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Only took since MATG to get the titling mess figured out with the state of Florida (thanks usaa and hurricane irma), but finally got the V plated up this week. Also been working on the flex fuel tune. Just when I thought 91 octane was stupid *insert e85*. 45° air temps and corn fed overspun supercharged v8 makes for an interesting driving experience. 3rd gear is now just about useless at highway speeds depending on the road surface under WOT. Switching back and forth from the miata to the V screws with your head. Both are so good at what they were built for.
So i had an unpleasant surprise on friday morning for work.. we werent suppose to get snow.. the cadillac is already stored with insurance pulled off of it... so yeah, I can confirm that RS4's make for a butt puckering-ly awful time in light flurries
I need to find a winter vehicle pronto. They havent salted anything yet, but i'm pushing the absolute limits here
Sadly this isn't the first time I've been in this situation. Flashback to April 2015 and getting caught in a random late season ice storm on 205 Z2's. Worst hour of driving I've ever had in my life. A stock 1.6 shouldn't spin in 5th at 45mph, but that day it did... never again, or so I thought.. let's just call it slick conditions driver mod
So for the last 2 years I've made a habit of buying a vehicle that needs a little loving, drive it through the salty winter mess while i store my summer projects, fix it up, and sell it in spring for a profit. Seems to be a fun way of trying out something else, making money, and keeping the project cars rust free. After a lot of searching long and far across the midwest for "the right flip", I found this candidate 8 minutes from my house as luck would have it.
2005 Subaru Legacy GT 2.5i Limited. Fully loaded with every option except Navigation. Automatic. 183k. 2 owners. New winter tires. Pretty much stole the thing at $2400. The headlight lenses are fogged up beyond repair with stress cracks in the plastic from sitting outside, the chrome on the grille is peeling, rust bubbles are just starting to form on 1 rear quarter (the other is solid as is the rest of the car), pads and rotors are shot, and the interior is in need of a deep clean as the leather and carpets are stained pretty well. It's weird driving around a quiet "normal" car after being so use to the V and Miata. The potential profits in this should fund a good portion of miata related things in spring time if all goes well
He didn't put the price initially, I have the email to prove it.
I'm a bit confused though. How much are people paying for automatic 200k Legacy GT's these days? Seems like MAYBE a $5k car in good shape. Definitely some profit to be made there, but after paying tax and reg and such... How much?
Tax and registration weren't much, the goal will be to be in the car just over $3k and sell for $5k minimum with a ~193k miles (likely will list for $6k OBO). I could invest more in it and get more out, but I'm not sure I pull any more profit that way. We will see. Just got done spending 6 hours detailing the interior and I'm not even fully complete yet (TAN interior FTL). Its restoring quite well.
You guys have fair points given your location, but you need to take region into account for something like this. AWD clean turbo cars (mileage fairly irrelevant as long as your have maintenance records, which I do) sell like hot cakes in the midwest. I couldn't find a base turbo 5th gen legacy in any neighboring state to me for less than $5k. Rusted out naturally aspirated pile of junk Subaru's sell for $2500 out here solely because "OMG a snowflake I need AWD to not die!" is not an uncommon mentality. Same to be said for 4x4 pickup trucks. Many people make money by buying clean texas trucks for cheap and selling them for a profit up here. Personally, I'm indifferent on the AWD thing. I actually dislike all the added drivetrain complexity from a maintenance standpoint. I've driven an NA6 Miata on snow tires and a 2WD Silverado on all terrains through a total of 4 rough WI winters without any issues. Driver mod with proper tires >>>> drivetrain type.
So long time no post. Haven't been up to a whole lot the last month. The NB has just sat in the driveway since I bought the Subaru. Brainstorming next steps on where to take the miata for the 2018 season, but not expecting this year to have anything too wild. Driver mod could use more work than anything honestly. Winter sucks. That is all.
On a less depressing note, a good friend of mine just bought this and we plan to go out ice racing it this upcoming weekend. It's going to be a hot mess but I'm excited to see how things go.
It's was an NA6 at some point in it's like. Previous owner swapped a torsen in it, put a m45 and ms2 on it for some quick and dirty power and tuning, cheapo coilovers and FM lift, then obviously cut half the body off it and tossed a ghetto cage on it.
What i did to it was dial the tune in because you can give a guy an ms2 but lord almighty should some people stay away from ecus.. it's conservative, but I'm getting it to start in -15° temps so my cold start tables seem to be working good. Then we had some ice tires laying around from his other car. They are 225 wide blizzacks on 18" wheels with 400 sharpened 5/16" bolts through each tire. Bought wheel adapters to make them fit and we're are going to have an time seeing how this handles. I'm guessing it weighs somewhere around 1700 lbs and 150 whp.
10-26-2017, 11:12 PM
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