Tom's Challenger thread made me want to write mine down, since it went a little differently.
i'm Luis, i work as a sheet metal mechanic at the aircraft boneyard on the east side of Tucson, so i spend my days around planes that will never fly again and i wanted a car that goes. 2019 Camaro 2SS, 6.2 LT1, the six speed manual, Riverside Blue, 37,800 miles. it came out of a lender's yard near Oklahoma City.
first, the money part, because it shaped everything. conaway's does not do financing, the cars are bank repos and the lien sits on the title until it is paid in full. so before i bid on anything i went to my credit union, Vantage West, and got approved for a used car loan with a ceiling of $30,000. they wired it when the time came. if you are reading this and planning to bid, do that part first. it took me nine days to get the approval letter and that was with my paperwork already in order.
second, i lost one. in august i bid on a 2018 Camaro SS 1LE, the one i actually wanted, $31,000 as my sealed number. it went to somebody else and i will never know if i missed by ten dollars or by three thousand. that is how blind bidding works and it took me a few days to get over it.
september, the 2SS came up. i put in $28,400 and won it. no buyer's premium, so that was the price. the yard was 1,060 road miles from my house. delivery covers a thousand miles at no charge, then seventy cents a mile, so i owed for 60 miles. $42. cheapest road trip i ever bought.
the listing at conaway's auto sales had 48 photos including the clutch pedal and the shifter, which was the reason i felt ok buying a manual i could not drive first. more on how that turned out below.
$42 for 1,060 miles, i spend more than that on gas getting to Henderson and back in a week.
real question though. a manual from a repo yard is my nightmare. the previous owner stopped paying, you think he was babying the clutch? how did you know it was not slipping before you handed over twenty eight grand?
car 2016 Mustang GT six speed, drag radials in the trunk
he could not know before. nobody can on a car they cannot drive. but there is a test you do the day it arrives and it takes two minutes.
warm the car up. find an empty road. fourth gear at about 30 mph, then floor it. if the revs climb and the speed does not follow, the clutch is slipping. if the tach and the speedo go up together, it is holding. do the same in fifth if you want to be sure. also note where the pedal engages. right at the top means worn, near the floor means air in the hydraulics or something else going on.
that is exactly what i did, out on Old Spanish Trail toward Saguaro National Park on a sunday morning. fourth gear, 30, floored it, tach and speedo climbed together. same in fifth. engagement point is about a third of the way up the pedal travel. it holds fine. i also did a few hard pulls in second and third and nothing smelled, nothing flared.
the one thing wrong with it was not the car, it was the trip. it came on an open carrier and somewhere on I-40 the windshield picked up a rock chip about the size of a dime, low on the passenger side. here in Arizona most of us carry full glass coverage, so a mobile glass guy came to my driveway and filled it for nothing. if that had been a crack across the windshield it would be a different story.
the paperwork from conaway's came with the car in an envelope, notarized, with both keys, and the title transferred clean once the lender got paid. the MVD office took it in about forty minutes.
the honest downside, other than the bid i lost: the 2019 front end. the SS that year has the black bar across the nose that everybody online hates, and Chevy changed it for 2020. i actually like it. my nephew says it looks like the car has a mustache.
the mustache comment is the best thing i have read on here.
LT1 and a six speed is a good combination, i will give you that, even as a Ford guy. the TR-6060 has the rev matching too on these, right? curious if you leave it on.
yes, Active Rev Match, the paddles on the wheel turn it on and off. i leave it on in town and off on Mount Lemmon. i like doing my own heel and toe badly.
for anybody comparing notes with the Challenger thread, here is where mine landed. $28,400 bid, $42 delivery, about $1,900 in Arizona sales tax and registration. dealers in Phoenix had 2019 2SS manuals with similar miles at $33,000 to $35,500 in september. i did not get the 1LE, which still bugs me a little, but i got a car with a heads up display and a Bose stereo that i would not have paid extra for, and it drives every day.
and if i bid again on conaway's i would set my number the same way. decide what the car is worth to me, put that number in, and do not sit there refreshing the page. losing the 1LE taught me that.
reading this with my Challenger under a cover and two feet of snow on the driveway. driving a car every day in january sounds made up.
the fourth gear test is a good one and i had forgotten it. i bought my R/T with the six speed from a dealer and did the same thing in the lot before i signed. dealers will let you. a repo yard will not, so the test after delivery is all you get, and it is worth knowing before you bid that you might be buying a clutch job.
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