Send him a certified check?
Certified check via snail mail would work if he’s willing to wait
That was a great price you paid,I paid a similar price for mine but it had twice the miles.:tup:
this.
Alright, I’ll go that route. Thanks guys
here’s the link to the ebay ad for anyone curious
i think it’s pretty damn clean, minus that hood ding
dude this thing is like mr.thirsty clean. his is silver too. nice car.
what the hell is a mr. thirsty?!
dude this guy has got the cleanest mk3 vr around here. prob best ive ever seen. i should post some pics of my last vr it was slammed with 17 inch tsw’s and white on grey.i like the silver tho there hard to find.
Cool, just booked my flight for march 2nd. I was starting to consider just having it transported up here because airfare has gotten so expensive that I figured 2 tickets plus amenities for 2 people on the drive up would cost about the same. Then my uncle, who travels a ton for work, called and said he had 2 free tickets for southwest that I could use. Fantastic. I took a few vacation days from work to spend at my grandmother’s on the beach too 
That will give me plenty of time to give the car a good thorough inspection before heading out.
Oh, and thanks again for the payment advice. It worked out fine. I got the title and bill of sale in the mail this past monday. I’ll get the DMV stuff done the monday before i leave so the 10 day inspection is still good for a few days when i get back
bump. lol.
So, it’s been awhile, but i wanted to update my experience thus far.
The “dealer” lied. The car was not in the shape he described it in, unfortunately it wasn’t exactly discoverable until i was 3.5 hours away at my grandmother’s house. I’ve gone through all the hoops trying to make this guy accountable but it boiled down to the fact that ebay will not back you up if the vehicle more than 10 years old and under a certain price. I was told they can advertise it pretty much however they want. Fun, right? But this bump isn’t about that part of my experience.
The guy picked me up from the airport in FL and took me to the “auction” that he was working at. He wasn’t a dealership, just some dude who flipped enough cars that the state required him to have a dealer license. But anyway he took my father and myself to the sketchiest fucking place i’ve ever been to. The car ran ok, the AC was cold and it shifted fine, so I just slapped my plates on it and we GTFO.
3 hours later we made it to my grandmother’s. By that time I could already tell that it needed struts.
I popped the hood to finally take a look at it without fear of being mugged and noticed something strange… the hoses running to the heater core were not connected to the heater core, but connected to each other with a pvc elbow bypassing the heater core… a quick reconnection of the heater core showed why as the coolant ran out the passenger side floor vent like a river. Nice.
After discovering this I called the guy i bought it from. He gave me every runaround in the world and ended with “I didn’t know about it, this is florida and we don’t need heat, not my problem”. I tried playing the legal route and dealing with ebay and got nowhere. At this point i had 3 days to do something about it before i had to be home for work.
First I called the local VW dealership and got a quote to put a heater core in…$1900 dollars and they couldn’t get the core in in time for me to get home anyway. Nice.
After putting spark plugs/wires, all new vacuum hoses, air filter, and a new set of tires on it, i started brainstorming ideas on how to make it home and stay warm… the end result was a 1200w power inverter and a space heater (which took a ridiculous amount of effort trying to find anything that makes heat in FL).
Did it make heat? yes. Did the heat even come close to comparing to what a car can put out? no. It was good until I hit west virginia and snowflakes the size of baseballs started falling, fogging the windows instantly. The only way to keep the windows clear was to run the AC and not breath. 12v fans, hand warmers, blankets, and other warming things were purchased at a local kmart. The rest of the ride home was unbelievably cold and miserable and I ended up getting sick for over a week.
So I get the car home, order the $25 heater core and put it in. Of course I then learn why it costs so much to have it put in as I removed everything from the steering wheel to the firewall. After about 20 hours and a lot of learning, the car was back together and HOORAY, i had heat.
Now I was in the clear it was time to go get it inspected. The nightmare was over. I did this on my lunch break… FAIL. But why, there is no check engine light! Oh, that’s because the check engine light BULB has been removed. Nice.
