Lloyd Smale

let it sit for 4 years. He had it in a heated building but never so much as turned it over. Motor seals and ac seals dried up. tires flat spotted permanently. if your going to let them sit at least run them every 3 or 4 months for 5 minutes to keep things circulated

Wazzugar

By far the worst thing done was let the black car sit in the hot sun unprotected for years. car got hot enough to warp the halo plastic, turned the carpet literally to dust and warped the heck out of the rear bumper. Second worse thing was painting all the plastic body moulding, looks decent but I think I have to replace it when I repaint the car. Third thing was quite stupid, replace the rear bose speaker assemblies with unamplified 6x9s, bet you can imagine how that sounded.

blackozvet

my vette had to be converted to right hand drive, and that sometimes means they have to lengthen some wiring looms.
when I was putting in my new stereo I found the stereo loom was one of those lengthened (its in the centre, so go figure !)
anyway, whoever did made all the wires RED !
took a while to sort that one out

Fastnail

Broke every mounting point on the dash pad to remove it for whatever reason, hadn't changed fluids in who knows how long, turned brake rotors too far on last brake job, just overall indifference. But got the car at a good price.

mmccarson

installed aftermarket alarm system on 91. Pain in the ***.

CaptainMerricka

I bought a 2004 GTO for pretty cheap. I found out why it was so cheap when I saw it first hand and noticed that the P.O. had hacksawed the rear fenders so he could fit huge tires on the thing. He said he was using NOS and wanted some fat tires to stay planted. 6 months after owning the thing I took out the top of the rear seat to find another stupid thing he had done. The foam in the rear seat was almost completely removed so they could obviously smuggle something! The thing always felt like a moonshine car from then on.

oxrageous

Wow, where to begin. At this point, I can honestly look back and say my '89 vert should have been a parts car - there was faaaar too much wrong with it than I would have believed. Pretty much everything had been taken apart and put back together in a half-*** fashion. As a result, I've got more money into than it's worth.

The latest was the exhaust. The PO had taken it off the car and cut the cats out. Then welded it back to together with the most hideous, holey welds you've ever seen. Most of the hangars were also missing, so it banged and clanged down the road, and with the Flowmaster mufflers it was loud enough to wake the dead. They also made a bend by heating up a section of the pipe and bending it around a tree or something - it was pinched, of course.

The exhaust guy, who has been doing this 30 years, said it was the worst exhaust situation he'd ever seen on a Corvette.

John A. Marker

Fuel pump relay stopped working on my 85. I replaced it and something about the "old" one looked odd. Didn't look to be sealed. Opened it up to discover that PO had soldered the circuit board to make the old relay work. You know what the little green boards look like with their narrow clean paths. This was soldered about 1/8" wide and 1/8" tall...looked like S**T. At that time FP relays were only about $15!

Stephen Vogel

Replaced a broken door switch with one from a Mazda. Drilled bigger mounting holes in the door panel to make it fit and then obviously realised that it won't connect to a GM harness so put the whole thing back together not working. Made replacing with correct switch 100 x more difficult than it needed to be.

B17Crew

B17Crew

tmirisola

Parked the car under pine tree's I guess. There's spots on the hood there he tried to remove the sap. Thank god it can be buffed out. Car goes in for buffing on the 20th. I hate looking at it like that.

Gave me the outdoor cover :-o that said Indoor Use only on it. I will never use it.

Had the two rear wheels on backwards. I showed him where the tires were directional. He just looked at me.

Put Magnaflows on the car. Gave me a big song and dance how he was not going to replace the OE mufflers with GM OE mufflers that are made in China. So, he put Magnaflows on it cause they were made in the USA. They are louder inside than they are outside.

Dried paste car wax everywhere. In the screws for the tail lights, around the side lights and in between every body seam. Uggg makes you want to get sick looking at it.

Thank god he only owned the car for a year from the original owner. He didn't have enough time to ruin it.

FASTAZU

Another non-Driver, Bought my 91 in 02 with only 9k miles (thank you Mr. Keefer) now has 56k miles of smiles

Aardwolf

Previous owners work..

DinoBob

No, no, no. If you are going to start and run the car it does more harm than good unless you let it reach operating temperature. You must burn off the condensation generated by starting the engine. 20 minutes minimum.

1cooldaddyo

Oh, where to begin.
The Carquest shocks (all blown)?
The fan that had been rewired at least 3 different ways to try to get it to run. As found it was wired direct to the battery with twisted and taped connections. I dang near lost a finger when I pulled the steel ball out of the shroud.
The vinyl wrap on the roof?
Indoor/outdoor carpet glues to the underside of the roof?
Front speaker covers mounted with 3 inch lag bolts?

ETM

they had the sawblades on backwards

DaveP85C4

How about remove the "Callaway" from a real Callaway car?

