Major or Minor repair

Hey all;

I'm just about to go and have a look at a '96 Roadmaster that just turned up for sale about 2 hours ago.

The car is being sold at a garage on behalf of the elderly couple who can't drive it anymore. There are a couple of spots of surface rust but the mechanic that I spoke to says it's mint in all other respects.

Apparently the guy that I spoke to is the mechanic who's worked on it for the last couple of years. He says the only issue with it that he's aware of is that it needs a new fuel sending unit as it leaks gas while running. Unless there's something else glaringly wrong I'm thinking that this might be a done deal.

Have any of you guys ever replaced a fuel sender?

http://guelph.kijiji.ca/c-cars-vehicles-cars-trucks-1996-Buick-Roadmaster-Wagon-W0QQAdIdZ238697285

 

I looks quite nice to me. As for the fuel sender it's unlikely that it leaks while running it's probably either the pressure (supply) hose or the return hose vice the whole sending unit. Being that it's fuel injected they are not just rubber hoses. Out here in Ca. if a tank has to be removed then it's pretty much $500 just for labour. There actually should be three hoses. One is a vent that's unlikely to leak while running. I generally just carries vapor. On a car that age it's good insurance to replace the whole schebang as the fuel pump is part of the whole assembly. Out here the whole assembly is a bit cheaper than just the fuel pump alone.

Either way, unless there's a access panel, the tank has to come out to repair.

 

I took a trip out to Aurora tonight to have a look at it. 3 hours in traffic on the highway just to get there. Yeesh!

The car looked excellent on the outside. The more I dug into it, the worse it got. Overall it needed a GOOD cleaning! Strangely the paint on the roofline along the tops of the doors had all peeled off.
The was a hole in the top of the passenger side wheel well the diameter of my thumb. The door sills on both sides were starting to bubble and rust and so were the edges of the jambs on either side of the tailgate. I took a closer look at the front to see if I could figure out why the door sills were starting to rust and I found fist sized holes in the wheel wells that was letting water pour into the body cavity.

We took it for a test drive and I found that the engine ran pretty well even with the fuel sender problem. The tranny shifted smoothly and the LT1 delivered plenty of pickup. We only had it out for about 20 mins but the wife was puzzled that the vents weren't delivering heat. I wasn't overly concerned about that as all of the rust made me completely certain that this wasn't "the" car. Maybe I'll get lucky with the next one.

I have some photos of the door sills. I'll post them tomorrow. Perhaps they will serve to enlighten another buyer about one more thing to watch for.

 

The monster storm hasn't hit yet huh? Sounds like you made a good call.

 

As the saying goes

"rust never sleeps"

Find the right one and you'll be a happy person. Glad you decided to not take second best.

 

It's been blowing pretty hard here all day. The drive down was OK because of the stop 'n' go traffic but on the trip back, the need to replace the weatherstripping on the Parisienne's doors was never more apparent with all this wind. It was almost as bad as sailing down the highway with all the windows open.

Yeah, I don't think the mechanic even looked at that car. He came out a few times and kept telling me how great the cars condition was. He seemed pretty surprised when I kept pointing out holes in the car. I pondered trying to work with it but when I saw the massive holes in the wheel wells that let me see right into the sill cavity I figured that's something that it will never recover from no matter what I do. Too bad, it was a good runner. Not worth $2800 plus dropping the fuel tank to so the fuel pump and sender though. Maybe the next one. I'm going to call about that '94 Roadmaster on Kijiji that I've been looking at in Oakville. I don't have high hopes really. It's been advertised for a couple of weeks and it's still there. Unless they're holding firm at $3300 and that's scaring buyers away, I'm nervous to see why they still have it. Not sure what to do if that '94 doesn't pan out. I need to put the Parisienne away for the winter soon. I'm wondering if I shouldn't just buy the '93 I've been looking at and settle for an L08 instead of an LT1. Decisions Decisions.

 

Good for you, wiz. Smart guy.Walking away from rust is always a good thing. I've seen guys want a certain car real bad and then settle for one with "just a little" rust. They were unhappy down the road. You were correct to walk away. Rust is the single most lethal car killer. You will find what you want....just be patient.
By the way....what exactly DO you want? LT1 Cappy or Roadie? I will keep a lookout if I know exactly what you want.

 

There were several points last night where I looked at the wife and said "I'm just gonna take it so it doesn't disappear" It had only been posted for 2 hours when I had called and he had received several calls about it through the afternoon with another viewer scheduled for this morning. It didn't help any that I took the money with me. It would have been so easy to just buy it and be bitter later.

Over the last view months I've switched from Cappy to Roadie and back again. Now I'm not too picky. I love Cappy's and Roadies equally. I love the look of a WB4 but I really like woodgrain too. I just love the feel of driving/riding in a wagon and the look of a longroof. I have a long standing love affair with Buick so I'm probably slightly more inclined towards the Roadmaster but that inclination is minimal.

