- You've definitely seen plenty of cars,
like this on Craigslist.
with plenty of mods that you think are sick
and maybe the price isn't too bad.
Well conveniently my boy Pumphrey,
just bought somebody else's project car.
- It's the car from the cartoon.
- So today we're gonna go through the whole model list
on Pumphrey's new 86.
Make sure everything's there.
Make sure it's working and not trying to kill my boy.
By the end of the day,
we should have a good summary
of what kind of shape this thing is in
and whether or not he made a good move buying it.
We'll also be able to give him
a to-do list of all the stuff he needs to fix
and make a determination on whether or not,
buying somebody else's project car is a good choice.
Now, he probably should've done this before he bought it,
but he already bought it,
so let's do it.
- That's good.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
- Big thanks to Off the Record,
for sponsoring this week's episode
of Money Pit.
- Cash during ticket on the way here.
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Be safe out there my deals
(car engine revving)
Now it's one thing to buy a project car
of somebody you know.
Somebody whose work you trust to be high quality.
It's a completely different thing
to buy a project car in a various state of disarray
that you're getting a good deal on
because it's gonna need a lot of work time and money,
before you even get to enjoy it.
So why don't you tell me
all the things that you know are broken on the car?
- It's got a lot of rattles
coming from a lot of different parts of the car
The timing belt is squealing I know that.
The speedometer definitely doesn't work,
the oil temp gauge, I'm 50/50 on,
also the coolant temp gauge,
the roll bar, which is cool
has some questionable hardware in it.
The interior is a mess.
Oh, the fog lights don't work,
the headlights don't go down sometimes.
The steering is a little loose.
The paint is bad.
That is a lot longer list than I was expecting.
- Oh, there's g-tons of oil leaks.
It's just puking oil.
- Nice, yes.
I mean, it sounds like it's in good shape.
Sounds like everything's great.
Okay, so now that we know that everything's wrong with it,
let's go take her for a drive.
See what this thing's got.
(car engine revving)
Let's rip this little turd.
(car engine revving)
(laughing)
This thing is sick.
Alright, let's see here.
Coolant temp gauge working,
oil temp gauge working,
check engine light not on
that's important, speedo, yeah not working.
Fuel gauge works.
Man, honestly.
Hey, the windshield wipers work.
All right, that could use tightened up, I guess.
I don't know why he's even the slightest bit concerned.
Oh my God, that's so fun.
He just wants to come(background drrowns out speaker)
Brake pedal feels good.
Wow, and the e-brake works.
What a gem.
This thing's gonna be just fine.
Yeah dude, it rips.
The test drive was definitely a positive.
Sure, it makes them weird rattles
and funny noises and some odd feelings,
but none of it feels too serious.
It doesn't feel like it's gonna kill me.
So, so far things are looking pretty good,
but we need to put the thing on jack stands,
get under it and get her knuckles good and greasy,
so we can really see what's going on.
(upbeat music)
So the pinch weld is where the unibody
kind of comes together
and it's what I'm supposed to use to jack this thing up
and where I was planning on putting jack stand
but it's pretty beat up.
So I think I'm gonna use a different part of the chassis.
Okay, she's jacked up.
Let's take a trip to the engine Bay
and see what's going on in there.
(upbeat music)
Not too bad.
I dunno Pump,
I'd say you're doing okay.
- All right.
- I'm gonna check the oil, looks fresh.
Did you just dump a bunch of oil in here, to drive here?
- Yeah.
- Now we need to find out where all this oil is coming out.
There's definitely oil coming out around the valve cover.
That's a sign of a bad valve, cover gasket,
and it's an easy thing to replace.
It's usually pretty cheap too.
It would probably cost them 20 or 30 bucks
and take them a couple hours.
Let's go write it down.
Which way do you think I should make the list?
That way?
- Probably.
So far I'm not too scared, I'm not too concerned.
We've got a decent looking bay here.
So the battery looks great.
