Dear List Occupants,
A week or so ago I queried alluvyas about the following ad:
http://www.collectorcartraderonline.com/addetail.html?4204182
Alas, nobody knew anything about it...
Let me fill you in on the situation, after talking to the
owner on the phone, and after going out to see and drive
the car.
It's SPL311-03509, with engine R09646. Recall that the
advertisement was for $4k. This will be important later.
The car is cherry red, with all the chrome trimmings in
place and spotless. The paint job was done by the previous
owner, some 20+ years ago. The current owner has had the
car for 18 years, during which he put on about 3k miles.
The car now has 137k miles, which coincidentally is the
same number as my 1991 Corolla. The car has some Z mags
on it and does not have the rear Datsun 1600 emblem
anymore. The previous owner(s) must have discarded it
since there are no obvious markings where it might have
been removed post-painting. Speaking of the paint, the
paint job still looked good but there were a few small
cracks in the paint here and there. 20 years of desert
may have done that. No rust. No rust. No rust. Seemingly
straight, too.
The interior is in good shape. The dash is flawless. The
heater duct on the passenger side is split in two, but hey
who needs heat in the Mojave Desert? The seats, carpets,
floorboards, glovebox, door panels, rear shelf, seat belts,
chrome trim on the gauges, the rear view mirrors, are look
to be in wonderful shape. The speedo is way out of whack and
the clock doesn't work. The other gauges seem to function fine.
The little booty that surrounds the gearshift is gone so one
gets to enjoy the view of passing asphalt. Padding had been
added to the dashboard. The turn signal level had a little
more play than one would like but maybe that can be easily
tightened by someone who knows more about these cars than
someone who has so little experience with them. The original
radio was replaced by an AM/FM/tape deck and a couple of
speakers were put in the sides behind the seats.
I got it probably up to 60mph on the backroads of Lancaster
for quite a while and the temperature stayed around 150ish.
The clucth and gearbox feel great. The car may be idling too
low as the car would stall when coming to a stop if the choke
wasn't out. Car needs a tune-up but the motor clearly ran
quite strong. Since it hasn't been used a lot in the last 15
years, would be good to replace some hoses/belts. Owner hadn't even
registered the car after 1990.
The top is old, and has not been used in a long long time. As
a result, it is a bit cracked and dry, with the rear window
quite dulled. One of the fastners is missing, thus leaving
a small hole which prevents one from have the top sealed
at all. Probably should just have the top replaced. The boot
cover has a couple of small tears in it but functions, inasmuch
as a boot cover functions. No tonneau cover to be found, but
hey since the front tonneau fastners were covered by the dash
padding, it wouldn't have been easy to put the cover on.
Spare was in the trunk, but no jack or lugwrench was present.
The original owner's manual was there. Chiltons was there.
And the Datsun Sports Car Handbook and Service manual was
there. Sweet.
It appeared that within the last three days the headlights
decided to stop working. Our guess was a bad fuse but we couldn't
successfully locate the fusebox! Wasn't in the glovebox, and
we couldn't test to see if it was under the rear shelf since the
rollbar had several bolts going into the shelf.... The owner's
going to try and find out what's going on with the headlights...
Also the reverse light didn't work... didn't find out why but
maybe it's a bad fuse too. Directionals functioned appropriately.
Needs new tires, too.
On the phone with the owner, I feigned ignorance of the asking
price, claiming I didn't have the ad in front of me. New
asking price of $3500 was voiced.
So... one would like the following things before using
it as a daily driver (i.e., I'd like to see the following
fixed up before I use it to commute):
(1) tune-up
(2) working headlights, reverse light
(3) new tires
(4) jack, lugwrench
(5) working speedo would be nice
(6) new top since it does rain occasionally between long beach
and pasadena
(7) maybe new battery?
(8) maybe new boot cover too?
Other items would be more cosmetic, so I wouldn't want to
knock a counter-offer down by much for a non-working clock.
Before any of you decide to run up to Lancaster to snatch up
the vehicle... let me pose the following:
(A) I don't think the guy has noticed the wealth of information
on the net about the value or pricing of these cars
(B) The owner can clearly be brought down below $3500 based on
reasonable arguments regarding costs of "repairs" etc
(C) I am looking at recouping about $2k for my 1991 Corolla
(unless one of you wants to pay more for it) and may not be
able to convince certain people to spend more than $1k on
top of that (bummer), and that likely includes some of the
initial repair costs. So maybe I can convince certain people
to agree to spending $2500 with the knowledge that new
tires/tune-up will need to be dealt with using another
several hundred. Maybe. And then there's the new top, etc.
So here are my questions to the great gurus of the list:
(1) What would you pay?
(2) Anybody feel like earning a couple of beers at the next
SoCal Roadster Run by checking out what appears to be
a car in pretty darn nice shape? Lancaster is about an
hour from downtown LA.
Am I forgetting something...? Hmmmm. It sure was fun to drive
and quite peppy. Gave a much smoother ride than my mom's miata.
Thanks mucho,
Dan Kelson
P.S. As I forgot to bring a camera with, I cannot post any photos
of the car. Doh!
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Daniel D. Kelson kelson@ociw.edu
The Observatories http://www.ociw.edu/~kelson
Carnegie Institution of Washington 1 (626) 304 0285
813 Santa Barbara Street 1 (526) 235 9486 (PCS)
Pasadena, California 91101-1292 1 (626) 795 8136 (FAX)
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