Previous Owner.....
03-17-2008, 01:26 PM
#1
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Chavies, KY
Posts: 47
Previous Owner.....
I guess I just need to rant a little, blow off some steam.
I swear the guy that owned this car before me had to be some kind of flipping moron.
Thank God he only owned the car a few months, or else it would be destroyed in no time.
The first aggrevation was when I cleaned up when I first got it off of him. If I was him, I would have been extremely embarrased to let a car go with that many old french fries, potato chips, and crusty old peanuts left in it. Not speaking of ALL the other trash he left behind. I can understand the thinking it wasn't his to worry about anymore, but me personally, it would have embarassed the heck out of me to let one go like that.
Then the other little minor things. When I bought the car, I bought it because it had real good service records, up until he got a hold of it late last summer. In that short time he put a wrong battery in, that lasted no time, with the wrong type of bolt to lock it down with. Rounded off the oil drain plug so that it would be near impossible to change the oil. Had hercules tighten the oil filter on, so no mear mortal would be able to get it off without straigning his guts out.
I should put in here, he had an extra parts car for it, one that had been hit in the front end, and when I bought the good car, I got both of them. So back to ranting about him. The antenna was broken, it took all of fifteen minutes if that much to remove the antenna from the wrecked car and place in the new one. The door light button (the one that comes out when the door opens, and gets pushed back in when it closes), he pretty much ripped the old one out leaving exposed metal to contact the inside of the body, so the car though the door was opening all the time whenever it made contact. Took a whole five minutes to get the one off the wrecked car and put on the good one. The SID unit, took but a few minutes to get out of the wrecked one and put in the new one.
There is more, I know there is, I just can't remember it all right now. I hope his little era of car ownership didn't do too much damage to it. There were so many easy things that he let go, it makes me kind of worry. It's turning into a really great car now though, everything is getting cleaned up, replaced, put back in working order.
I hate to blame one man for that much stuff, it is an older car now after all. It's the service records from the previous two owners that make me want to put so much blame on him though. I have proof of oil changes, tire rotations, everything from their ownership. Nothing from his.
Every car I have ever owned has been a used car, and it seems like they have all had their little things like that. Things that were super simple to work on, cheap, and easy to change that people just let go. All except the Blazer I own, I bought it at a car auction from a dealer, and am the second owner of it, the previous owner was religous about taking it to the dealership to get serviced and I have all the records to show it. It's been a great vehicle too.
I'm just hoping a little TLC will go a long way with my Saab. So far I have really enjoyed owning it. Even though I've had to go over all those little things. I guess it helps I like working on vehicles, I almost made a career out of it at one time, but I hated dealing with the customers. So I went into being a bondsman, dealing with the worst people out there, on a daily basis, sad thing is they are much nicer than your average customer anywhere.
Sorry it's so long, just had to blow off a little steam.
I swear the guy that owned this car before me had to be some kind of flipping moron.
Thank God he only owned the car a few months, or else it would be destroyed in no time.
The first aggrevation was when I cleaned up when I first got it off of him. If I was him, I would have been extremely embarrased to let a car go with that many old french fries, potato chips, and crusty old peanuts left in it. Not speaking of ALL the other trash he left behind. I can understand the thinking it wasn't his to worry about anymore, but me personally, it would have embarassed the heck out of me to let one go like that.
Then the other little minor things. When I bought the car, I bought it because it had real good service records, up until he got a hold of it late last summer. In that short time he put a wrong battery in, that lasted no time, with the wrong type of bolt to lock it down with. Rounded off the oil drain plug so that it would be near impossible to change the oil. Had hercules tighten the oil filter on, so no mear mortal would be able to get it off without straigning his guts out.
I should put in here, he had an extra parts car for it, one that had been hit in the front end, and when I bought the good car, I got both of them. So back to ranting about him. The antenna was broken, it took all of fifteen minutes if that much to remove the antenna from the wrecked car and place in the new one. The door light button (the one that comes out when the door opens, and gets pushed back in when it closes), he pretty much ripped the old one out leaving exposed metal to contact the inside of the body, so the car though the door was opening all the time whenever it made contact. Took a whole five minutes to get the one off the wrecked car and put on the good one. The SID unit, took but a few minutes to get out of the wrecked one and put in the new one.
