Last Call: Motel Hell Edition

spider motel
I don’t know, seems reasonable to me.
Last Call indicates the end of Hooniverse’s broadcast day.  It’s meant to be an open forum for anyone and anything. Thread jacking is not only accepted, it’s encouraged.
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  1. Van_Sarockin Avatar
    Van_Sarockin

    I told you, putting a Taco Bell right next door was a really bad idea.

  2. Wayne Moyer Avatar
    Wayne Moyer

    Well I just brought this home last night after getting it off of EBay Motors. I found out that you can buy a car sight unseen and make it work. The 86 County Squire made it the 82 miles home which is pretty good for just under $1600. It developed a problem with either the transmission or power on the way that I’ll describe later when I’m not in a rush but I wanted to post this because of our love of old wagons.
    Of note is the lack of rust and the fact it was bought without a third row. Now I need to figure out how to acquire on and install it. I’m guessing a visit to a junkyard will fix that. I’m hoping it’s not a difficult install.

    1. Lokki Avatar
      Lokki

      Oooooh! It’s pretty! There’s enough room under that hood for any power plant you want, up to and including nuclear!

      1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
        Wayne Moyer

        It has the 302 but there was the option of the 351. Given the low mileage on the beast I think I’ll keep the 302 and just do some mods.

        1. CruisinTime Avatar
          CruisinTime

          Cool story.Check the timing.

          1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
            Wayne Moyer

            The timing seemed right. I mean we had the money in the bank to cover this and everyone in the house wanted a station wagon.
            Oh you mean the engine timing. 🙂 It’s on my list to do with the tuneup this weekend.

          2. CruisinTime Avatar
            CruisinTime

            Sweet car for the money .

      2. Sjalabais Avatar
        Sjalabais

        Nuclear and torpedos, just how a battleship needs to look like.
        Great find at the price! Came here for the story? Was it you that had about 5k to spend?

        1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
          Wayne Moyer

          It was a lot of driving. So I guess I will go over what happened now. I had thought about writing this up as a Hooniverse article then wimped out and just put it in here.
          So I put my Spitfire up for sale a couple weeks back due to my wife and daughter both thinking it was too short to the ground and that they didnt feel safe in it. I can understand that. Add in that my wife and I think it’s kind of pricey to keep on the road. This is what you find out when you price Brit stuff vs American stuff. So we decided that we were going to get a classic wagon. I was going to sell my scooter, the Spitfire and this small bonus from work.It would give me about $5k to play with all totaled. Which should get me into an AMC or Studebaker wagon. That was the goal. The plan was to use it for long trips with our three kids and the dogs. So I was just cruising through Craigslist and then I stumbled back through Ebay motors a couple times. On the third through I bumped into this with two days left. It was at $1400 and had two days left. I watched it go up to $1550 with 6 active bidders and 15 bids. For those who know Ebay this seller had a 100% rating on 860 sales of cars and parts. That’s impressive. So the pictures looked good and I’ll link it below. There were a couple things that it needed and I called the guy about it. I wanted to know the situation about the rust and if it had the third row. He called me the next morning and said that there was minimal rust and he forgot about the third row. Turns out he was right about the rust. It has very little. It also has no third row. I’m hoping to fix this.
          So I talk to my wife and I tell her about the car. I show her that it is clearly undervalued and it fits what we were looking but is a touch newer. We settle on $1900 as the max bid figuring that we are going to get out bid. So I watch it for 24 hours. It says at $1550 which was someones max autobid to beat someone else. Then in the final two hours I just kept it up on one of my monitors and waited to snipe. With 23 seconds left I hit submit and put the 1900 in and got it for 1575.20.
          Here is the ebay listing for the car. Click on the little picture of the car and you will see all the images. Click on the pictures and they will expand. The next reply will be where I go into picking it up and driving it home. Which were both experiences.
          http://www.ebay.com/itm/381739845798?

