I may one day eat my words, but I want my next car[s] to be bone stock down to the filter. I have come to the conclusion that you simply cannot trust the previous owner's work, even if they seem like they know what they are doing (a shop built car could be different though). The previous owner of my Rx-7 knew what he was doing in general but his wiring was kinda shoddy (bad soldering jobs). The guy who owned the car before him was an idiot ricer who hacked up all kinds of stuff and fancied himself some kind of interior painter, hence the various ghetto blue accents around the car that have since been removed. I'm sick of pulling the car apart and saying "wtf is this? who did this halfass shit???" like my idiot light panel which had 30 horribly done butt splice crimp connectors because some idiot had cut off the connector or something.

so, anyone here who has owned a modified car chime in. It's tempting when you realize how much money you can save, but I think the heavily modded ones come with a lot of hidden problems (Duke's Miata? not sure about that one). I think if I do get another modded car it better be just intake and exhaust. Wiring and vacuum routing seem to be the most commonly botched stuff.

[Edited on January 22, 2008 at 3:16 PM. Reason : if my car's going to be ghetto, I should be the only one responsible for it]

1/22/2008 3:15:09 PM

it really all depends.

if you want something quick and dont want to worry bout the build, then yeah buy it already modded.

of course i would rather trust myself and do it myself.

yeah, you will save a lot of time and money if you get pick out the right modded car. plenty of people do good jobs modded.
just think, everyone in here thinks they are a god mechanic.

1/22/2008 3:36:03 PM

Depends on the car and the modifications done...

I remember Val's M3, came with a carbon fiber exhaust and neons and whatnot. Later discovered the car had a lot of previous body work, and other shenanigans. It's hard to know when buying a modified car. Never say never, but I tend to not buy modified cars, instead do the work myself. May not be the most cost effective method. My current M3 is probably the 3rd car I'm re-doing all of the suspension on, prior to re-selling the car... I certainly wouldn't want to buy a car that had been riced out, says something about the previous owner. Maybe I'm stereotyping.
Ahmet

1/22/2008 4:03:48 PM

Quote :

"it really all depends."

Quote :

"Depends on the car and the modifications done... "

Quote :

"I certainly wouldn't want to buy a car that had been riced out, says something about the previous owner. "

Agree 100% here.

My Miata had a lot of problems, but while I owned it, they were due in large part to the car having over 200k miles. I mean, the engine was a fresh build from a famous shop (Extreme Motorsports, of DSM fame) and the trans/rear diff were out of much newer, lower mileage cars, but stuff like switches, pop-up headlight assemblies, etc, wiring, etc was all from 1990 and with lots of miles. I also had to replace a starter (which is actually a huge asspain on a Miata) and an alternator--maybe he didn't replace the accessories when he had the motor built.

The only things I dealt with mod-related were (1) shearing the bolts that attach the driveshaft to the rear diff, which was an easy fix that prob cost me $10 to fix with grade-8 fasteners, (2) blowing the joints of the IC piping apart a couple of times...5 minute fix to pop it back together; a little hairspray fixes the problem altogether, and (3)seemed to need a tune when I sold it. seemed a little down on power and running slightly rough in certain spots. I'm pretty sure some dyno time would've fixed that right up. Either that, or the wideband O2 sensor was going bad.

The only other thing I can think of was having R&J cut my downpipe and rotate a section of it and the exhaust 90 degrees longitudinally to gain a little ground clearance (because a slammed-to-the-ground Miata with a 3" exhaust is painfully low on clearance)...but that wasn't anything that went wrong--it's just that I daily drove the car, and liked to be able to negotiate speedbumps and driveways.

The guy who bought the car from me, on the other hand, didn't fair so well. He must've gotten the tuning issue sorted out pretty well, because he hit the gas and ripped the mounts out of the subframe where the rear end mounts, as best as I remember him telling me. I think it dropped the trans, driveshaft, and rear end onto the ground, flailed a bunch of shit around, and ended up knocking a hole through the gas tank.

Guess those grade-8 fasteners for the driveshaft weren't such a hot idea after all!