There is more, I know there is, I just can't remember it all right now. I hope his little era of car ownership didn't do too much damage to it. There were so many easy things that he let go, it makes me kind of worry. It's turning into a really great car now though, everything is getting cleaned up, replaced, put back in working order.
I hate to blame one man for that much stuff, it is an older car now after all. It's the service records from the previous two owners that make me want to put so much blame on him though. I have proof of oil changes, tire rotations, everything from their ownership. Nothing from his.
Every car I have ever owned has been a used car, and it seems like they have all had their little things like that. Things that were super simple to work on, cheap, and easy to change that people just let go. All except the Blazer I own, I bought it at a car auction from a dealer, and am the second owner of it, the previous owner was religous about taking it to the dealership to get serviced and I have all the records to show it. It's been a great vehicle too.
I'm just hoping a little TLC will go a long way with my Saab. So far I have really enjoyed owning it. Even though I've had to go over all those little things. I guess it helps I like working on vehicles, I almost made a career out of it at one time, but I hated dealing with the customers. So I went into being a bondsman, dealing with the worst people out there, on a daily basis, sad thing is they are much nicer than your average customer anywhere.
Sorry it's so long, just had to blow off a little steam.
03-18-2008, 11:40 AM
#3
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Chavies, KY
Posts: 47
RE: Previous Owner.....
It can be enough to make a person scream sometimes. Then really wonder about people.
I about got it all now, just trying to figure out a mystery oil leak, and a mystery window problem.
I about got it all now, just trying to figure out a mystery oil leak, and a mystery window problem.
03-20-2008, 10:30 PM
#5
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Chavies, KY
Posts: 47
RE: Previous Owner.....
One more thing to add. The car has aftermarket wheels and lug studs on it. The studs take a special tool to put them on and take them off with. The previous owner was at least nice enough to include the tool with the car, but as it turns out, the end was rounded off and made the tool pretty useless.
It is basically just shaped like a very large allen wrench. So I figured I'd go get a allen wrench type tool to replace it with, but I was wrong about that. Turns out the tool is some odd size. It's between a 11mm and 12mm, and between a 7/16" and 1/2", but none of them fit right. We checked it with a caliper at the parts place, and seemed like it came out to an 11.8 mm in size, which doesn't match to anything.
Well, after no luck finding a new tool to take the lugs out with, I came home and cut the rounded off part of the tool off. There was about an inch of allen wrench on it, and I cut half that off. It works, but I don't like it. So I thought I'd see if one of the lugs from the wrecked saab would fit, but the heads are too big around to fit in the aftermarket rims.
I'm pretty sure I'd like to give the previous owner a good swift kick in the butt. Hopefully I'm about to the end of what he would have worked on now. All the basic maintenance stuff.
It is basically just shaped like a very large allen wrench. So I figured I'd go get a allen wrench type tool to replace it with, but I was wrong about that. Turns out the tool is some odd size. It's between a 11mm and 12mm, and between a 7/16" and 1/2", but none of them fit right. We checked it with a caliper at the parts place, and seemed like it came out to an 11.8 mm in size, which doesn't match to anything.
Well, after no luck finding a new tool to take the lugs out with, I came home and cut the rounded off part of the tool off. There was about an inch of allen wrench on it, and I cut half that off. It works, but I don't like it. So I thought I'd see if one of the lugs from the wrecked saab would fit, but the heads are too big around to fit in the aftermarket rims.
I'm pretty sure I'd like to give the previous owner a good swift kick in the butt. Hopefully I'm about to the end of what he would have worked on now. All the basic maintenance stuff.
03-21-2008, 10:55 AM
#7
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Chavies, KY
Posts: 47
RE: Previous Owner.....
