First off, I really really really want a 1st generation Eagle Talon Tsi AWD. I found one about 4 hours away, and the body looks really clean. I have yet to go see it in person, because I don’t want go out there until I’ve decided if I really want it or not.
The guy has a lot of work into it. I mean, he had the engine rebuilt in '04. Timing belt/water pump about 12K miles ago. New clutch, pressure plate, throwout bearings. The turbo was replaced/upgraded about a year ago. I mean the list goes on and on. He says the transmission grips the same way as the day he bought it in '01. He says he’s the second owner of the car. I mean, it sounds like it’s perfect.
The bad: He told me that on start-up only, the car blows out some bluish-white smoke. It doesn’t do it under boost or throttle. I asked him if he had just the top end rebuilt in the engine or the whole thing, and he says the piston rings were done during the rebuild in late '04 along with valve seals, rod bearings, and new gaskets. So I don’t know what to think. He said in October he noticed an oil leak and took it to some shop and they diagnosed the leak as coming from the turbo. But the turbo has less than 10k on it.
The car has 153k on it, and he wants $3500. I talked to him down to $3000 as is, but I don’t know man. See I have another problem. I have $3500 sitting in the bank, but it’s in a CD. I wanted to see if I could take out a $3000/4000 loan and use that as colateral (sp.) If I get this car for $3000 then I guess I’ll have an extra $1000 laying around to fix whatever is needed. But do I really want to go through all the hassel of doing that?
What do you guys think? I mean, I REALLY want it.
Sorry this is so long, too. HAH.
just save up until you can pay cash for what you want. borrowing money is no good.
<–only stupid people take out car loans
but really, just wait until you have a few grand saved up, and the start looking for what you want. Im sure you want it like RIGHT NOW but be patient and eventually the perfect one and the right deal will come along. im assuming that you have an audi that is currently non-functional, so before you go out and borrow money to get a car, id fix and/or sell the audi and then you can use that money (cash, because im assuming you dont owe anything on it) towards a DSM. the audi is just money sitting there right now.
but what do i know? im 20 years old, in college and in more debt than most people twice my age.
Yeah with a 1G DSM with some upgrades done to it already, you better double that repair fund to be on the safe side! You don’t know if the guy skipped the maintenance stuff and jumped right to upgrading things. It might be the reason he did a motor rebuild on it. Shit adds up quick. Your money though. Do what you heart contents.
buy an even less reliable dsm with all the money you have?
somthing doesnt add up.
theres a lot more issues with dsm’s than just the motor. even with a freshly rebuilt motor and a clean shell, it WILL have problems. buy a solid DD before you invest all your money into a money pit. unless you already have one in which case you can just ignore everything i just said.
He swears he’s keep it maintained. I mean, the list is really long of what he’s done. I just don’t want to post it to keep it anonymous. I don’t want to frighten away any potential buyers on here (if there are any) with the info I posted before. Know what I mean? If that even makes sense.
Edit: Woody, I’d consider my audi to be a reliable DD since I just had basically everything I could think of that was wrong with it taken care of. I just got it back on the road. I only need some damn window regulators that are nearly impossible to find, and I think I’m set.
Carnut’s yet to be wrong on anything that i’ve seen on here, and he’s worked on many of these. i mean like, MANY.
i wouldn’t do it. i’ve thought about these cars so many times, and they’re so cool in theory - but the maintenance is killer. i’d find another car… i know, it sucks - these are such phat rides… when they work right
EDIT: who cares about other potential buyers? it sounds like he’s willing to tell anyone who’s serious the same that he told you. and compared to many others out there, what he’s told you isn’t bad. post it up for the real DSM guys to take a look at and give you more info, if nothing else.
a list of stuff thats been done, and having actual receipts that PROVE it was done are 2 totally different things. if i was buying a car like that, id want to see some documentation of the service preformed, not a simple list that reads:
-Timing Belt: 56,000 miles
-Oil Change: 56,000 miles
-Water Pump: 61,000 miles
-New Turbo: 70,000 miles
Oh I’d def. check out the documentation. He says he has it all. And I’m also bringing a guy with me who knows these cars. (Maybe if someone on here wants to come with me… haha that’s the next thread. HA.) I know shit about cars, but not that much. And since I’m a girl, I’ve noticed that people think I don’t know jack shit. I wouldn’t want someone to play games with me. It’s sad that it’s like that but I know it and so do you guys.
well I bought a 91 Talon TSi last year. it had 89k on it. the guy said it had been maintained, new upgrades on almost everything. Said it was stock and has always had been stock. I took my mechanic with me…it looked fine, drove ok. I had it for three weeks and it blew a head gasket/timing because the car over-heated from a cracked coolant line. Since the temp guage didn’t work…i had no chance. So no more Talon. Insurance doesn’t cover cars blowing up so I lost all the money I paid for the car and was stuck at square one with nothing. I previously owned a 2G…spent more money fixing little things all the time even though it was in amazing shape, low miles, never saw winters, only a few small mods on it.(that car got totaled by an 87 year old man BTW) I’ve learned my lesson. hopefully you won’t experience what I had to. I say just drive what you have until you can afford a payment on a newer car. You really don’t want to have all that debt. I was stuck driving a corsica for this past year until now because I finally got my finances together and can now afford what I want. And if you ask the right questions and really know what you are talking about…guys won’t get far in trying to take advantage of you. being a girl, I actually get better deals on cars/parts once they realize I actually know stuff what i’m talking about. Good luck!
If you can’t afford to pay $3k for the car, you sure as hell can’t afford to fix it when it breaks. 6 months down the road, you’ll have a couple hundred dollars in months bills (insurance/payments) on the thing and need to put $500-1000 into something like the transmission/clutch/transfer case. Then you’ll be up shit creek.
To be a DSM owner you have to be especially tolerant of random things breaking.
I would not recommend you doing this if you can’t do work on your own car. If you have access to tools, parts, “a warm garage to do your work” [Skrapper] and you know what you are doing, I would say go for it.
