IML: Look before you leap - the '55

[Kenyon Wills <imperialist1960@xxxxxxxxx>]

I'm working my way through the 1955 that I am working
my way through.

The car was represented on Ebay as having a "rebuilt"
engine.  I'm going to borrow back my compression
tester (David), and check the engine now, because I'm
beginning to feel suspicious of it.


Why?  


The car runs and so forth.  Looked good at 10 paces
with new chrome and interior.  The guy that I got it
from put a new coat of paint on the car, and had the
brakes done about that time, and they work well too.

I started to drive it on short shake-down trips around
the block, and I found it woefully underpowered.  -So
this is the vaunted Hemi that everyone talks about?  I
felt like I would probably lose a drag to anything
with more than 4 cylinders.  -Could probably dust the
neighbor kid on his go-ped scooter, so it's not all
bad news.

The carb seemed to be working poorly - no accelerator
pump/no-start when cold without lots of cranking. 
Lots of soot out the back end.

I sent that out and had it rebuilt.  Carb guy said to
check my filter, since there was a LOT of rust in the
carb.  The filter, one of those clear plastic ones,
weighed about 10 ounces!  It looked ok until it got
flipped over and there was a solid glob of congealed
rust in it, right where you couldn't see it!  Looks
like I'll have to be doing the gas tank now too.

That's sorta frustrating, because the car was
represented to the PO as "restored" mechanically when
it was on ebay.  As far as I can tell, the engine got
painted day-glo orange, none of the spinning
accessories got replaced, and the car just got warmed
over.  The "rebuilder" didn't put a new water pump on,
and used matching orange silicone to put the pump onto
the engine.

The water pump failed already (after 4 miles of use),
and I'm waiting on that right now.

That orange engine block really bothered me, so I
cleaned it with kerosene and resprayed it silver.  

Looks super now.  

While I was fiddling around with that, the heater
hoses started flaking their black paint off.  I may
not know much, but I'm pretty certain that painted
hoses are not a factory option, and I replaced them.

I'm coming to realize that the car was spruced up for
show, but wasn't really gone through competently with
a mind to making it dependable enough to leave one's
zip code with confidence.  I guess that when you're
paying someone to work on a car by the hour, things
get short-cutted.

The engine compartment looked clean and well managed
at first glance, and probably looked really nice on
the ebay photo.  Not so much now that I'm further into
it.

Get anything that you want to buy that's not nearby
inspected.  Even so, I probably would have given this
car a visual "pass" if I were looking at it with the
idea of buying it, and I like to think that I'm smart
enough to avoid the bigger mistakes by now, but this
car would have gotten me, definitely (technically it
did, I guess, but I'm not complaining).

I'm not mad - the car is a good car, and will be fun
to drive around in once it gets sorted (looks like a
million bucks), but you can't buy a car this old and
expect anything but a chance at getting lucky with the
seller's representation (unless you know them, and
they know what they're talking about).

At this point, post purchase, the car got/will get the
following items:

New Brakes
New Paint
Rebuilt Transmission
Rebuilt Water Pump
Rebuilt Carb
New hoses and belts
Tune-up kit
Re-lined gas tank
Welded up leaking exhaust/new muffler
New lenses all around (thanks George Laurie!)
Engine painted/detailed
Maybe new tires?  The bias plies on there flat-spot
something firece after just a week, and it takes
getting them warm to loosen them up.

This on a "solid", "Drive anywhere" car that got
almost top dollar for its condition on ebay.

Had I been paying to have this work done at a shop
that charges by the hour, I could already have been in
for $8000+ on the mechanical problems that have been
exposed so far.

I suspect that I'll wind up spending $4000 plus enough
of my time to easily shoot way, way past the car's
market value if you add in what was paid for it on
ebay by the PO before it got crunched.



Caveat Emptor on used cars.


-K


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