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Worth buying a wrecked 84?

floridaZ

floridaZ

New member
A friend and I are looking at possibly buying a 84 Vette that we found on ebay. The guy lent it to a friend, and the friend spun it into something. Tore most of the rear fiberglass off, looks like there might be some frame damage. Also something happened to the fuel tank, so the motor runs but I'd have to fix.... whatever is wrong with the fuel system.

Front of the car is all good, one bad headlight motor, complete running motor with CFI. Interior looks okay from the pictures, the seats were supposedly redone recently. Silver/grey two tone.

I haven't gone and looked at it in person yet so I'm not completely sure of it's condition. I'm good with fiberglass and the frame damage can be fixed relatively easily as long as the entire frame isn't twisted. My thoughts were to maybe snatch it up and fix it, drive it a bit and sell it around tax time next year (summer sucks for selling cars). However, if the entire frame is tweaked then I would end up parting it, and the problem is that the guy wants $1100, which seems a bit steep to me.

So my question is, would you? I have a shop to work on it at, and a few garages to choose from for storage until I get around to it (my friend and I have like 12 Zs to work on as well). How much would it be worth in parts that I can realistically expect to sell (stuff like the hood would be difficult to sell due to shipping)? How much should I offer this guy? I wouldn't mind having a second vette to play with for a while, but I don't want to get too far over my head on this that I can't get out of it.
 
Depending on the extent of the frame damage, I'd probably off him $500.00 for it and consider it a parts car:thumbsup:

You're going to spend a lot on glass work and frame straightening.

The car's just not worth that much to begin with IMO.

FWIW, I bought my POS 87 for $1000.00 and with a battery and alternator...was driving it for a year or so before any cosmetics:thumbsup:
 
$200 for the Dana 30
$200 for the hood
$500 for the engine/trans (IF you can find someone that would want them)

Seats, interior, and other stuff depends on how good of shape they're in.

I definitely wouldn't waste my time trying to fix it. You can buy an excellent condition C4 for less than it would take to fix something like that. If it was super rare or desirable, I'd consider fixing just about anything up. But they're just too common. There was an 89 (I think) convertible FS in Pensacola for around $1500 that didn't have any body damage a while back.
 
I traded my 85 coupe for an equipment trailer worth $5000.00 and was glad to get it! C4's are a dime a dozen. It cost more to restore one than they'll ever be worth when you're done. They made over 30,000 of them every year so they are not rare by any means. Don't get me wrong, I love the C4 handling, bodystyle, etc. and may even have another one in the future, but many folks seem to think they are worth more than they really are.
 
Yea, I've dropped thousands into fixing up my brown 84 over the years. Never really plan to sell it though, so that's never bothered me. Probably couldn't sell it for $3000.

But $500 huh? That's more along the lines of what I figured it would be worth, maybe $800 if the interior is really nice. Thanks guys.:thumbsup:
 
To be honest with you --- you are asking the kind of questions
a novice would ask. If you don't have alot of experience building
cars, I would stay away from this project. Find a simpler project
and gain experience. There is nothing wrong with that.
By the way if you rebuilt this wreck you would have to declare
on the title; that it has been rebuilt. You would not get very
much money in the end. You would probably loss money.
Experience is a good thing. Good luck.
 
I am a novice - to parting out Corvettes. Never done that before. I have plenty of experience building and fixing cars, but as I have said I wouldn't want to buy it if in the worst case scenario I couldn't recoup all or at least most of my cash.

Hadn't thought about having to declare it as a rebuilt car.:banghead: Probably would be a hard sell even if everything is fixed perfectly.

On the other hand, I could always swap the motor out of my 84 into this one, and have a race car.:reddevil:
 
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