- You've definitely seen plenty of cars, like this on Craigslist. with plenty of mods
that you think are sick and maybe the price isn't too bad. Well conveniently my boy Pumphrey, just bought somebody else's project car. - It's the car from the cartoon. - So today we're gonna go
through the whole model list on Pumphrey's new 86. Make sure everything's there. Make sure it's working and
not trying to kill my boy. By the end of the day, we should have a good summary of what kind of shape this thing is in and whether or not he made
a good move buying it. We'll also be able to give him a to-do list of all the
stuff he needs to fix and make a determination
on whether or not, buying somebody else's
project car is a good choice. Now, he probably should've
done this before he bought it, but he already bought it, so let's do it. - That's good. (laughing) (upbeat music) - Big thanks to Off the Record, for sponsoring this week's episode of Money Pit. - Cash during ticket on the way here. - Is this you struggling
to pay your fines, need to keep points off your license. Are you afraid to fight your ticket? You think paying the fine is the only way. What can you do? - There's gotta be a better way. - Right through our gems, that's where Off the Record comes in. They'll connect you with a local attorney, that'll fight your tickets on your behalf and even more they'll help you keep your insurance premiums the low, which often save you more
money in the long run. - That's exactly what I'm looking for. Tell me more. - Okay. Well, one in five people
get a ticket every year at deals like you are definitely gonna get more than one ticket, especially after a 4th of July weekend. The average ticket cost about 150 bucks, which is a lot of green and not the kind of green that we like. The best part is they
have a 97% success rate and they even have a money back guarantee. Go to offtherecord.com/donut or use the Off the Record app. Use the code donut to get 10% off. Be safe out there my deals (car engine revving) Now it's one thing to buy a project car of somebody you know. Somebody whose work you
trust to be high quality. It's a completely different thing to buy a project car in a
various state of disarray that you're getting a good deal on because it's gonna need a
lot of work time and money, before you even get to enjoy it. So why don't you tell me all the things that you
know are broken on the car? - It's got a lot of rattles coming from a lot of
different parts of the car The timing belt is squealing I know that. The speedometer definitely doesn't work, the oil temp gauge, I'm 50/50 on, also the coolant temp gauge, the roll bar, which is cool has some questionable hardware in it. The interior is a mess. Oh, the fog lights don't work, the headlights don't go down sometimes. The steering is a little loose. The paint is bad. That is a lot longer list
than I was expecting. - Oh, there's g-tons of oil leaks. It's just puking oil. - Nice, yes. I mean, it sounds like it's in good shape. Sounds like everything's great. Okay, so now that we know that
everything's wrong with it, let's go take her for a drive. See what this thing's got. (car engine revving) Let's rip this little turd. (car engine revving) (laughing) This thing is sick. Alright, let's see here. Coolant temp gauge working, oil temp gauge working, check engine light not on that's important,
speedo, yeah not working. Fuel gauge works. Man, honestly. Hey, the windshield wipers work. All right, that could use
tightened up, I guess. I don't know why he's even
the slightest bit concerned. Oh my God, that's so fun. He just wants to come(background
drrowns out speaker) Brake pedal feels good. Wow, and the e-brake works. What a gem. This thing's gonna be just fine. Yeah dude, it rips. The test drive was definitely a positive. Sure, it makes them weird rattles and funny noises and some odd feelings, but none of it feels too serious. It doesn't feel like it's gonna kill me. So, so far things are looking pretty good, but we need to put the
thing on jack stands, get under it and get her
knuckles good and greasy, so we can really see what's going on. (upbeat music) So the pinch weld is where the unibody kind of comes together and it's what I'm supposed
to use to jack this thing up and where I was planning
on putting jack stand but it's pretty beat up. So I think I'm gonna use a
different part of the chassis. Okay, she's jacked up. Let's take a trip to the engine Bay and see what's going on in there. (upbeat music) Not too bad. I dunno Pump, I'd say you're doing okay. - All right. - I'm gonna check the oil, looks fresh. Did you just dump a bunch of
oil in here, to drive here? - Yeah. - Now we need to find out where
all this oil is coming out. There's definitely oil coming
out around the valve cover. That's a sign of a bad