I had a Sapphire Blue 88 Convertible I purchased at a repo yard in 1995 for $7,500. Not wrecked, stock car, had it running in 30 minutes, took a few days and about 2,500 more to sort out the various loose ends, put tires and a new top on it. It had a decal in the rear window "Callaway Twin Turbo", and the nose emblem was also a "Callaway" deal. The underside of the hood had been cut out, and a piece glued into the cutout. Very strange. The engine was a 1988 engine, but not the one that came in that car. Wrong VIN derivative. At the time I was looking at it in the yard I had never seen a real Callaway, I didn't pay attention to this stuff, I figured it had been added to the car, because it obviously wasn't a twin turbo. Over the next few months I found some paperwork in the car, did some research, found the evidence of the boost gauge having been in the dash, and some other stuff. It was not a B2K, but having seen numerous Callaways since, I'm positive my 88 had been a real deal Callaway, but was now minus its engine, and just another Corvette.

Basically, the PO took his Callaway car (and probably himself too) out of state in about 1993 and quit making payments on it. It looks like he obtained another 88 and swapped the drivetrains and hood insert between the cars. Eventually the bank in California found the real Calloway and it ended up in the yard where I found it.

I drove it for 3 years and had a great time. Almost no trouble with it, and a much better performing car than my 85. I sold it in 98 for $10,500 and that guy traded it in for a pickup for 4,500 trade-in value. It bounced around dealers and auctions for 3 years, then settled-in with someone in Inland Empire that has had it 10+ years, and drives it about 1,000 miles a year according to emissions records.

He probably never figured out the history of his car.

seeyouinajif

I would also like to add to my post.

Stupidest thing not driving this vette. I wish it was a stick but it's still fun. P.O bought it in 07 with 59k on it, I bought it Jan '16 with 66k. Less than 1k miles a year, hasn't been inspected since 2011 so probably been sitting for that long.

SurfnSun

Rumor has it that a couple was going thru a divorce and the judge granted ownership of the Corvette to the wife yet the husband retained ownership of the Callaway Twin Turbo conversion. That is the basic premise of the story.

I'll bet this is where the parts are to your car.


http://nashville.craigslist.org/ctd/5562893407.html

DaveP85C4

That's extremely interesting. I don't think there was a divorce, or anyone 'retained ownership' of anything. OTHER than the bank in San Gabriel California that didn't find it for almost two years. It hadn't been registered since 1992, and the back registration and penalties were about $1,500 which the dealer I bought it from paid. I found some memos from the guy's office under the seats, and it looked like he was in the Defense Industry in the boom years of the 80's (Reagan's Star Wars years) and by 91-92 his business had failed, and he was in another state. I highly doubt his $70,000+ car was paid for when he split SoCal. I think the blue car was "sold" or perhaps part of the payment for the swap labor with the intent "to get the Title to you soon". He never did, the bank found it, and it came to the repo yard in SoCal where I found it in September 1995.

I remember one thing about the VIN the swapped engine had that made it memorable even if I don't recall exactly what the VIN was. If I could find out the VIN of the red car, I can make a match. I also still have the VIN of the blue car. I run it on carfax from time to time to see its whereabouts and status.

My blue car had evidence of having had an Aero kit, rear spoiler and rockers. It had the gold mesh BBS wheels I've seen on other Calaways. The red car has Dymags, but those are easily changed. The rear wing had been busted off the car, leaving big holes in the bumper cover. The rockers were missing. One mirror was broken off. There were lots of unfinished details. Rear bushing in the trans was gone from over tightening the beam bolts. Lots of missing sensors, wiper motor, cut wires on the engine. Exhaust leaks at the head to manifolds. Rear diff leaked between the case and rear cover.
The red car may have been "professionally swapped" but if the same guy put the blue car back together, it wasn't very well done. I found a local guy that parted C4's. He had all the body parts I needed in Sapphire Blue except the rear bumper cover. I had to paint that.

I figured the swap was into a different color car, hence the piece glued into the hood on my blue car that came from the red car so there was no paint work involved. There is one detail BOTH of these cars have in common which is unusual for a Callaway. They were/are BOTH Automatics. My blue car had a patch in the tunnel which I presumed was for the shifter for the TH400. So it's a small world. The red car probably DOES have the parts off my blue 88.

I wonder if he'd give me the VIN of it? I'm now curious as hell if the engine in my blue car came out of this one.

EDIT ADD: I just looked through the file I still have for this car, even though it's been 18 years since I sold it. I found the owner's name and address I copied off the California title when I purchased it. I found an Experian credit report I found in the car. Both of these are in an individual's name. And I found the "GM Protection Plan" card GM sends to the Original Purchaser after the purchase is recorded. It is in the name of the Defense Contractor I found on other paperwork.

I don't think the story in that add regarding "the original owner of BOTH cars had it swapped" is true unless he also bought the red car new, and owned it outright. Which maybe he did. He sure didn't own the blue car outright. The bank lost their butt on it. I thought I paid 7,500 for it, I paid 8,300 which was still not much for a lot of car. And I also don't think there was a divorce involved. At least not with the swap. My speculation 20+ years later is that he owned both cars. The red one was free and clear, the blue one had a hell of a note against it. He didn't want to give up his Callaway, so he didn't. And fooked the bank.