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First of all, thank you for the wisdom you've given me in this post, I'll try and address everything. The price for this was $8,400, he told me the lowest he'd go is $8,000 since I'm out of state, and he didn't want me to drive all that way just to offer him $6,000. I'm in a unique situation as I don't explicitly need a car until around August of next year. I live on my college campus and only have one class twice a week on my college's 2nd campus around 15 minutes away. I can take the bus there, a car is just faster and less risky right now. However, I will be online-only Thanksgiving break, and with how well I've enjoyed being online for most of my classes so far, I will most likely take this route next semester, meaning more time at home. Basically, it can be a daily driver or not, as I only truly need to drive it for an hour every week in total. At my home 45 minutes away, I have a garage with an above-average toolset and I will be getting the Datalogit from the current owner. I have read up on basic diagnostic work with it and done some homework on tuning principles in general, just so I can assess the health of the car when I go and check it out. Of course, I'd love to be able to drive it until November, and I will wait to see if that's possible until after I get a pre-purchase inspection. I have around $1000 to chuck at the car currently without totally ruining my finances. I'm lucky that I'm young and only pay for insurance and Spotify. I'm aware that the easiest solution (also the most expensive) is to simply just buy new turbos and install them. But, for that, I'd need the engine out due to the turbo size, as well as to look over things. Makes more sense to just rebuild them myself at that point. I suppose my wording wasn't indicative of what I was trying to get across, I mean "typical" as things that were to be expected in a 29-year-old car with multiple owners. Call it neglect if you'd like, but honestly, so long as the bumper doesn't have self-tapping screws holding it in, it'll be an upgrade over mine. I'm not looking for something pristine, and neglect can be reversed, however mechanical wear and tear cannot. That's what I'm most concerned about with the car. My car has torn seats and I'm perfectly fine living with them, if I don't like them I can just buy new ones in the future. I mentioned it before, but I did some digging and research on the APEXi unit, it's basically the grandfather of a Haltech system and is really no different from other standalone setups save for the interface. I will be sure to call around, I'm located in Georgia and I have Z1 Motorsports (though they are booked until January right now) and Royalty Performance, along with a few other shops that have been around long enough to see a Power FC in their time. I'm willing to learn to diagnose issues myself and solve them in time, but finding resources for this unit is hard because most are to do with RB engines and from Australians. This next point is something that I do herald with a lot of respect. I have enjoyed the satisfaction of doing the same to my own car, adding things to make it drive how I want, react exactly how I desire it to. I tend to soak up information fairly well, but trying to learn about all of the complexities of this car is something I have to weigh doing. I have other options for cars and around $8000 to play with, I had looked at Mazdaspeed 3's pretty seriously for a minute, but as you can probably tell from the very fact I'm asking these questions, I want another Z32 in my life. The price is the only thing discouraging me from considering other cars at the moment. The market value seems to be around $10,000 for one in decent shape. This seller just wants it gone so he can start up a mowing business, it's just driven around as fun on the weekend and something to tinker with when he's bored. That, paired with the turbo issue, explains the low price. For me, purely financially speaking, it is a justifiable investment, as undoubtedly these cars are going up in value. I know that reflects stock variants more so, but a working TT pushing around 400whp has to be worth something around $12-15,000, at least in my opinion. What you said about buying unknown and fixing the broken bits is something I am far too familiar with. My Z was dealer cared for its entire life until the previous owner slammed it on the ground and didn't take care of the car whatsoever. I would have paid $2000 for that car instead of the $4200 I did had I known all the terrible things I would encounter with it. I should have known that him including an extra alternator was remotely suspicious haha. I've done my homework more on this car and there aren't any issues that I can find that I don't feel I can tackle. And again, if I do think that this car isn't right for me, I'm sure someone with a relatively stock TT and more time and money to work on cars would not be unhappy trading for this car, which puts me in a good spot if I want to get out of it. I think you may be right with the wanting to jump into the deep end, I know the worth of having stuff done to these cars and for that, I will pay a premium. I'm lucky that this car is relatively inexpensive for the severity of the issues it's having, and I think that I can make it work for me. I'm not one to rush into things, but I tend to get very into researching one thing intensely then falling out of love with it a month later. That hasn't ever happened for me with cars and the Z32 in particular. My parents have given up on being the dream-killers in my life because I got my car against their wishes and showed that I could fix, daily drive, and enjoy it even when told that I wouldn't. Thank you for your wisdom. I had someone message me about my listing saying I was too over-informed, I included too many details and had so much info, so I must be insane. I simply replied that you have to be to drive one of these cars, otherwise I would have gotten myself a Corolla :) Glad to be a part of this community and hopefully in 20 years, I can return the favor to a young enthusiast who's in my shoes.
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14:10:50 09/29/20
