out now is "My civic + $825" (My dad and I were shocked that he lowballed himself that bad) I was hoping to get it down to at least $1k. So I agreed and then he fixed the little problems that my dad pointed out and I picked it up a few days later. Minutes after I got to the lot and began to clean out my Civic, I was already moving into my new car and making myself at home. I installed my S14 CD player, and I also took out some silly ass neon stripe shift boot and ricer knob and replaced them with my genuine leather boot from Redline Goods and my OEM knob that I stripped the leather off of. I am still 100% convinced that I got such a good deal on the car because my dad was there, if I was just working this guy by myself he probably would have laughed at my offer of $1k. Anyway, I'm driving it now and it's all mine! It's got a few perks over my last one: the NISSAN 'button' isn't scratched off (however the AC and circulate buttons are instead), the hooks for the privacy shield aren't broken this time around, and there's also no cracks in this dash. But its fair share of problems too (hood, taillight), but I look foreward to tackling those things and learning as I go along. The clutch pedal sticks, the timing chain rattles, the brake light stays on, there's a tear on the door panel and in an odd place on the seat, and the bushings are shot...but I'll fix all that in time. And no more wet parking lots with curbs! I'm not gonna ruin this one this time. Besides, I'm not even gonna do much of anything till I replace all my bushings. About the thing having lots of miles though, I dunno...I've given it a couple little tough runs and the VLSD seems like it's still pretty strong, certainly not showing 250k miles of wear. Anyhow, the guy is really nice and he couldn't give a written warranty but they said that if there's anything wrong with it just bring it by and they'd be willing to help out. They're really nice guys and they're working on opening up their own shop. He said if I ever wanted to go SR, they'd give me a great deal on the swap. and also his shop would sponsor me too, if I ever get into drifting or AutoX or whatever. So needless to say, I'm hanging out there a lot and they're like my new pals. They bled the clutch and it was good when I picked it up, but now it's sticking again. So this week they're gonna help me replace my master cylinder and I'm going to learn how to bleed a clutch! They said when it comes to things like that, as long as I pay for the parts they won't charge me for any labor. Plus I want to learn how to work on my car myself, so I'll be doing it too. They're going to show me all sorts of things, and I'm gonna take care of this baby!
Here are some more pics that didn't make it into the story:
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/01.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/06.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/15.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/19.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/22.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/26.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/27.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/29.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/30.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/34.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/35.jpg
http://dori-san.home.comcast.net/36.jpg
I hope you guys enjoyed my little photo shoot. I took these pictures at the Regal Avenues parking lot and on my way home from this photo shoot I encountered a few funny things I'd like to share: This picture is pretty self-explanatory as to why it's funny. This one I thought was funny because the license plate says "FUNN," and all I could do was laugh and say "yeah, sweet ass FF understeer is SOO much fun!" And this was great, because its my first 'fingered Probe,' given to straight from within the sweet 240 itself. This is my first visual confirmation of my hatred for Probes. I will continue to take pictures like this and share them in an album. In case you guys haven't seen it, this behavior has been inspired by this website. I don't know how or why I came across it, but I just thought it was kinda funny. It's this stupid guy who goes around flicking off people who are sleeping and takes pictures of it. I decided to adapt this to my own style and flick off as many probes as I see, sometimes I hope to get the owners as well but my first one didn't have it.
So now we've finally reached the end of the post HOORAY! I've got me a sweet red RMKS13 for a great deal! Thanks for sticking with me and my super long story, I'm sure I left out a good bit of details but this is all I could remember for now and I didn't want to bore you to DEATH, just into a coma!
