HHELP Quick 2nd Opinion needed

[Gypsyangel]

Ok looking at a 2000 Tdi beetle with 143k. Runs great" shifts smooth, normal interior wear n tear.. BUT no idea when the timing belt was done and the front tires are all worn down especially on the inside.this may or may not be leading to a mall front end vibration. The car is being offered at$ 3800. Take it on or run away?

[Tico4Life]

Auto or stick?

[Gypsyangel]

Sorry manual transmission

[Tico4Life]

My guess w/o looking or driving the car is the vibration is being caused by the tires being out of alignment and balance.
143K miles for a well cared diesel is nothing. How is the rest of maintenance records? Any?
It does not sound bad, how is the interior and exterior of the car? Clutch seems ok?
Try to beat them a bit more if you can, play the game

I think kfoxie would be one to ask, he might chime in soon

[Gypsyangel]

Interior is a bit rough. Broken switch on passenger door and mirror control. Various interior scratches. 2" tear in drivers seat. Lol could use a good detailing. Exterior not bad. Tiny chip in windshield that'll need fixed. Mirror has some broken plastic around it. Service records up to where it was traded in to dealer then went to auction. It was once loved.

Nothing too abnormal for a 10 yr old car. Except the paint on the interior of the drivers door is bubbling. Bad repaint?

[Tico4Life]

Originally Posted by Gypsyangel

paint on the interior of the drivers door is bubbling. Bad repaint?

Quite possible. Back to your original question I'd say depends on much you can or are willing to lay dow in one shot vs buying a cheaper car and pouring some money along the way to bring it back to life, or a better life that is. I found a couple of TDIs on CL while "browsing around" this morning ranging from 3-7K dollars. If its all cosmetics then it can be done fairly easy or find parts from junk yards. It'll take time and effort and that's ok as long as you know what you are getting into.
Try to keep the thread alive for the day until the TDI guys find you

[Tico4Life]

What would help a bit is if you could get some pics and post them here

[Gypsyangel]

Looks like I may be out voted. My hubby just took all the plastic spoiler and engine cover off and it looks decent. Timing belt is original. brakes look good. No major leaks that we can see.

I'm not afraid to work on it myself, and we've weighed the" how much. Are we willing to pay for" issue. I figure we can get a nice one for about$ 6k so don't want to be in over that with this one. Hubby is taking it for one more spin so he's probably sold on it. Will let ya know how it turns out.

[MyOtherRidesAVette]

Originally Posted by J.Arce

What would help a bit is if you could get some pics and post them here

At that kind of mileage the wear on the front tires could indicate suspension and/or sterring problems beyond a simple alignment. You're going to have to put some money in it immediately to clean that up and new tires.

Right now there are a lot of TDIs on eBay, cheap. Not only is this an indicator of their prices being down, but that there are a lot on the market, not just on eBay. Probably being fueled partially by the price of Diesel, which I saw last week, in the cheap gas Texas market, at $3.50 gal ($.50 spread over Reg Gas)

Without doing a $$$ analysis of the others available v. condition and mileage, I can't tell you for sure, but if I were you, that is exactly what I would do. With tires and front end work you could easily spend $500 - $1000, save anything else this particular TDI needs.

MORAV

[Gypsyangel]

Yeah, sorry. I'm on my cell. So not sure how to get pics to load. Thank you so much for your input.

[Tico4Life]

Well, interior work if you get used parts here and there wont amount to $3K, if he is anything like me he is just pretending to test drive it to "see if the car is good enough" but he wants it... for you of course

Make sure you beat them up some more on the price. I am not saying its not worth that much, just saying MAKE SURE YOU BEAT THEM UP SOME MORE

I hate to see ppl paying asking price!

Keep us posted

[Gypsyangel]

I was thinking steering or suspension" but nothing really jumps out besides the tire wear and vibes. Suspension looks good and it steers tight and doesn't drift or pull to one side or the other. Of course I'm not a professional.

I also noticed the price coming down. Although even on gas ones. Maybe in anticipation of the new design coming out.

Will let you know how it all turns out. What the heck, I can rebuild bikes and Miatas. Maybe beetles won't be too bad.

[Gypsyangel]

Lol don't worry,we did beat him up. Asking price was 4300. And I think you're spot on about the test drive

[Tico4Life]

Originally Posted by Gypsyangel

I was thinking steering or suspension" but nothing really jumps out besides the tire wear and vibes. Suspension looks good and it steers tight and doesn't drift or pull to one side or the other. Of course I'm not a professional.

I also noticed the price coming down. Although even on gas ones. Maybe in anticipation of the new design coming out.

Will let you know how it all turns out. What the heck, I can rebuild bikes and Miatas. Maybe beetles won't be too bad.

Of course you can, and that makes it cheaper and more fun. What color is it?

[2004NBTURBOS]

Myself...My opinion here, just an opinion. $3800 is a fair asking price. Yes the tires are worn, could be suspension issues, or it could just need tires and a alignment. Some people don't see the need the rotate tires on a regular basis, they just buy tires twice as often. Go into figuring basic maint items, TB/WP, brakes, tires etc and figure that in the total

[MyOtherRidesAVette]

After re-reading what you had to say about the interior, you really need to do some research. You haven't given enough details to really run it on KBB or the like. Here is a good start.

You can see what has sold very recently and what's there for sale. It will also link you straight to KBB. No other site offers you the final selling price, hence, this is the only source I know for good research.

Price Research on eBay
eBay -: Volkswagen Beetle-New

Don't fall in love with a beat up, old, used, car. Figure probably double what you think, to fix the issues and you'll be closer. Another will come along.

Been there, done that!