Terminals look nice and clean, no corrosion.
That's always what you want to see.
I know Pumphrey was a little bit worried about
the state of the wiring here and at a glance.
I can see why.
'Cause it looks a little bit like spaghetti.
There's some wires hanging out.
The wiring is okay, it's just ugly.
So we got a little clean up project here.
Alright, let's go put clean up engine bay wiring,
on the list.
Let's see what we can see behind this timing cover.
Well, hopefully we'll get a look at cam seals.
See if there are any more engine leaks going on back here,
get a look at the timing belt as well.
See what kind of shape it's in.
It looks, I mean, if I were guessing,
I would say it looks relatively new.
It does look like there's some seepage down here
which could still be the valve cover gasket.
But I'm gonna go ahead
and guess that the cam seals are leaking too,
and really, while you're doing the valve cover gasket,
it's usually pretty easy to do the cam seals as well.
So I'm gonna go ahead and put those.
So we heard this thing squeal when we started it up
and I think that the accessory belt down here
is a little loose.
I mean, this is one of those things
that we can put on the list
or I could just help the boy out real quick.
I think I'm a retention to belt fam.
Nice guy thing to do or what?
Okay, so I just got done re tightening this belt.
Feels great, hopefully it won't squeal on startup now.
And man, I just see so much oil.
This thing is soaked, coated, covered, dripping in oil.
The oil pan gasket
or lack thereof is definitely a huge leak.
So that's gonna move right to the top of the list.
I mean, this thing is losing so much oil.
It's insane.
So this is actually an engine swap.
This is a for 4AGE from a later Corolla
and it's supposed to make, I think about 130 horsepower.
Sure it's a little leaky,
but this is a pretty sweet engine
and is what makes this car so fun to drive?
Alright, so we're gonna pull out the spark plugs real quick.
Take a look at them,
just make sure it looks like there's nothing
out of the ordinary going on.
Oh, what do you know?
They're sopping wet with oil.
Another sign that the valve cover gasket
is leaking around the plugs.
Oh yeah.
It's wet down in there, it's wet.
So just gonna try to clean it up for him
until he gets it fixed.
Also because I'm about to pull these plugs out
apart from being completely soaked in oil,
it looks pretty good.
The electrode is a nice tan color.
It looks nice and uniform.
The ground strap is still in good shape,
there's no erosion.
This looks like a healthy running engine for sure.
So if the next three plugs look like this,
we're gonna be happy.
And that's a lot dryer of a plug.
Things seem to be in better shape back there, sparktacular.
All right, so after having gone through the engine Bay,
let's talk it over real quick.
In terms of negatives.
Sure, we've got some oil leaks.
The valve cover gasket needs replaced,
the oil pan gasket needs replaced.
The belt needed tightened up
and we've got a little missing hardware,
and this wiring could use cleaned up,
but we've also got the engine that you want.
We've got the swapped high compression, higher power engine
and it seems to be running great.
Sure, it's got leaks, but the spark plugs look great.
We've got our strut bar.
We've got a sick radiator, great battery.
So with that short list considered,
I'm calling the engine Bay a positive.
Positive in the engine bay,
now it's time to move on.
Let's do steering, suspension and brakes.
All right, so the first thing I'm gonna do
before I take the front wheels off
is give it a front end, shake down.
I'm gonna quickly check the ball joints,
the wheel bearings and the tire rod ends
just by jerking the wheel around a little bit.
So side to side is how you test for tire rod ends.
If your tire rod end is bad,
you'll feel some clunking right here.
I don't feel as nice and tight.
So our tire rod on this side is good, that's great.
Now let's check for the wheel, bearing.
Grab it at the top and bottom, shake back and forth,
if you feel play any clunking,
then your wheel bearing is going out.
I'd say that's pretty normal for this kind of car.
I think this uses old boy taper bearing.
So that's normal.
So now we're gonna check ball joints, which is also easy.
Take this apple box and a pry bar.