          1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
            Wayne Moyer

            So I make the deposit and arrange to go get it but the car is 82 miles away from home back right near where I grew up. Now I’m getting nervous. Most of my classic cars have been person to person. This is from an estate sale via a used car dealer. Try that one out.
            From twenty feet it looks good. It looks like a barge which is funny because I know how much smaller the previous generation is then the ’86 but it was sitting next to a much smaller car. So the guy comes out and asks me to do a walk around and a test drive around the lot. First things first. The car’s exterior is in good shape. For that matter so is the interior. Getting the door handle to work was a bit of a trial. Starting the car was interesting. Even with fuel injection it still needed some goosing from the throttle. That’s not the way its supposed to work. Then it stalled a LOT while going around the yard. I get “it ran fine earlier” and the ever present “Are you two footing it?”. I’m 44 years old and have driven enough carburated cars to know what he was talking about. Hell I own a Spitfire that I had to three foot before we got the carbs and stuff sorted out.So I run it around it stalls and stalls and stalls. Then suddenly it warms up and works. Something I have learned from motorcycle motors that were converted to fuel injection from carburation is that they are cold blooded. I’ve owned a couple. It seems like this is starting out the same way. Maybe when the tune up is done and all the fluids are changed out it will get better. Heck it may still have two year old gas. So I park it and I do a final walk around and I notice the tailgate doesn’t open. All of the windows aren’t working perfectly. The rear one is one of them. This seems to be affecting the tailgate. I didn’t want a broken window or a flapping door so I left it shut and just wrote it off to a $1600 car.
            So paperwork done after the ubiquitous “Where the heck is Womelsdorf?”. Which on Hooniverse means the last name of a certain writer named Bryce and in my case means a little Mennonite town in central Pennsylvania. I bought the car outside of Northeast Philadelphia about two miles from the most dangerous intersection in the country. (Go look up Roosevelt Boulevard). Next up would be the drive home. So I have a car that’s been sitting for a couple years. It’s stalled a bunch but is now running okay. I haven’t even opened the hood because “Out of sight, out of mind” is the motto. Now i have an 82 mile trip home through hills with a car that has been described as having a slight issue under load and needing a tuneup. Funny enough if you look at my one picture the plugs and wires are in the back seat.
            So as a good Dad what do I do next? Well I put the person next to me who has been through two near misses in my Spitfire in the passenger. I put my 15 year old in the passenger seat. Her job is to communicate to her mother who will be going home in the other vehicle, but not following us directly, if anything happens. You know because it’s safe to drag a child along in this situation.
            So out onto the road and the car is running like a champ. Left turn onto Rt 1 Roosevelt Blvd next to the closed state hospital (Pennsylvania speak for mental institution) and heading for the turnpike.
            Ok time for a new reply due to length. Hope I’m not boring you.

          2. Wayne Moyer Avatar
            Wayne Moyer

            OK so onto the turnpike and it’s cruising along great. Who knows how many of the original 150 horses are still left but she’s cruising like a tank. A few observations.
            The steering isn’t overboosted. That was a surprised because other American cars of the era are.
            It drives much smaller then it is. This may be because I drive a Grand Caravan daily though.
            The suspension is pretty nice for its age. I’m tempted to leave it as,
            The stock radio worked without an antenna. Although there is one with a built in CB Radio that I want to get.
            It accelerates pretty decently and that overdrive is nice. Until….
            We stopped at the gas station on the turnpike. The gauge was reading half but had been for 30-40 miles so I didn’t know if i should trust it. So I put 7 gallons of 93 into it. Thank you cheapish gas. The car sat for about 20 minutes though. Once we got back going it did not act the same way. Where I would only need a quarter throttle to hold 65mph before. Now I was needing full throttle to get through first through third gears. Second and third gears were rocking the car hard. I was waiting for something to come through that hood until we would get back into overdrive. Once we did it would settle down, need light throttle, and then accelerate really nicely once again. It became a real drip for those last 35-40 miles. If the fuel gauge is accurate I also burned through the seven gallons in those same 35-40 miles which will tell you how hard my foot was in it. While the first 40 didn’t move the gauge very much at all.
            So I’m not sure if i kicked stuff up on the bottom of the fuel tank when i filled it. Maybe the cars computer, it has a very early computer, was going nuts and I just needed to stop and restart it, or if the injectors got clogged, or what. I’m not sure what that studdering is. I just just know I will be changing out the transmission fluid pretty quickly.
            TL:DR; fun drive until I had the issues with second and third gear. Oh and sorry for being wordy.

          3. Vairship Avatar
            Vairship

            Thank you for being wordy 😉 great story, and good luck!

    2. GTXcellent Avatar
      GTXcellent

      Sah-weet!
      You’re keeping the white walls, right? Right?

      1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
        Wayne Moyer

        I have to clean them up a bit though. They are bleeding pretty badly. Let me go get you pictures of the interior. It looks pretty nice.

        1. Wayne Moyer Avatar
          Wayne Moyer

          Here is the interior. I’ll get better shots later today in the daylight but its held up pretty well.