valve, cover gasket, and it's an easy thing to replace. It's usually pretty cheap too. It would probably cost them 20 or 30 bucks and take them a couple hours. Let's go write it down. Which way do you think
I should make the list? That way? - Probably. - Probably. So far I'm not too scared,
I'm not too concerned. We've got a decent looking bay here. So the battery looks great. Terminals look nice and
clean, no corrosion. That's always what you want to see. I know Pumphrey was a
little bit worried about the state of the wiring
here and at a glance. I can see why. 'Cause it looks a little
bit like spaghetti. There's some wires hanging out. The wiring is okay, it's just ugly. So we got a little clean up project here. Alright, let's go put
clean up engine bay wiring, on the list. Let's see what we can see
behind this timing cover. Well, hopefully we'll
get a look at cam seals. See if there are any more
engine leaks going on back here, get a look at the timing belt as well. See what kind of shape it's in. It looks, I mean, if I were guessing, I would say it looks relatively new. It does look like there's
some seepage down here which could still be
the valve cover gasket. But I'm gonna go ahead and guess that the cam
seals are leaking too, and really, while you're
doing the valve cover gasket, it's usually pretty easy to
do the cam seals as well. So I'm gonna go ahead and put those. So we heard this thing
squeal when we started it up and I think that the
accessory belt down here is a little loose. I mean, this is one of those things that we can put on the list or I could just help
the boy out real quick. I think I'm a retention to belt fam. Nice guy thing to do or what? Okay, so I just got done
re tightening this belt. Feels great, hopefully it
won't squeal on startup now. And man, I just see so much oil. This thing is soaked, coated,
covered, dripping in oil. The oil pan gasket or lack thereof is definitely a huge leak. So that's gonna move right
to the top of the list. I mean, this thing is losing so much oil. It's insane. So this is actually an engine swap. This is a for 4AGE from a later Corolla and it's supposed to make, I
think about 130 horsepower. Sure it's a little leaky, but this is a pretty sweet engine and is what makes this
car so fun to drive? Alright, so we're gonna pull
out the spark plugs real quick. Take a look at them, just make sure it looks
like there's nothing out of the ordinary going on. Oh, what do you know? They're sopping wet with oil. Another sign that the valve cover gasket is leaking around the plugs. Oh yeah. It's wet down in there, it's wet. So just gonna try to clean it up for him until he gets it fixed. Also because I'm about
to pull these plugs out apart from being completely soaked in oil, it looks pretty good. The electrode is a nice tan color. It looks nice and uniform. The ground strap is still in good shape, there's no erosion. This looks like a healthy
running engine for sure. So if the next three plugs look like this, we're gonna be happy. And that's a lot dryer of a plug. Things seem to be in better
shape back there, sparktacular. All right, so after having
gone through the engine Bay, let's talk it over real quick. In terms of negatives. Sure, we've got some oil leaks. The valve cover gasket needs replaced, the oil pan gasket needs replaced. The belt needed tightened up and we've got a little missing hardware, and this wiring could use cleaned up, but we've also got the
engine that you want. We've got the swapped high
compression, higher power engine and it seems to be running great. Sure, it's got leaks, but
the spark plugs look great. We've got our strut bar. We've got a sick radiator, great battery. So with that short list considered, I'm calling the engine Bay a positive. Positive in the engine bay, now it's time to move on. Let's do steering, suspension and brakes. All right, so the first thing I'm gonna do before I take the front wheels off is give it a front end, shake down. I'm gonna quickly check the ball joints, the wheel bearings and the tire rod ends just by jerking the wheel
around a little bit. So side to side is how you
test for tire rod ends. If your tire rod end is bad, you'll feel some clunking right here. I don't feel as nice and tight. So our tire rod on this
side is good, that's great. Now let's check for the wheel, bearing. Grab it at the top and
bottom, shake back and forth, if you feel play any clunking, then your wheel bearing is going out. I'd say that's pretty
normal for this kind of car. I think this uses old boy taper bearing. So that's normal. So now we're gonna check ball
joints, which is also easy. Take this apple box and a pry bar. We'll get under the tire and we're gonna bounce it up and down. And while we do that,
looking for any play, also feeling for any play
