>> My 1999 isn't starting off well. I set off to work on my 77 Midget
>> yesterday, the weather was a little warmer than it has been, and figured
I'd
>> tackle the brakes. The DPO had told me that when he rebuilt the front
end,
>> he had done the brakes as well.
I fully sympathize with your situation, I when I was younger and not as
wise, I too
bought some real "dream machines" - held together with bondo/duct tape and
being
sold as "totally resorted, one owner, etc etc etc"
However, we are always so eager to blame other people and DPO's for our own
mistakes. If in fact the previous owner had indeed rebuilt the brakes, was
there clean
fluid in the master cylinder ? were the brake pads new ? were the rotors new
or at least re-cut ?
>> this car I just bought was supposedly a one-owner car, 113K miles,
rebuilt engine at 90K miles.
If the engine had been rebuilt 23K miles ago, a simple compression check may
have revealed otherwise,
was a compression check performed ?
>> Oh, and about that smog test it passed last week.
Did you ask for documentation, concerning the smog test ? any DMV emission
testing center in NJ will
print out a copy of the emissions for free
Sorry to get on a bit of a high horse on this, but it is the BUYERS
responsibility to check everything
out, nobody put a shotgun to your head and told you to fork over the money
for the car. I buy and sell
a couple of cars a year as a hobby, and always take a pair of dirty
overallsand some basic tools, so
that I can crawl around under the car, after all it's MY money that I am
spending, and if I do not like what
I see - I can walk away.
I just saw a MG Midget I owned for 10 years being advertised as
"Beautifully restored 1977 Midget, 57K Miles, Totally Reliable"
I did every major endurance TSD Rally in the North-East in that car, the
whole underneath
of the car shows the outline of rocks that I hit. I bought it in 1988 with
97K miles and
sold it with 255K.
I sold a 3 year old Jeep Wrangler to a young woman a couple of years ago,
who did not even
open the hood to check ANYTHING on the car. She liked the "color" and bought
it on the
spot. Now if anything had gone wrong on the car who do you think she would
be blaming - the DPO
NEVER assume anything the seller says is true
gerry
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