Would you buy a project or not?

[Bigmansm]

I am in the market buy to buy a turbo Buick. I have been looking at the 86 and 87 grand national's.

I want this car to be a daily driver but i put less than 12,000 miles a year on my car. mostly under 10,000 miles a year.

My question is: Would you buy a super high mileage car and rebuild it fora fresh start? or would you buy a relatively low mileage car to just leave it alone and fix thigns when they need ot be fixed.
Of course the lower mileage car may end up needing alot of work as well. But that seems to be the risk u take, even when you do a proper inspection of the vehicle.

I am use to BMW's so it seems like the Bucik parts are inexpensive comparatively.
I spend on average $500 a year on maintenance excluding oil changes, tires and brakes. most of the time it works out to be $1,000 a year for one year then nothing for the next.

 

[BlackBandit]

I'll throw something out there for ya. Learn all you can about these cars before you buy one. I bought one without doing the research and got one that had been ridden hard and put away wet so to speak. I daily drove it for about 4 years and I can assure you my maintenance costs were more than 1k a year. Maybe 2-3k a year. And that was parts. I do all my own work and no, I didn't have to go back and rework anything. That much stuff really broke. If you get a good one I'm sure it would be less than that though. But you have to get a good one. HTH james

EDIT: I guess that includes the trans I got from aamco which sucked (Lonnie Diers built now) and my engines. (Stocker had wiped mains, recon f'd me on a reman, current one I built)

 

[SavageATL]

Probably not-

I drive my car every day, and am dependent upon it, so I bought a low mileage car in good shape off of Ebay. If you shop around long enough, you can get one that hasn't been beat to death without paying show-car price.

Because of that it's been reliable. Still, it's a 20-year old car, so things go out mysteriously; because of it's age by definition it's a project car already. Look at all the half-finished or unfinished projects that go up for sale, people think they have the time/patience/money to work on them and then life gets in the way most of the time; also it's going to cost more to bring a beater back to life than to start out right.

For my money I'd shop until I found a car in good shape and fix things as they go wrong ('cause they WILL) rather than buy a project which ends up in little bits in the garage for all eternity.

 

[salvageV6]

I daily drive both of mine.

Buy a STOCK BUICK BUILT motored car anywhere from 50K to 120K miles will do.

I drive about 9K a year myself.

$1.5K a year for the first 3 years should get you plenty of spare parts and diagnostic stuff for the car. Performance parts extra.

Add another $1K to your initial buying budget for stuff you missed when buying the car, such as dry rot or wear on the tires, a sensor or two, new hoses, bad wires, plugs, some weather strips etc. and you should be good to go.

A super high mileage stock motored car may be FAR less of a project than a rebuilt motored car that wasn't done right.

That's a fact that can easily be backed up by reading the 3 main Buick boards.

 

[Bigmansm]

I drive my car every day, and am dependent upon it, so I bought a low mileage car in good shape off of Ebay. If you shop around long enough, you can get one that hasn't been beat to death without paying show-car price.

Because of that it's been reliable. Still, it's a 20-year old car, so things go out mysteriously; because of it's age by definition it's a project car already. Look at all the half-finished or unfinished projects that go up for sale, people think they have the time/patience/money to work on them and then life gets in the way most of the time; also it's going to cost more to bring a beater back to life than to start out right.

For my money I'd shop until I found a car in good shape and fix things as they go wrong ('cause they WILL) rather than buy a project which ends up in little bits in the garage for all eternity.

I agree. I just wanted to here what others thought. I was kind of being cheap because i enjoy working on cars. I will keep reading on the message board to see whats going on. When I find some time i plan to test drive a few that are local.
It just seems like most of these cars belong to owners that drove them hard.

 

[Project TNX]

I'm building a project.............

























.........one day I actually intend to have it running too.