and I don't feel any, it feels nice and tight. Sweet. It's not what you want. Feels like wheel bearing. Okay, so the good news is I
think the wheel bearing is okay. Maybe the coil over's just loose. So I'm gonna tighten that
up and shake it again. See if that fixes the noise. Hey, clunk, be gone. Just gotta tighten up those coil overs. Gretty coil overs are cool, but they're not cool if
they're about to come off. Alright, so now that
we have the wheel off, I'm just gonna go ahead
and do a quick inspection and just kind of give
everything a once over and make sure everything's okay. Brake line looks nice, it's braided. That's cool. Let's see what the brake pads look like. Plenty of life, plenty of life. Hmm, you've got some wetness going on down here at the
bottom of the brake caliper. I wonder where that's coming from, must be coming from the piston, I guess, that's a little bit of a bummer. So to fix the brakes, you can rebuild a brake calipers or even just replace them. That's probably what I would go with after a little power steering thing, probably ts replace them. All right, so we've gone all
the way around the car now. We've checked the suspension, the brakes and all the
steering components. And the only issue we found was a slightly leaking brake
caliper on the passenger side. So a steering brakes and
suspension pretty much check out. I'm gonna call them a positive. (upbeat music) Okay so now I just got done
looking at the fuel system and it looks old, but it looks fine. All the hoses are in good shape. Hose clamps are in good shape. You can see some of
them have been replaced. So the fuel system overall,
from what I can see, gets a positive. So after inspecting
the chassis in general, I think I'm gonna call it a neutral. Here's the deal. We've got some damage. We've got the pinch welds
that are smashed to hell and we've got this kind of a frame rail, whatever you wanna call it. That's smashed in over here. Not great, but there's
also not a lot of rust. And the fact is A86s' are
by and large pretty beat up. So in relative terms,
this looks pretty good. I don't hate it, but I
don't love it either. It doesn't make me feel warm fuzzies. So I'm gonna give it a neutral. Alright, so I can get
into the bell housing here and, well, it's definitely damp. I'm gonna say, I think the remains
leaking a little bit too. Man, this thing has all of the oil leaks, just soaking wet. Alright, so we've, we've got at least, I'd say a rear main seal leak and or an input shaft seal
leak on the transmission. That's probably the
biggest negative in my book because that's kind of a big job. You gotta pull the
transmission out to fix this. That's something that could take this from a car that makes sense
to buy to one that doesn't depending on your skillset or how much you feel like
taking out of transmission. It also sounds like the throw
out bearing is going too. When you put the clutch in and when you manipulate the clutch, you can hear some kind of funny noises. So the transmission is
gonna have to come out. The throw out bearing
is gonna need replaced. The rear main seal is gonna need replaced. And while you're in there, you might as well do the
transmission input shaft seal, since you've already got
the transmission out. So in terms of the transmission, this thing gets a negative. We got a lot of leaks and this big thing needs
to come out to fix them. - That's what I'm talking about. Like the kind of catastrophic things that I don't want to happen. - Okay, so a lot of the nuts and bolts have been touched and looked at. And so far we're doing okay. Now let's take a nice general gander at the exterior and see
how things are going. See if all the stuff's there. See if anything's trying to fall. Exterior is the largest organ. (laughing) (upbeat music) Okay, so one of the things I wanna do is find where all the tires are rubbing and where some of these
rattles are coming from. So we're gonna look in
the fender wells right now and just kind of get an assessment. Okay, first off. So the fender can easily be rolled and that will help alleviate
some of the rubbing that happens on the outside of the tire. Just roll this puppy in a
well, and it'll fix that. Zip tie situation here
is obviously not ideal, but kind of cool. Functional is hell Eddie. Alright, so we've got a
little missing hardware here on the fender, which I think creating one
of the rattles that we heard, We're also missing a bunch
of hardware down here. So I'm just gonna try to
find a bolt that'll fit. That'll stop all this rattling. Okay, so after going over the body, there are some things that
need a little bit of attention. Like the fenders could use rolled. We could stand to add some
