Has anyone bought a wrecked car and fixed it up for a bargain ride? I'm tempted to buy a fixer as a project - something that isn't too damaged that I could swap in parts and maybe only requires a little body work. Sort of like pic related.
Is it a totally stupid idea or a worthwhile endeavor if you're careful? What kind of damage should I prefer when looking at these things?
Fixing a wrecked car so that it meets the same safety standards is difficult job. Because of safety standards, the metal is designed to crumple a certain way and distribute the force. If you were to try fixing the car in your picture, you probably would find out the rear doors are misaligned, you may have to take quite a few tries to fix leaks in the rear window and trunk, and your welding jobs would make certain parts of the frame too weak or too strong. Also, insurance tends to be more expensive for salvage/rebuild vehicles.
Mercedes are already super cheap used because of how shitty they are, and how much it costs to keep them running. Just buy a used one.
It's probably easier to find some dumbass trying to dump a Mercedes that just needs a simple fix.
Well, has anyone heard from catstang recently?
Still warms my heart
They're better as donor vehicles for kit cars desu.
Salvage cars are worthless. Get a mint one or get a different car. Anything you save will be spent fixing it up
Who/What is Catstang?
Yes, although i regret not buying a mint vehicle but it turned out to be a good car so im happy.
Watch this guys videos first.
youtu.be
will do, thanks!
Yeah, ok, I'm not talking about that level of fucked. I'm looking at maybe replacing a door or trunk or bumper, not trying to pull a rollover out of the grave.
>website called Cop Art
>not a single police sculpture to be found
>just a bunch of wrecked cars
I needed something nice to give my uncle for his retirement party. He's retiring as a sheriff of 40 years.
False advertising / 10
I always assumed it was dark humor.
Bunch of wrecked and bloodstained cars called "cop art."
IDK, on that particular example the panel gaps on the rear doors look OK.
I mean, if I were serious about that exact car, I'd want to see it in person before putting money on it, but from the pictures it doesn't look like it would be *that* bad to fix over the course of a bunch of weekends.
Rear end damage sucks ass to fix.
If you just ain't care, then that thing can be easily fixed by pulling the latch area until it aligns and just putting on a new bumper cover.
But I wouldn't bother with an amg car, you can find them totaled because the ABC went out nowadays. And you can just swap it to coils or diy fix it for cheap
That's the idea though.
A lot of cars can be a huge risk to buy used.
If you buy a salvage car, you have one obvious problem, and you can usually assume that the car was a mostly working car before the crash.
This way if it does turn out to be a piece of shit, you are not into it by much and can easily get your money back parting it out or selling it honestly.
I'd rather buy a car cheap and throw the difference in cost into parts and know that everything was mended right, then buy a car used that's a complete unknown.
I'm not saying that this is THE ONE for me, I'm more or less just holding it up as an example. For instance, the interior looks fine, the C pillars look fine, the rear door panel gaps look fine, it just looks like it took a hit above the rear bumper. I didn't know that that sort of thing sucks ass to fix because I don't really know anything about this, but what kind of damage would be better or easier to deal with/low risk?
For instance, here's another, it looks like the hardest thing to fix would be the rear quarter panel.
copart.com
It just looks like it got rubbed. No airbag deployment, no real violent hit, more like a serious fuck up going through the McD's drive thru.
It sucks ass to fix because the unibody usually gets bent even in super minor crashes, and you can't just unbolt and swap quarter panels.
The easiest damage to fix is usually front end. As long as it doesn't bend the front rails or any underlying structure to the point that you can't safely repair it.
This is because you just find another car being parted out that's the same color, and just buy the whole front clip to put on yours. Everything bolts on.
Roof damage from falling objects is easier to fix then rear end usually as well, and that almost always totals a car.
Do you want a car to fix up and sell, or one to personally drive for a long time?
Suicide with a full-metal jacket round
One tiny hole in the body/shattered glass, minimal cleanup
Aha, I get it. Thank you for the education.
I'm looking for a project that will hopefully wind up as my weekend driver/fun car.
I DD a Toyota Tundra and have a LS400 as my spare car, so having a reliable ride handy isn't a problem I have.
That car was totaled out because a professional, with many years of experience, and the exact knowledge, equipment, and ability to fix it, deemed it not worth fixing. The quarters are damaged. It doesn't matter if they are damaged "just a little bit" or ripped off the car with a tractor, the repair is the same, major structural surgery.
>what if I just replace the bumper and bondo the dents on the quarters
What are you going to mount the bumper to? The unibody is smashed where it mounts all around the trunk floor. Who is going to paint match it? Will need to blend way into the quarters, minimum $1500 for paint if you do all the prep work. You will end up dumping $5k into a poorly fixed car that is worth $4k. That's why people don't buy cars from copart, unless they already know EXACTLY how and what to fix.
