Am I the only person who understood that in your first post?

Why else would Chrissy have called it 'buyer beware' and listed the plate if it were not still available?

Ah my bad....you did not purchase the car..

This car was at the Welsh meet with it's previous owner.

And as if by magic, here he is.



I'm with Chrissy on this one. With ebay, you often take a punt based on gut feeling and the information you have. It is an auction at the end of the day. The advert wasn't great, but there were receipts and it looked reasonably genuine.

The other thing with ebay (which you don't get with other types of ad) is you have more protection via ebay and paypal. Plus you have the added benefit of feedback ratings.

Don't get me wrong. If I was spending £10k on a car, I'd want to drive it and take it apart before I bid, but for £1k it is often worth a punt.

PS - I'm not trying to being holier than thou, because my Coupe was an ebay classifed ad (the worst kind if you ask me...) and while mine is in good nick, it did need £1k+ spending on it after I'd bought it. So I got stung with the best of 'em.

Great to hear you didn't get tourqued into keeping it Chrissy

:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

First, the heads-up is always appreciated.

Second

I clearly didn't put 2+2 together and understood from chrissy's first post that he had bought it after winning the bid.

A wild goose chase and the associated expense/inconvenience is do-without-able.

'Cause I've been on here and other car forums long enough to see waaaay too many horror stories of dead engines within weeks or months (or days!) of a rebuild, even when the work was carried out by a reputable dealer.

I'd want to see at least 6 months and 5K miles and preferably a year and 10K miles on a rebuilt performance engine, unless the car was so cheap that you could afford to scrap it and walk away.

My first coupe had a new engine fitted by Fiat (not a rebuild, a brand new engine) and I was still finding problems upto 18 months later due to missing brackets/bolts, hose clamps not tightened etc., so even just removing and refitting an engine can easily cause problems that you'd never imagine.

Also, I'd be wary of why a car is being sold so soon after having such a large chunk of cash thrown at it. 6 months or a year later, OK maybe they didn't like the end result, but a few weeks or months later would be ringing alarm bells for me.

I'd have been more concerned with the k seal on the receipt

The heads up is appreciated. Learning of that Sprint blue one with what was deemed low mileage that was for sale with a trader in Devon to end up in Ulster that was known here to have serious issues was an eye opener has it had caught my eye when it was advertised.

Regarding the comment about the oil pressure gauge photo that would be something I'd have put store in too, though the mileage on the odometer isn't that far out from that on one of the receipts. I didn't spot K-Seal though.

Regarding your wasted time and mileage I was doing a site job in W-s-M years ago and a colleague was travelling from South Wales. He was driving a CVH engined Ford and had disconnected the speedo drive to keep the mileage down. Trouble was he'd forgotten when he'd disconnected it and was getting a bit jumpy about when the cambelt service was due.

On the upside at least you didn't buy it. I've bought loads of lemons, you sidestepped that one.

Hi Chrissy, I went to look at this car. To be fair on the guy he had been totally ripped off by the person that sold it to him. I did trust him, he had no qualms about letting me drive it before the auction finished.

You definitely did the right thing by walking away.

He was genuinely gutted when I showed him the clutch was slipping as well as the poor oil pressure and the howling rear wheel bearing!
Regards, Robin

I've just noticed that I saved three images of this car from when it was previously for sale on the PH classifieds a while back. I think it was then being sold by a chap in the Bath area that was also running an Alfa GTV.

I didn't even drive it, At idle with ZERO oil pressure, Coupled with the fact it had just had a head gasket and NOT a FULL engine rebuid as claimed, was for me perfect reason to tell him to sod off! Yes I was very sympathetic to him being stitched up, but the guy knew what he was doing when he failed to mention critical points in his ad.