Dan,
The car seems to have a lot going for it. Straight body, decent paint and no
rust speaks highly for the car. What you have listed as "problems" don't
seem to be very significant. These cars always need a little work after they
have been sitting for a while and yours sounds like it is pretty much ready
to go, so here is my two cents.
Your shift boot is going to run you about 12-15 dollars. Big deal. Your
electronics problems may be fuse related, but I am thinking relay instead.
There are ways to check for this and some of the techie guys on the list can
help you out with that.
If you pay to have your tune up done, figure you may want to have the engine
looked at and inspected at the same time. When I got my 70 2000 (now my
girlfriend's car) it ran fine, but when I had it tuned up, I found out it
needed a valve job and the throttle bodies on the carbs were shot. Figure
you will need to have the engine gone through and it will cost some dough.
A new jack and lugwrench may be found from other resources, but I don't know
of anyone who uses the jack holes and jack supplied with the cars.
Your speedo issue is either a bad cable or bad speedo gear. Not a difficult
part to obtain and not overly hard to replace. Figure you would do it when
you get the car tuned.
If you get the canvas top with a zip out rear window (highly recommended)
figure to spend around 400.00 for it. Plus, you will need to get your top
frame redone (around 100.00). I have one of these on my 67.5 2000 and cannot
speak highly enough of it. It's a great top and well worth the money.
Battery and boot are optional, especially if the battery is OK.
One other thing. If the car has not been registered since 1990, it has
fallen out of the system. This means you will owe no penalties on back
registrations. You will have to fill out a statement of facts at the DMV and
also have either the DMV or a peace officer do a vehicle inpsection and sign
off that the car is road worthy.
I think that for around 3000.00 for a rust free, straight car with good
paint and interior that needs such minor work you should buy it before I do.
It sounds like a good deal to me.
Good luck!
Andrew Murphy
67.5 2000 Solex
SoCalROC
>From: "Daniel D. Kelson" <kelson@fedka.ociw.edu>
>Reply-To: "Daniel D. Kelson" <kelson@fedka.ociw.edu>
>To: datsun-roadsters@autox.team.net
>Subject: Update on LancasterCA 1966 1600
>Date: Sat, 4 Nov 2000 22:22:35 -0800
>
>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!
>
>------------------------------------------------------------------------
>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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