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The Spare Car

Posted: August 12th, 2017, 1:30 pm
by WJrazz
My Jeep 4.0l is failing, making noises like a drum corps march. Found a good used engine to put in, but for now it is parked until I can deal with it.
Suzy's Toyota van is pushing 300,000 miles and was in the shop last week for a new alternator. It still runs good, but we were both without a functional vehicle for a couple of days.
Suzy's mom took pity on us and gave us some money to look for another car. We went shopping for an under $4k around town beater to get us by and serve as a spare vehicle when needed. Looked at old Toyotas, Hondas, etc., not finding much in decent shape with less than 200k miles showing.

Then we found this. A well loved two owner car with only 67k original miles, sold and serviced for most of its life by the local dealer, garage kept. Suffered hail damage last year and was purchased for salvage by an enthusiast who buys interesting cars at auctions, drives them for a few months, then sells them. He fixed the hail damage, added new tires and brakes. The cheap clearcoat paint job is failing, so he decided to move on to something else.
We had an oil change and new shocks put on the rear this week along with a thorough scan and eyeball checkout by a factory trained mechanic.
Car is in excellent mechanical condition, needs only a serpentine belt and a couple of radiator hoses, preventive maintenance. Drives like new. I think we really lucked out on this one. Our new under $4k "beater" 8-)

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Re: The Spare Car

Posted: August 12th, 2017, 2:08 pm
by SkylinesSuck
Very nice! I've always like those. It's fun getting card like that for cheap. People always buy beaters when getting stationed on Okinawa. Usually winds up bring a 15-20 year old top of the line Japanese luxury car getting passed around for like $2k. Besides my Skyline, I had a Nissan President and a Toyota Crown Majesta. Nice, comfortable, powerful, and very reliable.