Before and After - Rebuilt
Original engine ran but I knew I was keeping this one so I swapped it out with a lower mileage, car has 42k on. I just took it to McGrath for the recall stuff, they swapped out the injectors and steering rack for free.
If you don't know what your doing keep doing it by hand. It is very easy to burn through the clear coat and then the paint will go down the drain. Be careful and experiment on spare parts. Like go to a junkyard and buy some cheap fender off any car for $25 and work on that until you get it down right.
car
Good stuff!
10K all in is a steal, salvage title or not. You paid 10K to have a running Lexus on the road, and made sure it was fixed to your standards.
I want to do this in a couple of years myself.
10K all in is a steal, salvage title or not. You paid 10K to have a running Lexus on the road, and made sure it was fixed to your standards.
I want to do this in a couple of years myself.
I've had practise with the dealer's cars. When the dealers in our area can't fix it they send their cars to us and then we fix them and send it back and they treat it as if they did the work there, customer never even knows it was send to us.
People are affraid of salvage cars and I don't know why, as long as it is repaired by someone who knows what they are going it's as good as a new car just costs less. And yes people say the resale valve isn't as good, but thats because you bought a 35k car for $15k, you saved 20k and you might sell it for $9k down the road but you still saved 20k.
It didn't look that bad in the pictures but once I got it, there was alot more to be done, but I know this. I rebuild and fix cars for a living. I work for a yard in Detroit and we specialize in Lexus, MB, and "BM trouble U" Parts are mixture of new and used. New cover, hood, used fenders, headlights etc. I just paint whats needs to be painted and either pull parts off our other cars or order them and put it back together. This is why I can provide parts to this community. I met the previous owner as well. Its a long story but here we go...
So upon getting the car there were no keys, the auction yards do not have the contact information of the previous owners so I had to contact the insurance rep thru the auction yard and then they were able to call the owner and she called me. I was trying to track the owner down thru just research on the internet using what was in the car when it came to me. With the research I did and confirmed by her. Her BF who was a doctor was driving the car last. There were a ton of script's written for controlled drugs and I though it seemed a be fishy and there was just so much evidence that he was writing illegal scripts and cashing them. Come to find out he is currently in jail for that and was arrested when he smashed the car. I met up with her to get a key and exchange his belonging that were left in the car including uncash checks over $6000.
So upon getting the car there were no keys, the auction yards do not have the contact information of the previous owners so I had to contact the insurance rep thru the auction yard and then they were able to call the owner and she called me. I was trying to track the owner down thru just research on the internet using what was in the car when it came to me. With the research I did and confirmed by her. Her BF who was a doctor was driving the car last. There were a ton of script's written for controlled drugs and I though it seemed a be fishy and there was just so much evidence that he was writing illegal scripts and cashing them. Come to find out he is currently in jail for that and was arrested when he smashed the car. I met up with her to get a key and exchange his belonging that were left in the car including uncash checks over $6000.
