Need help buying a car in CA

[Schoenfeld]

Hi,

As many of you already know, I'll be at Amiwest next weekend, and I'll be staying a little longer for some more trade shows. I figured it would be cheaper to buy a used car than to rent one for such a long time (tried Avis, and they want a whopping $1446,90 for an SUV for that time!). Registration and insurance is already taken care of. Even if I lost a few hundred bucks selling the car afterwards, I'll be saving a bunch. If it's "the lucky find", I'll keep it and ship it over to Germany.

I'll be landing in San Francisco, CA thursday next week, but anything that I find on eBay is either overpriced, or much too far away from California. What I need is a reliable passenger vehicle for three persons and lots of luggage. I just want to avoid getting a lemon. Oldtimers OK, price range around $2000, A/C, cruise control, diesel preferred, dents and other optical drawbacks dont matter. Just needs to run, no leaks, and it should make more than 10 miles/gallon ;-)

What are the websites to check? Maybe a trustworthy used-car dealer to call between San Francisco and Sacramento? Any help appreciated!

Jens Schönfeld

[Schoenfeld]

Thanks for the hint with rent-a-wreck, but I went for the buying option.

I found a 25-year old Chevy Scottsdale pickup truck with 6.2L diesel engine. Was a great vehicle during my time in the US, and it's now for sale.

I'm looking for $1200 from amiga.org members, $1500 from anyone else, or $5000 from Microsoft employees.

Some data:

Year: 1979 (I'm the second owner!)
6.2L diesel replacement engine (early 80s, military overstock, the 1979 diesels were 5.7L and blew after a year or two).
practically new Michelin tires
heavy duty leaf springs in the back
All lights OK
Brand new starter ($180)
new air filter
roughly 130000 miles

The truck gets nearly 20mpg, has two tanks, 18 gallons each, manual switching between them.

Breaks work great (had to do an emergency stop because someone pulled into my lane, and was surprised how good such a heavy thing stops!).

Passenger door opens, but must be lifted to close. One welding spot might fix this, or you just go to a pick-a-part. Outer appearance is "farm truck" - dirty, dented, rusty in a few spots, but being a California car, it's not much rust at all.

Interior condition: Poor. Bench seat is ripped, dash is cracked. Bench seat won't move forward any more (somehow stuck), you should be over 5ft to drive the car ;-)) Manual windows move hard, but work. A/C is there, but does not work. The previous owner said that it's a frion leak on the radiator, after fixing that, the A/C will work again. He seems like an honest guy to me, so you might be lucky and have the A/C fixed for a few hundred bucks. Belt on A/C compressor is missing.

The engine is really strong. Top speed is over 80mph, did not want to try more (risk of a speeding ticket). Accelerates great, suspension is super-precise (no play!), power steering works great. This truck drives like a car!

Automatic transmission shifts OK.

Two batteries, one is brand new, the other one is "good used".

With the truck comes a 115-piece toolkit (only three weeks old) that goes way beyond the toolkits that come with today's cars. Only used once when I had to exchange the starter (the only breakdown I've had in nearly 3000 miles!). A few spare parts: Oil filters, spare bulbs.

AM/FM/CD/CD-R/MP3 radio that's loud enough to piss off police officers. Drawback on that: Easily stealable, buttons have wrong labels. The search button advances directories, and the directory button enters search mode.

Colour: Copper/beige. Pictures on request.

If anyone of you needs a reliable beater, contact me ASAP for a test drive, as the insurance will expire pretty soon. The car will be in San Jose this weekend and the following week, after that, it'll be in Yamhill, Oregon, parked on private ground.

Contact me for any questions!

ciao,
Jens Schoenfeld

[Schoenfeld]

Well, we do have tanks like this in Germany, they're just very unusual. I'm driving a red/white 1990 GMC Jimmy (my 'boing mobile' with a gigantic boing ball on the hood), and I just finished restoring a 1982 Chevy El Camino. Both with 350 V8 engine modified to run on propane gas, because regular gas is way too expensive in Germany (about $5,40 per gallon).

The reason why I picked the Chevy Scottsdale was that it's easy to service. I would not know what to do on a Toyota if I broke down somewhere on the road. No easy computer access (my GMC has the simple ALDL interface as opposed to the far more complicated OBD2 that most Toyotas use), and the pickup is so high above the ground that I did not even have to jack it up to exchange the starter.

If I'm buying "old", then it should be "easy to service" at the same time. Anything "too new" to be serviced on your own, but "too old" to be worth taken to a shop would have been useless in my situation. I did the whole thing to save money, not to end up spending way more due to repairs.

Right now, I have spent roughly 200 dollars less than rental for one month, and I own a car and registration until sometime 2006. If I sell it (at whatever price), I'll be even better. I might keep it if nobody wants it, since it's a very reliable thing. Might be good to have for my next visit, sometime next year - if Jeri and Courtney will allow me to park it on their ground for such a long time.

Jens Schoenfeld