Ok, my old car isn't dead yet. It still drives all messed up cause the transmission is hosed, but it drives. However, I've decided that you only live once and since I've always wanted to get another Mustang, I'm going to get one. I'll figure out how to pay for it later. Now, I'm looking at OLD ones (1987-1993) because that is the body style I like the most. I want to get a GT convertible, cause I've always thought those looked the coolest.
Now that all that background is out of the way- some more background and then questions.
I saw one on the internet for 3650, it is an '89 GT convertible. I went down to look at it (thats one hellacious trip... like 4 hours coming back and it is only 65 miles away.. god bless the D.C. beltway), and here are some things I saw that are wrong with it. I'd like for some of you auto-inclined people to tell me how much some of this might cost to get fixed, so I won't go in completely blind.
1. Power locks are broken.
2. Power Mirrors work going up and left, but not down or right.
3. For some reason, no matter which vent you select.. the air comes out the floor vents.
4. Two front speakers are blown (I can replace those myself tho)
5. Car needs an alignment (which is ~$80 I think) and 4 new tires (probably ~$350-400)
6. The rubber strips for the driver side window are ragged as hell, and the passenger side is only a bit better. Both windows would leak in the rain, since the windows leave a gap between where the rubber SHOULD be and where whats left of it is.
7. The car leaks oil. This kind of worries me, since that can make a car break. There was a pretty decent size oil patch under the front end of the car, the salesman said he didn't know anything about it, but I was talking to one of the mechanics there about it and he said the car will smoke from under the hood if it gets hot, and something about maybe a bad PVC valve or something? (I've never heard of that, I'm not much of a car enthusiast, although once I get my Mustang I hope to change that)
The car seems to be in pretty good shape inside and out. There are a couple little dings in the hood, and there are a couple of painted over rust spots on the driver side door. The frame looks good under the hood, so I don't think it has been wrecked (my first one had been wrecked but I was to stupid to know the frame wasn't supposed to look like that). On the inside there are a couple faint stains on the back seat, nothing to serious, and the driver seat has a small tear in it (maybe 6 inches). It starts up fine, and it idles nicely (I didn't drive it, I just checked it out). I'll see how it drives when I go back there in the next couple days. The salesman said they had replaced the brakepads, and from what I could see the rotors looked OK. I've never seen a mustang convertible up close, so I am not sure how far the top is supposed to go down in the little space (it sticks up some, I'm looking for pictures to see if that is normal or not).
All in all, they want $3650 for it. According to kellybluebook.com, the value on it is about $2,500. I'm sure he'll be able to find some teenager that doesn't care whats broken and sell it to him, so I'm curious as to how low I can go, which is why I'd like help in finding out how much the work I'd need done to it would cost. I'm thinking about offering $2,000 (the car does have 125,000 miles on it) and seeing what happens from there, but even then I'd want to make sure I don't have to put another $2k into fixing it up.
Hblair, Lazs, you two seem to know a lot about cars, so I'd much appreciate any input you could offer me. Anyone else that knows about old Mustangs can chime in too, it'll all be appreciated.