Replicant. Nice term, I'd run with it, dude. No shame not having a 'fake' one at all, except it isn't worth as much - but you weren't going to sell it anyway, right? Value means nothing to me becasue I plan on being buried in it anyway.
I bought mine with 94k on the clock early this March, with the following problems:
- A/C is out, they said it leaked but I could always fill it and have A/C for a few months...
- Heater core is out, they bypassed it becasue it leaked. Car runs pretty cool without it, and who needs a heater in Hawaii anyway?
- rear hatch defroster is out, only a few lines will work. More to come as I look into that problem.
- Tint isn't in the best of shape, either.
- Antenna motor always runs. The fuze is yanked out to prevent battey drain, so I have no horn, interior lights or turbo-timer. Plugging the fuse in and all that stuff works.
- Headliner is sagging. Even on the T-top under-liner whatevers. Lots of annoying reddish dust was coming out of them, so I stashed the liners for now. T-top headliners dont' sag nearly as bad as a solid roof headliner does, though, so I'm not terribly concerned about it yet.
- Driver's fog light is not working. It's also missing the stupid plastic clips that hold the lens to the body.
- I'm missing two badges, the nose badge and one of the winged tire emblems. The car looks naked without a nose badge!
- The fiberglass nose was replaced, but it wasn't primered before the idiots painted it, so the paint is chipping off of it.
- I had thought the boost gauge was kaput, but I discovered that it isn't - I just wasn't getting on the gas enough.
The tee-fitting off of the MAP line is bad, still, so I'm probably not getting accurate readings as boost PSI will leak out before hittign the MAP. But it actually works, sort of.
- The car will make this odd dort of backfire type of complaining once or twice if I really get on the gas, after it gets done hesitating, it's a freaking rocket!!! For this reason, I rarely if ever exceed half throttle. Still pretty fast, though.
- Alignment is off. Driver's front tire shows sign of excessive wear on the outside portion of the tread.
- Tranny makes a curious whining sound in first gear only, pitch is based off of engine RPM's. No mechanical-sounding junk, and the fluid is super-clean, so I don't know. Doesn't affect driveability and shows no sigh of getting better or worse.
- Rust on the t-top cross bar thing, the black plate that is screwed inot the off. Pretty bad.
- Minor rust on the passenger A-pillar, a few inches from the base of the pillar. Looks deep.
For all of those reasons, the value of the car isn't very high, but a lot of these problems can be addressed by me, or a competent shop.
I paid seven grand for it. How much would you all have paid for it? Be brutally honest, please.
My dreams consist of the folowing items, hopefully in a logical order.
- FIX ALL THE GLARING MECHANICAL PROBLEMS ABOVE!
- ScanMaster. I'd like to know what's going on with the car, and to learn how it ticks.
- SFC's.
- Re-paint the car, new badges. I'd leave the door and windshield stickers off, the old owners had them reapplied when they re-painted the car some years ago and the windshield banner looks "off".
- I'm hazy on this point, but some subtle modifications, the typical stuff that most of you guys do, like the hot-wire fuel pump mod, a better boost gauge, and maybe other suspension modifications, replacement high-flow convertor, and anything else that just makes too much sense to ignore.
Despite the problems, I love driving it. Much more so then my GTA, which seems snail-slow in direct comparison! I still get some stares from other drivers, and Mustangs seem to hate my guts whenever I drive it. Real easy to spin up a Mustang GT owner (especially the more mods the Mustang has, tacky or not), and I even had a white nice-looking Cobra try to start something. Considering the car hates WOT, I just let them be immature, and really enjoy it when they get a ticket... Ricers give me a hard time also - I'm guessing it's the door stickers. My co-workers and fellow Church goers are always giving me props for the car, and all but drool over it. Once it's fixed up, I'll have a real head-turner on my hands. Makes me want to go cruising, just thinking about it.
Here's a picture of the car, illustrating a few of the problems I outlined above. No, the car next to it hasn't moved for YEARS. Does it show?
