Small update. Been cold here and tough to work on the car.

GTR button and a BLOX shift **** installed. Happy with the BLOX. Wanted the M1 Abrams **** but could not justify spending anywhere near that amount for a ****. This one was $47 on amazon. Forgot to put the dash back together for the picture, whoops.

The more I tear into the car, the happier I am. I am not finding any indication of water anywhere. Under the shift **** is some foam that looked brand new and I don't think anyone refurbishing a flooded car would have looked or fixed it.

 

Looks good. Nice that you're not discovering any hidden gremlins, hope your smooth sailing continues

 

I've always been curious of salvage vehicles. It would be cool to do this but my ***** are not big enough. I'm financially stable also but really cheap and don't like risks.

 

See Jack, there is the difference between us I am really cheap, and I will take risks in the name of cheap. Bought the car for under $14k. Looked good. Worse case scenario I will be out ~$6-8k (new engine, install, troubleshooting) which is what I would have paid to buy a used car without salvage. Calculated risk.

Before buying salvage I do LOTS of research on the seller and on the vehicle. Maybe I should educate people...

By googling a VIN# you can usually find pics from the salvage sites so you know what it looked like before it was fixed up, and also what it was sold for. Knowing your seller margin helps when negotiating.

Know your seller, mine had some great positive feedback on ebay and was a dealer. I have bought things from non-dealers though too. When that happens it is easy to "stalk" someone. I bought a motorcycle once from a forum... knew the guys name and city he lived in. From that I was able to find him, his personal address, and his employer. Felt confident I would be able to track him down or mess up his reputation (quite high up in NASA) if he screwed me, so I went forward with the deal.

Google everything. The seller, the VIN, anything and everything you can get your hands on before buying. That is my main advice.

 

does the lip and the bumper not match?

 

Good eye, it is a little off. I am hoping a summer in the sun helps them match a little better. If not I will probably look at getting them repainted, but then the whole front will probably not match the rest. IP is an unfortunate color to match.

 

Interesting build, subbed for updates.

 

not many other than me would notice lol. I've been dealing with the same issues on my liquid platinum for two years

 

Alright, due to the fact I need to have this car rebuilt, and not salvage still, I remodified my headlights while taking the time to install the tsx-r lenses. Find my DIY to do this. I now have a couple ugly amber holes in my headlight paint to be legal for the inspection here in michigan this spring. I might leave it, I might open up the headlights for a 3rd time. Either way, I think it is still better than stock. Open to close on my 2nd headlight, the 2nd time around was about 40 minutes which included the tsx-r swap and scraping off a little paint so the amber reflector is visible.

 

Well, it’s up to you if you want to be legal or not. You can drive in peace and enjoy your car to the fullest, or forever look behind you for the stress of those dreaded red lights that will force you to go legal anyway.

 

If I did not have an inspection coming in the near future I would have left the headlights the way I had them. No officer would be THAT picky unless inspecting to reclassify a title (I asked my inspector if he would be looking for the amber side markers...yep). My daily driver is an SUV that has had the front drivers side turn signal completely broken out of it for 8 years... how many times has it gotten me pulled over? 0. A couple times I have been pulled over not a single officer mentioned it.

 

Having never been pulled over for an infraction is proof of nothing. All you have to do is add the word “yet” to make sense of it. After all, the captain of the Titanic crossed the Atlantic for over twenty years without ever hitting an iceberg, except for that one last time……..

 

You are pessimistic. We are talking about a fix it ticket... Anyways, the amber will no longer be discussed in this thread.

 

Well it has been a while! Car passed inspection no problem. Also had it in to my mechanic because I was worried about the head gasket still. He said there is no problem as far as he could tell. Also mentioned that IF it had been in a flood, they cleaned it up very quick because from underneath he could find no trace of it.

Anyways- since the last update
Powder-coated rims
Eibach springs installed
20mm spacers in the rear, looking for 15's in front. Will swap locations when I get fatter tires in the rear.
I added 2x 10w6v2's that i had laying around in the trunk (kept the custom infiniti box I tried to sell a while ago)
I think that is it?

 

I know you said no more talk about amber, but my old car didn't even have an amber light on it... Just for the blinker and it doesn't stay lit at night.. I don't think you'll have any problems at all, man.



Other than that, the car looks great! I love that black chrome/gunmetal look you have going on. Makes that stupid "chrome" lip look a lot better and the headlights look amazing.