My S2000, on the other hand, was supercharged, had an exhaust, and a pretty hot stereo...only problem I can think of that car ever having in the 2 years I owned it was a fried stereo amp. I've owned stock vehicles that gave way more trouble (to include my almost brand-new Evo, and for that matter, the 330ci that replaced the S2000, although that one was fine until I sold it to my buddy. He had a few things go bad at pretty low mileage--like 70k...sensors and electronic stuff. Nothing big, but they're kinda expensive on a BMW)




HOWEVER, even in the case of the Miata and all of the shit that went wrong with it, it STILL would've been way more expensive to built it from scratch. I think I bought it for $8k and sold it for $5500 (it had a busted fender from a parking lot hit and run, and it needed a tune and/or new wideband O2). It caused a number of headaches, but it really only cost me maybe $500 in maintainance, plus wear items like tires and brakes. I'm sure the guy who built it prob had $15k in it, AT LEAST...prob more like $20k (almost everything was top of the line and overkill in that car).


The S2000 was even FAR more cost efficient than that. It was a 2000 model with 37k miles when I bought it. Perfect in every way except a driver's side window switch that didn't always go auto-down (worked fine otherwise). I paid $20k for it, which was prob about market value for a STOCK s2000 at the time...mine had probably $12k worth of stuff done to it just in parts--aftercooled Comptech SC, Comptech cat-back, 18" Fikse wheels ($1000 per wheel), Potenza S03 tires, and prob $1500 of audio stuff (plus labor, because the guy had all of it except the stereo installed at a Honda dealer).

I sold it 2 years later with 65k miles, a blown stereo amp, and bald tires (the 3rd set I'd worn out in those 28k miles, haha)...for either $22,000 or $22,500...I can't remember.

1/22/2008 6:48:43 PM

^ditto. It's a LOT cheaper if the car has any decent mods.

1/22/2008 7:52:43 PM

one other thing, though--if you didn't do all the work yourself, it's a lot more of an asspain to fix things when they do go wrong, and no service manual can step you through it.

1/22/2008 8:12:35 PM

Quote :

"and no service manual can step you through it"

the crux of my problem. random wires and other parts swapped from different series cars and stuff.

[Edited on January 22, 2008 at 11:37 PM. Reason : this is on "factory" shit not aftermarket]

1/22/2008 11:36:36 PM

fuck no I wouldn't shouldn't buy another modified car, but you never know. could find a diamond in the rough

1/23/2008 2:19:47 AM

i'd rather just find a diamond.

i'm down with buying modified cars, but i'm not down with buying someone else's problem project. there's a reason he's selling it.

i mean, i guess every man has his price, but it would have to be a price that would be attractive even in a worst case scenario. i'm much more inclined to buy a well executed build by someone who's selling it for waaay cheaper than i could build it myself.

i tend to be more inclined to buy from someone who really, really knows his shit, and who also clearly has shit tons of money (so i feel like it's more likey that he did everything right). for example, the dude who i bought the S2000 from was an electrical engineer who designed avionics for satellites. His DD was a Porsche Cayenne, and he'd just bought a new Subaru STi for his son that they planned on doing track days together with. He basically bought a new S2000, bought a bunch of top-notch go-fast gear for it, had the dealer install it, and sold it for a HUGE loss as soon as the warranty was up. He did stuff like having the valves adjusted at 25-30k miles--you know, just in case...haha.

1/23/2008 2:35:45 AM

If I was to buy another performance-oriented car, I wouldn't universally shy away from modded ones. As long as I know who did the work, how it was done, and how the car has been driven and maintained, there's no problem with it really. And most highly modified cars sell for a fraction of what it would cost to build one yourself.

1/23/2008 10:32:26 AM

yup.

thats why its good to buy from people you know, or who are reputable

1/23/2008 11:19:12 AM

depends on who you buy it from. i bought an integra from Azaka, he'd done some stuff to it, and he did a fantastic job. i know he's a good driver and took care of it. but when i bought the car i have now, i chose it over one just like it that had work done to it because i had no idea if whoever put it on knew what they were doing, or if they took care of it.

1/23/2008 12:09:12 PM