hardware back into this thing. And yeah, we're covered in dense. We have a sweet tape antenna delete. The, the trim is fading. Listen, it's a 30 something year old car. It's not in great shape, but the fact that it's not in great shape also kind of works as a positive because it made this
thing more affordable. So in terms of the body overall, I'm gonna go with a high
neutral, low positive. Alright, now we've got the
exterior. all figured out. Let's do the last thing on the list. Let's check out the interior. Honestly, first thing I noticed is that the interior is really complete and most 86s' I've ever
seen are not this complete. The roll bars suite. Let's see what kind of wiring (beeping) we got going on now here. Alright, so there are some extra wires down in the knee area. So, you know, an afternoon
of organizing these wires, tying them up in the right spots and fixing things like this. Like I'm not a big fan
of using these wire nuts and just solder that. But again, that's not a big deal. That's easy to do and kinda satisfying, but it is another chore that's
going to need tended to. So let's put it on the list. Do we know what this switch does? - It's supposed to be the fogs. - Oh, see if she works. Are they on? - No. - Nice, alright. So the fogs is don't work. So that's a bit of a negative. This car came with an auto power rollbar, which is pretty cool, but some of the hardware was loose on it. So I'm just tightening it up. It's real easy. The seat backs on both
seats are coming apart, but the good news is, this is a really easy fix. All he needs to do is go to the store, get some hardware to
replace where it's missing. Honestly, this is the
perfect kind of thing to be wrong with the car, in my opinion. It kind of looks a little janky, but you spend a few hours on it and you'll fix it up with no problem, and for only a few bucks. But for now, it still goes on the list. There's no stereo. That kind of sucks. I need music when I drive. That's just how I am. I know Pumphmrey is kind of the same way, so that's kind of a negative. Alright, so the interior overall, from where I'm sitting, it's a positive. This is a 30 something year old, A86, that have all been abused. And this thing is in
pretty complete shape. These seats are awesome. It's got both door panels. Sure, it's got some
things that need fixed, but overall, this is a
huge positive for me. So let's get out of the car, put it back together. And then we'll tally up all
of our positives and negatives and see whether or not this
purchase was a good one. (upbeat music) Not bad. All right, so after
looking at the engine bay, the steering, this suspension, the brakes, the chassis, the electrical
system, the body, the interior. After looking at the whole car, my assessment is, that this was a great purchase. This thing rips, they say
never meet your heroes, but I don't know if that's true, cause this thing's one of mine and I'm glad to admit it. But you gotta remember guys,
this stuff is all subjective. It really comes down to you. And what you like and what you want to
spend your time doing? People like me, people like Pumphrey. We love pieces of crap like this. And we wanna spend our
spare time working on them. - Honestly, this was a lot
better than I was expecting. This is exactly what I wanted the car for a couple of little week or a
lot of little weekend projects. And then one kind of big one. But again, that's what Nolan's for. Turns out, buying someone
else's project car sometimes, is worth it. - That's right. Thanks for watching guys. If you liked this episode, consider subscribing to the channel. If you wanna learn more about the A86, check out this episode of Up to Speed. And if you wanna learn more
about this specific A86 and watch it get fixed, then follow Pumphrey on
Instagram at James Pumphrey, follow me at Zach Jobe at donut media. I'll see you guys next week.
Just bought a project car the other day and then this video comes out while I’m researching fuel pumps. I don’t think my heart is ready to watch.
Honestly, its actually in really solid condition. That's one lucky find.
imo, its really a gamble.
on one hand, its possible the PO has discovered that for some reason the project is doomed or not worth continuing, and they are not being honest about it, like some hidden damage, or it needs some rare part that is now unobtanium.
on the other hand, the PO may have run into a roadblock that is more related to the PO and their lack of experience (or savings).
shit, you can buy regular cars like this.
"why you selling it"
"it wont start"
"did you try a new battery"
"yea, we put a new one, but it still wont start, we just dont want to deal with it anymore, so we are getting rid of it."
"uhhhh. ok."
buy the car for half market value, tow it home, throw in a $200 starter from Oreilly's and you got yourself a perfectly working car.
kinda sad, but it happens.