So been looking to buy one of these for a while and found one a couple states over at a decent price. 2004 red with 57,000 miles, excellent condition, had airline tickets bought and ready to go this weekend, fly out and drive back. Seller seemed pretty above board on everything... I thought! Plugged the vin into Lexus.com and come to find out it was in for service a couple weeks ago, oil/filter change, tire rotate and balance and find a notation on the ticket all 4 rims bent and will be needing tires before too long. BIG surprise to me, he never let on! I get ahold of him today and he says oh yeah.. I bought 4 new OEM wheels you can have to take with you.
I canceled our flights and pretty sure I am going to blow this off. What else is damaged if he hit something hard enough to bend all 4 wheels? But my main concern here is his deception... what else has he not told me?
What are your opinions on this please? I've not made a decision as of yet...

 

What rims did he bend? If it was OEM then I would be concerned. If it was aftermarket I would not be too sure. If he went with very low profile tires and bent the rims I wouldn't be concerned.

 

I wouldn't touch this. My personal opinion is never to buy when you can't trust the seller and never buy one until you have a good mechanic do a pre-purchase inspection. There is a "sticky" in the top section of the forum. If you haven't already, take a look, there is some very good information on buying an SC430.

 

OEM wheels , stock tires I believe.

 

Yes, I'm leaning to just blowing it off. And yes, I've been through that sticky a few times, too bad a lot of the links are no good anymore.

 

And also, he has only owned this for about 7 months, which can be innocent enough, we bought a Honda S2000 and only kept it about that long as it was just not the right car for us... or more is wrong, and he wants to unload it. Hard to tell, but not coming forth on those wheels is what really scares me.

 

SGB, how much was he asking if you don’t mind me asking?

 

Depends on price, service records and accident history, condition. Wheels can be bent but still balanced. But yea also stock 18s shouldn't bend that bad unless it hit something.

 

He has it listed right now for $25,900

 

My biggest concern was the fact he was trying to hide something... And then, what else might he be hiding?

 

So I guess the search goes on!!

 

HEY, I just noticed it says I'm a "Driver School Candidate"!! Heck, I was a motorcycle rider instructor for years!!

 

For me, bending rims with 40 series tires in NY wasn't too hard. Even got a bubble on a Goodyear Eagle tire going over un-even road paving once ( new layer of asphalt about 1.5 inch higher than old road surface doing 30 MPH)..

 

So update on this, I talked with the seller, and he agreed to put full new set of OEM wheels with new run flats for our original agreed price, so I think we are taking a road trip this weekend. I priced run flats and they are more expensive the big tires on my truck, about $1500 a set. He already had the wheels to replace the damaged ones on the car.
Also the car has an upgraded stereo, a pioneer with all the goodies, nav, BT, Sirius ready, car play (whatever that is) and the backup camera... AND he still has the original OEM radio.

 

BTW the run flats are the worse tires you can put on an SC. I would suggest you get some Michelin Sports tires