We'll get under the tire
and we're gonna bounce it up and down.
And while we do that, looking for any play,
also feeling for any play and I don't feel any,
it feels nice and tight.
Sweet.
It's not what you want.
Feels like wheel bearing.
Okay, so the good news is I think the wheel bearing is okay.
Maybe the coil over's just loose.
So I'm gonna tighten that up and shake it again.
See if that fixes the noise.
Hey, clunk, be gone.
Just gotta tighten up those coil overs.
Gretty coil overs are cool,
but they're not cool if they're about to come off.
Alright, so now that we have the wheel off,
I'm just gonna go ahead and do a quick inspection
and just kind of give everything a once over
and make sure everything's okay.
Brake line looks nice, it's braided.
That's cool.
Let's see what the brake pads look like.
Plenty of life, plenty of life.
Hmm, you've got some wetness
going on down here at the bottom of the brake caliper.
I wonder where that's coming from,
must be coming from the piston, I guess,
that's a little bit of a bummer.
So to fix the brakes,
you can rebuild a brake calipers
or even just replace them.
That's probably what I would go with
after a little power steering thing,
probably ts replace them.
All right, so we've gone all the way around the car now.
We've checked the suspension,
the brakes and all the steering components.
And the only issue we found
was a slightly leaking brake caliper on the passenger side.
So a steering brakes and suspension pretty much check out.
I'm gonna call them a positive.
(upbeat music)
Okay so now I just got done looking at the fuel system
and it looks old, but it looks fine.
All the hoses are in good shape.
Hose clamps are in good shape.
You can see some of them have been replaced.
So the fuel system overall, from what I can see,
gets a positive.
So after inspecting the chassis in general,
I think I'm gonna call it a neutral.
Here's the deal.
We've got some damage.
We've got the pinch welds that are smashed to hell
and we've got this kind of a frame rail,
whatever you wanna call it.
That's smashed in over here.
Not great, but there's also not a lot of rust.
And the fact is A86s' are by and large pretty beat up.
So in relative terms, this looks pretty good.
I don't hate it, but I don't love it either.
It doesn't make me feel warm fuzzies.
So I'm gonna give it a neutral.
Alright, so I can get into the bell housing here
and, well, it's definitely damp.
I'm gonna say,
I think the remains leaking a little bit too.
Man, this thing has all of the oil leaks,
just soaking wet.
Alright, so we've, we've got at least,
I'd say a rear main seal leak
and or an input shaft seal leak on the transmission.
That's probably the biggest negative in my book
because that's kind of a big job.
You gotta pull the transmission out to fix this.
That's something that could take this
from a car that makes sense to buy to one that doesn't
depending on your skillset
or how much you feel like taking out of transmission.
It also sounds like the throw out bearing is going too.
When you put the clutch in
and when you manipulate the clutch,
you can hear some kind of funny noises.
So the transmission is gonna have to come out.
The throw out bearing is gonna need replaced.
The rear main seal is gonna need replaced.
And while you're in there,
you might as well do the transmission input shaft seal,
since you've already got the transmission out.
So in terms of the transmission,
this thing gets a negative.
We got a lot of leaks
and this big thing needs to come out to fix them.
- That's what I'm talking about.
Like the kind of catastrophic things
that I don't want to happen.
- Okay, so a lot of the nuts and bolts
have been touched and looked at.
And so far we're doing okay.
Now let's take a nice general gander
at the exterior and see how things are going.
See if all the stuff's there.
See if anything's trying to fall.
Exterior is the largest organ.
(laughing)
(upbeat music)
Okay, so one of the things I wanna do
is find where all the tires are rubbing
and where some of these rattles are coming from.
So we're gonna look in the fender wells right now
and just kind of get an assessment.
Okay, first off.
So the fender can easily be rolled
and that will help alleviate some of the rubbing
that happens on the outside of the tire.
Just roll this puppy in a well, and it'll fix that.
