Will Speed

So as some of you know me, I bought an 84 corvette from a member here back in August. The car was advertised as a fairly good car. Mint interior with everything working in the interior including the dash. Updated bushing in the suspension. The down side was that the car wasn't running.
Now the seller advertised the car as not running due to swapping the crossfire system back on from the TPI setup. His rationale was that he wanted to sell the car with the original system on it and sell the TPI separately for more money, but he ran out of time and patience because he bought a C5....

I should've known better.

The car had both bumpers updated to the newer 90's style front and rear bumpers. The rear lights were in and everything worked but the front bumper didn't have the lights installed but he had them in a box. So my first issue when I got home was putting the lights on only to find out that he gave me the lights off the original bumper. I called him and he said he would find them and ship them to me. That was pretty much the last time he responded to me....

So I've been working on this POS since then only to find out the laundry list of actual misinformation he gave me and **** show of a car I bought.
The digital dash works and lights up, but the oil pressure and water temp don't move.
The borla exhaust with cat delete system he said was on the car actually has a cat on it but the cat has been blocked off with metal **** inside of it. How the **** that happened I have no idea.
The bolts holding the exhaust manifold on are almost all stripped.
The crossfire system doesn't have all the parts, missing bolts, missing water outlet, and some other very minor things.
The TPI system was missing all the bolts, the upper plenum was stripped and bent, the throttle bracket was missing and some other more minor things like the crossfire was missing.
The suspension bushings need to be replaced in the rear.
And to top it off, the key wouldn't allow the fuel pump to turn on. Like it has a VATS system on it or something.

I bought the car for $3500 and I knew I would have some work to do to it. And frankly, I'm not pissed that I have to do work to it. I'm pissed that people advertise things falsely and then go MIA shortly after the sale.

Just my rant for the day. I wonder what I will find wrong with this c4 next.

cv67

Link to sale, sounds familiar

Will Speed

https://www.corvetteforum.com/forums...e-project.html

vette196

1st problem I see is he had 9 posts when he sold the car, not really a "member"

ghoastrider1

sorry about how things turned out for you.

ghoastrider1

383vett

Sorry about your predicament. The seller sold you a nonrunning project and apparently misrepresented a lot about the car. Does he live near you? Can you send Bruno over there?

confab

3500 is a lot for a project, but it sounds like you've got the car guy wherewithal to get it smoothed out and have some fun with it.

Good Luck, Bro!!

Renfield

Being that it's an '84, I would've passed. Not a fan of first year GM anything. That aside, he also lost me with the crossfire yard sale photo. Icing on the exit-stage-left cake was the paint. And if it's so easy to get it running, well, show me.

Mileage doesn't match the condition. I suspect someone had their way with that odometer.

Holy crap. I've got people on this forum telling me my '95 is worth less than $5K. It is in showroom condition by comparison.

So sorry to read of your rectal exam by corvette.

DGXR

Whoa that is a bit of crappy experience. Sorry to hear it. But I am glad you realize you were getting into a "project car" before you bought it.

To be honest about my first thoughts, the ad says "$3400 OBO" (OBO means they are willing to negotiate).

So, why the hell did you pay $3500 for it?

zachaeous

Sorry to hear about your experience buying a 1984. If you do not have one get the 1984 FSM, It is a great tool to have with the Crossfire fuel system.

It might not be that bad getting your car running as you think. A lot of people on the forum are down on the 84s because of the fuel system. To me it is not that complicated and there are thousands and thousands of throttle body fuel systems still running today.

The seller of my 84 told me that the car ran great and I made it 15 miles from our meeting place and it just quit running. I called him and he offered to help but would never answer his phone after that first call. It turned out to be the ECM which was a easy fix for $90.00 at that time.

I always take most any thing a seller says about a car with a grain of salt and if I like the car and it checks out I will go for it anyway.

Good luck getting your 1984 running.

Will Speed

I actually paid $3k for the car and paid another $500 for the black wheels. He was trying to sell them separately.
I should've done more research but you live and you learn

Klondike

Some people's idea of what "Mint Condition" means is pretty far out there. Maybe like a Peppermint Patty mint laying on a Las Vegas sidewalk in August!

