Beware the "restored car"

Posted by HH56 On 2017/1/15 14:23:17

Just watched a show on the Velocity channel called "FantomWorks". Not sure exactly what all the shop does -- appears to be a bit of everything in the old car realm.

In this episode a guy had brought in a "restored" 69 Camaro for some spruce up and to look at weak brakes and something with the engine. Didn't say where or how he had bought the car but it did look nice. New paint, upholstery and exhaust among other things. Don't think they mentioned what the guy had paid for the car but IIRC, figure mentioned for the "repair" was around $33K

What they found after getting it on the lift to start brake work was an almost totally rusted floor that had been "repaired" in a few spots. A main side to side brace on the unibody was cut out and instead of replacing the rusted floor and the brace, they had just put in some metal pieces here and there. The metal was held in by some tack welds and hot glue with silicone sealer to fill in the gaps. The emergency brake cable had been stretched over a frame member instead of going thru a hole so was chafing and barely worked while rear hydraulic brakes had been totally disconnected with tubing blocked off. There was something about the front stub frame attachment. Apparently it was put together during the restoration without the structural brace because after they put the new floor and brace in while it was on the frame machine and then put the car down on the ground afterwards the doors were considerably out of line with the fenders. That had to be fixed with some kind of shims on the stub frame.

I knew there were some shady people out there in the resto business but that kind of takes the cake. Just thinking of the problems found with that really good looking 55 Patrician that was mentioned a few days ago, all the more reason to thoroughly inspect a car before buying.