Zip tie situation here is obviously not ideal,
but kind of cool.
Functional is hell Eddie.
Alright, so we've got a little missing hardware here
on the fender,
which I think creating one of the rattles that we heard,
We're also missing a bunch of hardware down here.
So I'm just gonna try to find a bolt that'll fit.
That'll stop all this rattling.
Okay, so after going over the body,
there are some things that need a little bit of attention.
Like the fenders could use rolled.
We could stand to add some hardware back into this thing.
And yeah, we're covered in dense.
We have a sweet tape antenna delete.
The, the trim is fading.
Listen, it's a 30 something year old car.
It's not in great shape,
but the fact that it's not in great shape
also kind of works as a positive
because it made this thing more affordable.
So in terms of the body overall,
I'm gonna go with a high neutral, low positive.
Alright, now we've got the exterior. all figured out.
Let's do the last thing on the list.
Let's check out the interior.
Honestly, first thing I noticed
is that the interior is really complete
and most 86s' I've ever seen are not this complete.
The roll bars suite.
Let's see what kind of wiring (beeping)
we got going on now here.
Alright, so there are some extra wires
down in the knee area.
So, you know, an afternoon of organizing these wires,
tying them up in the right spots
and fixing things like this.
Like I'm not a big fan of using these wire nuts
and just solder that.
But again, that's not a big deal.
That's easy to do and kinda satisfying,
but it is another chore that's going to need tended to.
So let's put it on the list.
Do we know what this switch does?
- It's supposed to be the fogs.
- Oh, see if she works.
Are they on?
- No.
- Nice, alright.
So the fogs is don't work.
So that's a bit of a negative.
This car came with an auto power rollbar,
which is pretty cool,
but some of the hardware was loose on it.
So I'm just tightening it up.
It's real easy.
The seat backs on both seats are coming apart,
but the good news is,
this is a really easy fix.
All he needs to do is go to the store,
get some hardware to replace where it's missing.
Honestly, this is the perfect kind of thing
to be wrong with the car, in my opinion.
It kind of looks a little janky,
but you spend a few hours on it
and you'll fix it up with no problem,
and for only a few bucks.
But for now, it still goes on the list.
There's no stereo.
That kind of sucks.
I need music when I drive.
That's just how I am.
I know Pumphmrey is kind of the same way,
so that's kind of a negative.
Alright, so the interior overall,
from where I'm sitting,
it's a positive.
This is a 30 something year old, A86,
that have all been abused.
And this thing is in pretty complete shape.
These seats are awesome.
It's got both door panels.
Sure, it's got some things that need fixed,
but overall, this is a huge positive for me.
So let's get out of the car,
put it back together.
And then we'll tally up all of our positives and negatives
and see whether or not this purchase was a good one.
(upbeat music)
Not bad.
All right, so after looking at the engine bay,
the steering, this suspension, the brakes,
the chassis, the electrical system, the body, the interior.
After looking at the whole car,
my assessment is,
that this was a great purchase.
This thing rips, they say never meet your heroes,
but I don't know if that's true,
cause this thing's one of mine
and I'm glad to admit it.
But you gotta remember guys, this stuff is all subjective.
It really comes down to you.
And what you like
and what you want to spend your time doing?
People like me, people like Pumphrey.
We love pieces of crap like this.
And we wanna spend our spare time working on them.
- Honestly, this was a lot better than I was expecting.
This is exactly what I wanted the car for
a couple of little week or a lot of little weekend projects.
And then one kind of big one.
But again, that's what Nolan's for.
Turns out, buying someone else's project car sometimes,
is worth it.
- That's right.
Thanks for watching guys.
If you liked this episode,
consider subscribing to the channel.
If you wanna learn more about the A86,
check out this episode of Up to Speed.
And if you wanna learn more about this specific A86
and watch it get fixed,
then follow Pumphrey on Instagram at James Pumphrey,
follow me at Zach Jobe at donut media.
I'll see you guys next week.