Cjunkie

I mean i dunno. What do you expect for a 3k Corvette? Come on its 2017 people. I wouldn't he hating on the seller.
3k is a good weekend in Vegas. Put on your big boy pants or open up the wallet.
You can always get a nice new Corvette for 53 or 63k.

scrappy76

Seriously.
The fact is that you bought a non running, project car, and to top it off, it's 34 years old. There is rarely ever a plug and play in this situation. The only that I might see that the seller might have done wrong was to offer newer front lights, when in turn he didn't have them or couldn't find them. we of course do not know both sides of the story.
Anyways, not trying to give you a hard time, just for ranting or venting. Just trying to get you to understand what can of worms you dug into.
Now, get back to work, get the parts you need and finish it.

Renfield

Don't feel bad at all. It's easy to get seduced by these cars. They appeal on a very basic level and can blind a purchaser. You're not the first to go in a little giddy only to wake up the next morning with a hangover.

mikeb

Yeah, I hate when that happens.
Unfortunately, I've had my share of screw-ups.

Good luck with it.

Will Speed

Project or not, I don't think that it is too much to ask that a seller be honest with his knowledge of the vehicle. I asked the seller if the dash worked and he said 100% that it did. The seller told me he replaced the suspension bushings but he really didn't. The seller said all the parts were there for the TPI and the Crossfire but they weren't.
I mean, I get what you are saying but if you are asked specific questions and you answer them with a lie, shame on you. The other things in my rant I get, they are the price you pay for buying a non running car. Well it's actually all the price you pay for a nonrunning car. But I expect a level of integrity and that is something a lot of the human race is lacking these days.

hilflos

None of what follows is to belittle what the OP is dealing with, more a commiseration. I was where he seems to be a bit over a month ago when I found transmission fluid on the floor of my garage very late one Saturday evening, as I was wrapping up the new weatherstripping install on thee B-pillars.

I brought my '87 home the last weekend of March. It had been my father's since '87, had mostly sat for the last fourteen years, only two thousand miles on it in that time, and I have worked on it literally, every weekend since then. It is just now in the shape I thought it was going to be when I picked it up. Dad, had been getting it back to "good shape," but he and Mom are looking for a smaller place, easier to keep up, and it's time for the car to be mine now.

The list so far;

What still needs done;

Stereo and Speaker (Bose) refurbishment or replacement

New wheels and tires (old wheels are slightly out of true from having sat so long)

Valve Job, at a minimum, as there's a puff of oil smoke on startup, from the passenger side, when it's been parked on a slope. No discernible loss of oil over three thousand miles. I'm going to give it some thought before I get to that, but sounds like the right time to new heads and an intake to me, perhaps a complete rebuild of the engine as, the paint on the block is pretty much gone, and if I'm pulling the whole thing out to be repainted... We'll see.

Suspension and brakes both will require attention. There's bushings that can stand to be replaced, but aren't bad enough to demand it happen near term.

C5 brakes will probably happen when the pads are worn enough to need replacing. They're fine, but I'm adopting a, if I'm replacing it, make it better, sort of approach when work on anything. So, why not that too?

Mostly, my own father hadn't driven the car in so long that he didn't have a good baseline for it, to evaluate against when he finally started to again. He handed off something that I'm a bunch of money and time into, and it's now pretty much where I thought it was going to be, back in March. There's more of both on the horizon, but no longer anything that has to be done immediately.

Oh, and it's going into the body shop to get a scrape from his Harley off the passenger side quarter panel, on Tuesday. At that point, it'll be a relatively pristine '87 C4 with less than 30k miles, that could still use some love, but is a relatively reliable driver / cruiser.

Last night, as I was cruising home from seeing some friends, top off and stowed in the rear, showing some kids in the car next to me that the pop-up headlights work, and how, I was thinking about how satisfying it is to finally be at this point.

Just one point of view, take it for what it's worth.

Edit: None of that's to excuse the seller or anything. Just, if you choose to keep it, there may be some good associated with it, as time goes on.

pezter22

My first Corvette was an '84. I should have paid attention to the bells and whistles that were going off when I was looking at the car.

For instance - The owner would only let me test drive the car up and down the driveway. When he pulled it out of the garage there was a piece of cardboard that was underneath the car soaked with oil, coolant and transmission fluid. It leaked everywhere. And the real doozie was he turned on the AC and it blew cold air. Of course it did, it was February.

Everything is fixed now, I have a long list of items that I repaired and replaced. It needs paint, but I'll leave that for the next owner. Mechanically and electrically, it's new.

Good luck with your '84! There is some satisfaction with getting things right.