Hi, I’m Lincoln (Redlands/SoCal IE hinterlands)

[LincolnPeters]

Been doing the new car search for longer than I can care to remember and that’s mostly because of personal finances and such... I may have settled in on the most dicey car Craigslist has thrown up in a while. Met with the fella selling it today, left $500 and am gonna return with the other $6500 to come away with the salvage/ badly matched paint to a little here and there deformed body-work princess that if (the gods are willing) ‘an it don’t grenade something critical on the way home, well—-it looks like it should be a great platform for me to learn how to drive a little better at the upper margins of things.

Your forum—-I love it. Y’all seem really down to earth. I’m over here in Redlands in what they call the Inland Empire of SoCal. That would be like the Long Island of New York, or more exactly, The Ronkonkoma.

So, I’m excited and terrified like I was buying an old Ferrari (someone on here said that and me and my lady laughed and laughed and laughed. I’ve been riding fast motorbikes since I was 22 and could afford one. Got hurt real bad a couple times in the last few year (on MTBs) and have to maybe move over a little to something that doesn’t tear my rotator cuff out of it’s socket the next time I overcorrect. That’s what I meant by learn. The car I’m gonna pick up——Oh God. But if it can help train me up and keep my fast twitch skillset intact when I go over the bar to fifty next year, whelp then let’s bless this little experiment with longevity and endurance.

I’m already grateful to Chi-town and Truegearhead for their insight into the 2.7 swap. Thanks for being real and cool. I’m Lincoln. Lemme know if I can be of any service to you.

[LincolnPeters]

Lame for replying to my own post, I know, but if any of you can recommend or are yourselves solid mechanics and not a flatbed-tow to the OC or 818... I’d totally love to hear about that here or in a personal message. I can see that adopting/ being adopted by a stand-up mechanic is... yeah, I’d love to hear from you or about your friends.
Linc.

[Starter986]

Hi Lincoln,

Redlands. Down the "street" from me... I'm 92262 proximate.

The shop I'm considering (for transmission work) is Precision in Colton. Check them out.

I'll help you do some wrenching. PM me.

[Lugnut]

Welcome to the forum! Just to make sure what I'm reading... you are spending $7,000 on a dicey salvage/bad paint/deformed body-work 2.5L car? That price seems high by double. Around here, anyway, there have been extremely nice base model cars (2.5s and 2.7s) for less than that and they sit and sit on the classifieds forever. For 7k, I feel like you should be in the realm of nice drivers that are in decent shape, have good body, paint, top, and mechanicals, but maybe haven't had an IMS replacement. A super project shouldn't be going for that kind of money.

Good luck on it, though! Can't wait to see pics and how you nurse it back to health!

[LincolnPeters]

@Starter...that’s a hulluva offer. And I’ll write down precision for the future. That was a super generous offer, BTW.

AND Lugnut, I take your point. My thought for now is I gave up some of that exterior quality for solid internals, but that’s only as far as I know, and hope.
There are receipts for clutch kit and associated replacement internals and facing, brakes and rotors, and a “built” (not sure what that means motor work or just installed in this case, will have to dig around) motor added two years ago with 47k miles put in by Speed Gallery out of Hollywood. IMS done.

I’m still in that “Whoa, look at this thing that just happened” daze when you buy yourself into something like this. Put 70 miles on it and everything seems tight. Let all the dudes at work weigh in and seems legit. I better call the insurance lady before it’s not Friday any more.

I totally appreciate you guys noticing me!