Yeah.... kinda makes me wish the spare car had a full set of four rims on it. Well.... it has all four rims, but one of them is busted. I've called around to see if I could find a cheap one at all the salvage yards. All just so I could use a standard saab lug bolt.
Guess I'll make do with what I have for now. The aftermarket rims don't look all that bad anyway.
Guess I'll make do with what I have for now. The aftermarket rims don't look all that bad anyway.
03-21-2008, 09:16 PM
#9
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Join Date: Mar 2008
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RE: Previous Owner.....
I've been working on trying to get pictures for a while. Seems like any time I get it cleaned up, I'm not thinking about getting a picture, and when I do remember it, it immediately starts to rain.
03-21-2008, 09:28 PM
#10
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Join Date: Mar 2008
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RE: Previous Owner.....
I swear I have the worst luck.
I went to get new tires put on today, and..... now my car is out of commision for a little while.
Kids in garages just shouldn't happen, they tear up more than they fix.
They were actually going in record time today, no problems to speak of. Then they got to the last tire, and the older supervisor guy figured the kid could put a wheel back on a car.
The kid somehow managed to get the wheel set back on a little crooked, and cross threaded three lug bolts. One of those air gun happy kids, who can't do anything by hand. When he couldn't figure out when the first one wouldn't tighten up, he just kept going with the other two. Finally after the third one he hollered at his boss to check on it.
When he hollered I thought he was done, so I put my magazine down and went out with the boss guy. The next thing I know the boss man was about ready to kill the little feller. He actually got mad enough to send him out on a good couple hour long errand just to get the boy out of the garage for a while.
The boss guy managed to get the two remaining lugs in, no problem of course. He worked on it about an hour and got a third one in. After that, we went to the office, and to my surprise he is going to fix what the boy tore up. No extra cost to me.
He was going to order a whole new hub, but being the nice guy I am, admitted to having the wrecked car and said I would just try taking the one off of it first. He said if I'd do that he'd try putting it on, and if there was any problem with it that he would get me a brand new one, and brand new lug bolts.
I kind of hope the boy don't get fired for it, but I don't think it was his first mess up either. The way the boss man talked, the boy has already messed up quite a few studs and lug nuts by cross threading them on other vehicles. While it's no where near as expensive as messing up something on the saab, it's still a lot of goof ups. I'd say the only thing that will save the boy is that it's too hard to find any help around here, and impossible to find good help.
I'm just glad I have something else to drive, or else I'd be really P'd off.
I went to get new tires put on today, and..... now my car is out of commision for a little while.
Kids in garages just shouldn't happen, they tear up more than they fix.
They were actually going in record time today, no problems to speak of. Then they got to the last tire, and the older supervisor guy figured the kid could put a wheel back on a car.
The kid somehow managed to get the wheel set back on a little crooked, and cross threaded three lug bolts. One of those air gun happy kids, who can't do anything by hand. When he couldn't figure out when the first one wouldn't tighten up, he just kept going with the other two. Finally after the third one he hollered at his boss to check on it.
When he hollered I thought he was done, so I put my magazine down and went out with the boss guy. The next thing I know the boss man was about ready to kill the little feller. He actually got mad enough to send him out on a good couple hour long errand just to get the boy out of the garage for a while.
The boss guy managed to get the two remaining lugs in, no problem of course. He worked on it about an hour and got a third one in. After that, we went to the office, and to my surprise he is going to fix what the boy tore up. No extra cost to me.
He was going to order a whole new hub, but being the nice guy I am, admitted to having the wrecked car and said I would just try taking the one off of it first. He said if I'd do that he'd try putting it on, and if there was any problem with it that he would get me a brand new one, and brand new lug bolts.
I kind of hope the boy don't get fired for it, but I don't think it was his first mess up either. The way the boss man talked, the boy has already messed up quite a few studs and lug nuts by cross threading them on other vehicles. While it's no where near as expensive as messing up something on the saab, it's still a lot of goof ups. I'd say the only thing that will save the boy is that it's too hard to find any help around here, and impossible to find good help.
I'm just glad I have something else to drive, or else I'd be really P'd off.