I am looking at a 87 vette 69,000 miles on it and its in good shape, seats need some work but everything else works. What should i look for other than the regular stuff ie: tire worn parts etc,.. Guy wants 6500 for it. Is this a good price?. I don't know what to look for on these vettes but i need a toy and this may be it.

 

Look for clues of maintenece.....

Vette specific, off teh top of my head,
Check the U joint, all 6 of them. Often negleted for service or replacement becasue they are a PIA.
Look for cracks in the fiberglass outside and inside if posiable at any and all fastening points that you can find.

Other than that, it's a normal car.
Check steering for play
Check for signs of fluid leaks
etc
etc
etc

Dont forget to kick the tires, I suppose if a car dont fall apart when you kick the tires then it's road ready.
I dont know, havent figured out why people do that yet......

 

Good point about the fiberglass i will check it out. Thanks Matttttttt

why do they kick the tires???

 

I kicked my Mustang's tires when it wouldn't start.

 

Maybe the gas tank was empty.

 

Damn, didn't think of that! Should have kicked the gas tank then!

 

Edit - What engine is in it?

 

I bet it started anyway.

 

I have no idea why they do that...

I will kick or hit the tires with a stick on a trailer before I pull it, especially if it's sitting in tall grass or in a field. Thats to make sure there is air in them. But if it's obviously a daily driver, and if it's on solid ground.... then simply LOOOOK! If one side is flat, then you know.

Besides they are thinking of buying it, not getting ready to drive it. So how that helps them decide if they are interested, I really dont know.

 

I looked at an 88 here for 6500. it had 120,000 mi. I was interested but would only have offered 5K. If it looks nice, runs out good, and hsa some paper trail of maint. low mileage 65 doesn't sound terrible. try for a little less. they sure kick nice. I wound up getting an '80 malibu 2 door instead that will be getting some much kick in the pants power soon. more fun to build something than just buy it off the rack. if it's going to be a toy anyways.

 

im not a big fan of any corvette from the 80s but it sounds like a good price.

 

They really arent any worse than any of the other cars of the mid to late 80's. The 80's was just an over all bad era for production cars. IMHO

Not 100% sure this decade is much better.

 

yeah but looks, i didnt like the way that 87 style corvette looked at all.

 

yea thats what I was talking about too.

Although perfomance was also lacking in all the cars in the 80's. There are much faster version before or after of every one. The 80's were hitting record slows.
87 The mustang may be faster the 87 vette
Then 88 teh vette maybe faster...

But almost all the 60's to early to mid 70's mustangs were faster than the 87 mustang.

Sam thing for the vette.
Then in the 90's speed came back again.
80's were just poor styles, poor perfornance for vehicles.
Took us almost 15 years to bounce back and start making real cars from the gas shortage.

I can still appreciate those cars from that era, but there is some disapointment for me in them too.

 

I don't remember when they stopped the 4+3 manual tranny, but those are very expensive to fix. Most people that I know ended up replacing them with something else due to the cost of repair/rebuilds.

Woof
Bowser