I have a car in my shop right now that was repaired (and it looked good) after going into a ditch, but the customer said he's had a strange shimmy while turning right at speed since the repair. The body shop didn't catch it but the whole rear subframe is tweaked. You can align the car, but the LR wheel is about 3/8" back from the RR wheel. The strut bushing binds when cornering, car is unsafe to drive, going to be an additional $6k to fix. What do you do when you have some copart car, "fix" it, then find something like that? You don't have a frame rack so you have no way of knowing. Just not worth it.
Okay, do you want the car to be fixed 100%, or just fixed like 95% visually only?
If you just don't care, then both the cars you posted are fine as they sit, just force the trunk closed and put tail lights back on it. You can maybe clean it up a bit or put on a new bumper. For the Bently, hopefully the bit that's missing comes with it and you can just zip tie it on, otherwise, just get a new bumper cover for like 1200 and calm it good.
OK, so look for a car that has a smushed roof or carefully consider a car with front end damage like said. I know enough to avoid flood cars like the plague. I'm only considering what they call "run and drive" cars.
If you were seeking a project car from the bargain basement, what would you look for?
>muh you have to do it all exactly and perfect and replace the whole unibody if it gets a chip in it
Daily reminder that a corvette was totaled because some road debris scratched an exposed but of the unibody.
For your car you're talking about, just fucking put it on the frame machine and pull it back, what the fuck. 6 grand my ass.
I would definitely not do a roof car. I personally wouldn't be scared away from a flood car if it's on a brand I have experience with, but I've done hundreds of harnesses/overlays and know electrical diag very well. A body guy may not be scared off doing a car with a stuffed front end that he can pull on a frame rack, but of course I wouldn't buy a car like that. The only hope of coming out ahead is using some kind of expertise or resources others don't have. If you have none you have no hope of coming out ahead. Many people with shops look at copart cars, to win one you (knowing nothing) have to spend more than a professional, who can repair the car 100x easier than you, thinks the car is worth. There is no free lunch/"easy" salvage car. If the repair was a piece of cake the car wouldn't have been salvaged.
I'm pretty picky so I would be shooting for 100%. That being said, my skill level is not that high. I can diagnose, source, remove and replace parts, but I would have to run it in to a body shop for anything that requires welding and paint (unless I decide to just do a vinyl wrap over the car instead of paint). That being said, I have a buddy who manages a body shop, and if I brought in something not too major, I'm pretty sure I could get a break on the price.
...
>I personally wouldn't be scared away from a flood car
No kidding? I've heard that those are the worst. Electrical work is my major strength, though, and swapping out interior bits is easy as fuck. Second look at flood cars that still run and drive?
>just fucking put it on the frame machine and pull it back
Pull a fabricated aluminum subframe, which is surely more rigid than the unibody, on the frame rack? Yeah, great idea!
It's odd on Veeky Forums every poster thinks every repair is $300 and takes an hour, yet has never managed to actually do any of these repairs.
"I know more than professionals and most cars get totalled for no reason" is definitely the right attitude, you should buy a copart salvage and show OP how easy it really is.
no clue what happened to him but I still have these two pics. Thought I deleted them.
>'94 mustang GT
>needs a new front bumper by the looks of it, maybe new radiator
>buy it now is $500, delivery would be $140
>salvage title
How much would driving a GT with a salvage title fuck my insurance?
Long time ago my gf at the time was driving a Mercury Cougar that was 4 years old and got into a flood. The car was on a sloped driveway and the water came up and got high enough to soak the carpet in the rear of the car - didn't even get high enough to reach the seats or the front or the top of the transmission tunnel. Fresh water, too. Insurance totalled it. I could never figure out why. You could have literally shop-vac'd the water out of the back footwells, opened the doors and put a fan on it in the garage for a few days and it would have been perfectly fine.
But it was a Mercury Cougar, so I suppose it wasn't worth even a few hours of labor to fix.
The insulation under the carpet was fucked and it probably soaked up to the front as well. Carpets aren't the problem when an interior gets flooded, it's everything under the carpet.
Still.
I had a CVPI back then and it had the rubber floor. I remember noticing that the floor was leaking water, likely from years of snow melt getting underneath and soaking the spongey shit underneath the rubber. I spent an afternoon pulling the seats out and pulled the entire floor out, flipped it upside down and let it sit in the sun on the driveway until it was bone dry. I put it back in the car and drove it for several more years before the trans blew up.
It didn't seem to be that hard, and yet insurance would have totalled it?
Post your best finds, bonus points for blood
copart.com
Nothing tops the one I saw with the obvious shotgun slug hole in the roof over the driver's seat.
I mean, yeah, a little bondo and a new interior, but....eww.
kek
If the part was bent one way, it can be bent the other way by proving the same force in the opposite direction.
>eww
Depends, what car
A Kia IIRC.
Cop?? low miles
>all that blood
>couple of spots of not blood, god only knows what
I'm sure it smells real nice in there.
Would feel weird owning a car someone an hero'd in.