I've narrowed it down to a handful of major items that I really want.
-LT1(Especially now that I've driven them. Wow!) Although I continue to think that maybe I should just settle for an L08 as the Parisienne needs to go away for the winter very soon. At this point LT1 is still very much on the table. I hate the word "settle" when I'm car shopping and I hate to rush, but I don't want to put snows in the Parisienne. It would be nice if this were the first car where I didn't just "settle".
-Dual Exhaust (kind of goes hand in hand with the LT1)
-As rust free as possible. I can repair surface rust but any holes would be beyond my abilities.
-Relatively nearby. The wife isn't comfortable with the added cost of bringing one up from the U.S. (Pretty major handicap for the rust-free requirement here in Canada, but I love a challenge) I could see me sneaking one past if it were in Buffalo or somewhere nearby. Frankly rust-free cars are as uncommon there as here so that's not likely.

I'm not fussy on leather vs cloth and I love cleaning cars so it doesn't have to show like a Concours or anything. I just want it to run well and hopefully not need to address any major issues for at least a year. I plan to drive it in the winter, but it will be undercoated and rust-proofed.

I'm still squirelling away money but at this point I have ~$4000 to play with.

 

With getting caught in traffic through Mississauga/Toronto it was almost dark when we got there. I managed to get a few pics of the worst of it. It was too dark in the wheel wells to get the camera focused to show the gaping holes.




This peeling paint along the roofline seemed pretty weird to me. It was really dark by then so the pics didn't turn out very well. This is the best example.

 

Thanks. Yeah...the rust may be a problem in your area if you want to buy close to home. If you are going to make it a winter car I would not discount the 350 TBI. If you drive mostly around town you will find that the TBI is pretty quick too. Not knocking the LT1 (I have one)....just saying that you will get a 93 for less money and cheaper maintenance. That may be a consideration for a winter driver in your area. BUT....you will likely have to take the car that presents itself since you don't want to travel for one. I will look around. And....again....good job walking away from the rust problem. Good luck and keep on being selective.

 

Holy crap! That's a rust bucket, wiz. I don't think that car is even worth $2800 from what I see. Good thing you took a pass on that.

 

hey wiz, the pealing paint just screams cheap body repair IMO, and the rust, you would walk outside in a couple of months and look in the drive and find 4 tires and a pile of parts where you parked the night before!!!!!!!I wouldn't give $280 for POS glad you walked away man that would have been a big mistake!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

I wish I could have gotten a photo of the massive hole in the wheel well. That's where the water was getting in to rot out that door sill. It was large enough that you'd have to watch for animals living in the body cavities.

What's really frustrating is that the car looked spectactular from even 10 feet away. It wasn't until you really got up to it that you could see how cancerous it was.

I'm hoping to go and have a look at this one on the weekend.
http://guelph.kijiji.ca/c-cars-vehicles-cars-trucks-1994-Buick-Roadmaster-Wagon-W0QQAdIdZ235357922

I tried to get to it last weekend but couldn't. I'm still partly spooked by how long this one has been up for sale. It should be gone by now if it's worth having.

If I rethink and decide to go with an L08 350 TBI I may go back to looking at this one. I know Fox has some reservations about it, but I haven't even had a look at it yet. Never hurts to look.
http://guelph.kijiji.ca/c-cars-vehicles-cars-trucks-1993-Buick-Roadmaster-Wagon-W0QQAdIdZ219229884

 

I like the first one. Offer a lot less and settle somewhere in between.

The second one may be fine, once you see it, but that first one sounds like it has been oiled yearly and if that is the case rust is probably not an issue. Put some nice wheels on it come spring and you'd have one heck of a cruiser.

The thing about rust is, if you can see it, you gotta know it is in all kinds of places you can't see, doing its dirty deed. When I see rust, even small bubbles, I run away. I've been caught too often in the past with cars that had minimal visible rust only to find that they were just the tip of the iceberg. You are cautious with your money so your desire to invest it wisely is the right decision. We should all be so diligent.

Fox, you looked hard for yours and it shows in the quality of wagon you ended up with. A real beauty. Hopefully Cyber will have the same good fortune you did.

 

Thanks, Saf. Yeah, I hope wiz ends up with a rust free wagon too. But I traveled south for mine and he is trying to find a rust free wagon in Ontario....not an easy task. His market to buy is also very small, comparitively. Yeah, wiz....I do have resevations about that 93. He wants $3K FIRM for a TBI car that has a rebuilt engine and a rebuilt tranny. These cars will go 300K miles if taken care of so that has to tell me something. What else is worn out? And "rebuilt" means a lot of different things to a lot of different people. Don't see any interior pix either. I could be way wrong about it, I guess, but, as I said before....I like an unmolested car that was taken care of by a fussy owner. I don't buy cars that have the engine or tranny "rebuilt" by someone I don't know. OTOH....you might end up buying the wagon and be happy with it for years. I just don't like rolling the dice on messed with cars.