[DZLBUG]

If you buy it, get the timing belt done IMMEDIATELY!

The job requires a very specific procedure, special lockdown tools, and it involves more than just the timing belt. The water pump, tensioner, 3 rollers and several stretch bolts all need to be replaced. Do not go to the VW dealer, do not go to an "indie" VW mechanic who usually works on aircooleds or gassers.

These are the two guys in ATL that I can recommend to you:
Roger Feldt
Atlanta Southside
678-907-4221

Troy Sentz
Atlanta Northside
Canton, GA 570.233.1385
TDI Club username TNTKNC

They are great guys, they will do the job right and treat you well. They will also point out any other items that may need addressing. Unless you learn to do all the work yourself, these are the only two guys you should let touch the car.

Good luck!

[Gypsyangel]

It's a silver one. Seems to be the most common color besides black.

Also, just rotated the tires and put air in them (they only had about 20lbs). Car rides much better. Go figure :-/ . But yeah, it's coming home with us. first stop wll be tires. 2nd will be timing belt.

Thanks for the # to the guy on the southside. We'll be giving him a call this week.

[Tico4Life]

Hey Congrats. Best of luck to you both. There is one thing you need to do before the tires and way before the timing belt... POST PICTURES
Guess u r not gonna get much sleep 2night

[BlueLghtning]

Hey everyone, thanks for the input to my wife earlier.

We had driven from Newnan, GA to Saluda, SC (200+ miles) to go pick up this beetle and I wasn't expecting some of the surprises we had found once we got there. I had talked to the seller quite a few times over the phone over the previous week and he overall he seemed like he was being honest with me, but even he did fail to notice a few things that I picked out. The car is a 1 owner car that got traded in at a big dealership back in Nov, then went to auction and this "small seller" guy bought it from auction to resell. So although it had been a 1 owner car, it was passing through a couple dealer hands over the past few months.

I did break one of my own rules and that if I'm going more then a couple hours away, I request pics of everything I know I'm going to be looking at so I can judge for myself and not waste my time. By the time we made a deal though and agreed on price, he had gone on vacation and the only pics I had were the few he had posted the ad with which honestly weren't that detailed. I let that slide and it got me with a few surprises I probably would have seen in pics had I held to my own rule. He had no interior pics, no tire pics, no engine pics, etc, just some outside pics.

He had told me about a few things on the interior like the seat tear and some of the plastic bits looking a bit worn from like the sun or use, but I wasn't expecting the right window switch to be missing or the mirror adjuster to be broken, but those aren't deal killers, just annoyances I would have liked to have known about. And the paint bubbling/pitting up on the drivers inside door panel for some reason?

He said the tires were like 30% over the phone, but in reality, the fronts were at their wear bars in the middle and both front tires had obviously been driven many miles under inflated with both edges worn pretty good (even a small spot on one edge were the cords were about to break through on one front tire. The rears (although not as bad), had been ridden under inflated too and have less then 1k miles left in them.

On the first test drive, the engine sounded nice, the clutch and transmission shifted great, but the car pulled left and was honestly riding pretty crappy due to the low air pressure.

With all the issues we first found and surprised by, our first reaction was just that we were going to pass. I hated to do this as we had sent him a $250 deposit to hold the car and take it off ebay. I figured we could chat about the differences I found and he explained over the phone, but he wouldn't give me my $250 deposit back as he felt he had described the car the best he could even though he realized he didn't describe the tires correctly and a missed a few other things I pointed out. So we left really expecting to just eat the $250, and having to drive the rental car we had rented all the way back to Atl.

Only a few miles down the road though, he called and we chatted and he offered to come down on the price. Sarah and I discussed it some more, and we decided to turn around and go back to give things a much closer look. With everything I had already seen, I told him I was going to spend some serious time underneath it as I didn't need any more surprises and he agreed. We jacked up the car everything under the car and hood checked out to my satisfaction. We don't know for sure the timing belt is original, but when I pulled that basic black cover off the top of the engine, the sticker over the timing belt cover is still the original one with a 2000 date. I would think most would update that sticker, if the timing belt was replaced but maybe not? All of the original owners info is still in the car along with the dealership that serviced it in the beginning and some service records along the way like oil changes and stuff, but I never found anything for a timing belt, so I plan on trying to contact the dealer it was serviced at and maybe the previous owner if I can track them down to get some records perhaps. That would greatly help me know where I stand. I would assume anyone that had the car serviced at the dealer from early on and owned it for 142k miles over a 10 year period would do pretty well on maintenance.

Once everything under the car checked out, I spent some more time looking at the tires and I started to feel like it was just some poor neglect on the tires and with 4 new ones, everything would be much better, but we still had to make it back to Atl on these tires that were on there which was taking a big risk with their current condition. I asked the seller to help me rotate the tires and he agreed. I knew those front tires were really iffy and I wanted them on the rear for sure, so all 4 got rotated and the front two at their max psi and the rear a bit higher so I could keep them off the worn edges. I test drove the car again and the pull went away and it rode a lot nice with better pressures in the tires. They got us home, but all 4 will be replaced here this week. I'm thinking overall, the bad wear is just from some under inflated tires that just got neglected. We'll hope for the best there, but I don't think there's any suspension issues or anything.

The seller originally had the car listed at $4500 and we agreed on a $4050 price the week before. With the re-negotiation, we were at $3800 which I think was fair for both of us and leaves us room to replace the tires, do the timing belt/water pump and then work on some of the smaller issues. With all that done, we should have a well dependable TDI with lots of life left in it.

We made it the 200+ miles home without issue and only sucking down less then a 1/4 tank of fuel.