Moving on to fix that i had to determine what was wrong with it. Secondary air system, mainly, the combi-valve and air pump. Fuck. So off comes the entire front of the car. Radiator, bumper, everything from the motor-forward. I found an entire setup on VWvortex that was from a passat which required me to use all the parts from it, but it worked great. Not to mention the price was far less than buying the parts i needed. 1 new fusible link and VAGCOM was showing no more codes. Awesome. I get the inspection.
A few weeks go by and I’m tired of getting rocked from potholes in the road, so i finally buy all new struts for it. They replace pretty simple, no worries there. Afterwards I go to get an alignment done and BAM, can’t do it, inner tie rod end is bad. Ugh…no big deal, they are only 25 or so dollars for a complete assembly (inner, outer and tie rod). So i buy one for each side.
Later that week while driving home from work, I notice the car is running a bit rough and there seems to be a decent amount of visible white exhaust coming out of the tail pipe. By the time I get home the engine coolant light has turned on. A quick look under the hood reveals an empty coolant reservoir and no visible leaks. You guessed it; HEADGASKET.
Back in the garage it goes. After tearing some stuff out I find that I can get the head out without having to pull the motor and do a little bit of a happy dance…until I realize that both timing chain guides are busted. In order to change the lower guide the motor has to be pulled. So i do it.
The motor is on a stand now, the head is back on after getting freshened up at a local machine shop. I put a mk4 metal headgasket on since it is a recommended upgrade from the mk3 fiber gasket.
New clutch kit (clutch, plate, throw out bearing) on the way along with all new timing components (guides, chains, hardware). The clutch wasn’t bad but I figured…why not. I’ve also put in a shifter rebuild kit along with a TMtuning short throw shifter. I’ve replaced the rubber shifter bracket bushing with aluminum as well. The motor mounts were shot so those got upgraded to poly mounts, along with the transmission mount. New tie rods will be going in tomorrow.
Other than all of that, the car is GREAT :ham:
Fortunately, there isn’t a single rusted bolt on the entire thing so the dismantling has been pretty easy. It’s just time consuming.
In the 3 months that i’ve owned this car, I’ve driven it for approximately 2 weeks. With all the work that has gone in to it though, it should be good for quite a long time. I could just get rid of it but I feel kind of obligated to at least drive it for awhile since i’ve been so intimately involved for the past few months.
Does the whole experience make me think less of VW? no. It makes me think a lot less about buying from gangster car dealers in the ghetto of FT Lauderdale. I’ve learned a lesson, that’s for sure.
wow that sucks…
holy shit,you probably have spent more in repairs than what you purchased it for. 
You should be good for a while though,some crazy maintenance you did :tup:
I still blame vw.
I don’t plan on ever owning a german car outside of it’s warranty period.
Sounds about like my purchase of my 08 E-350 benz a few months back. Luckily some of it was covered via warranty and the dealer sent me a g. But I feel your pain especially spending what I was and getting a pile. Sux man. I might buy my next car brand spanking new just because im sick of used car BS.
After the first thing went wrong at grandma’s, I’d have driven it back to the “dealer” and claimed lemon law. Call the bank and cancel the check. You have WAY more patience then I do.
And there are some crazy deals on new cars now. I know most people say not to buy new since its terrible financially, but fuck it, EVERY Daily Driven car loses its value, might as well know everything thats been done to the car you rely on every day.
i would be absolutely STUNNED if there was a lemon law in florida. (and no, i’m not gonna look it up) even if there is, it’s not that simple, even in ny.
anyway dude, that sucks. for your sake i hope this is your last set of repairs for a while. enjoy the car :tup:
i guess ill be the asshole to say if a deal seems too good to be true it usually is…
its hard buying cars out of state and sight unseen. i know ive had my fair share of issues since ive done it quite a few times…
Buying used VWs = nothing but headaches.
Trust me I know.