Where to begin? Well as some of you may have seen #1902 was up for sale recently and I decided to take the plunge and pick it up. So on a nice February Saturday a friend Jake and I hoped in his truck and with the trailer ended up treking the 4 hour drive to Iowa to go take a look at the car. On the way down I was a bit nervous the shell has a metric load of miles on it and from what I had learned the transmission was blown. I figured the car would have some rust and need a decent amount of work to get it up and running again. This however was not going to stop me from purchasing this car. See the reason I wanted this car was simple. I have been around friends that have had these for quite a few years. The first car I ever saw was Project BLKOUT2 of Josh's over at PRT and from that day I was hooked. I have loved these cars but never went out and bought one instead I had a ZX4 Focus then after that car was in a accident I sold it off and bought a 02 SVT Focus. I loved the SVTF but still wanted something with a slightly bigger motor that did not have a cast iron block in it with a wonky transmission from what I had read. So after working out a deal with Josh I ended up trading my SVTF for a 00 Roush Cougar. I really liked the car and thought it was great but then I stumbled on to a BMW 325XI that I had purchased and one thing led to another with medical bills and such that I sadly had to sell the Roush. I sold the car and not long after the person I sold it to crashed the car for the first time. After that he fixed the minor damage sold it off to another kid whom then sold it to another whom then sold it to another and on this last owner it sadly met its demise in the form of a accident. I am trying to find the current owner and buy the car back so I can either repair it or strip the motor trans and diff out of it. I will keep you updated on that situation. After the Roush I stuck with the BMW for a while and then after it started to nickle and dime me to death I decided to sell it and take a break from the car scene. I expected this to be a short break however it ended up turning into a 3 or 4 year break, until one day Jake sends me a link to the car and with a bit of coaxing we were on our way to pick it up. When we arrived the car was at a shop with a spare tire stuffed under it to keep it from rolling (parking break cable is broken and trans or diff is shot) I hoped out and started giving it the once over. Parts of the car were in worse shape than I had thought. There is surface rust in spots that with pictures I was not able to see. The rockers like a good chunk of the CSVT's are rusted and will need to be replaced. The thing I was most worried about was the under side of the car. After crawling around we noticed that the underside is fairly clean so that was a huge plus. So I paid the previous owner and 20 minutes later the car was loaded and on its way to Wisconsin. So where are we at now? Well we have determined that the diff is what is actually blown and not the transmission. Jake has a spare sitting around that will be getting replaced starting in about 2 or so hours. The surface rust is exactly that and will be getting repaired along with the rockers and the entire car will be getting a respray. I have not quite decided on what color I am going to go with but that will come. It needs new front fenders which we have and will be replacing soon. Exhaust has a leak that needs to be fixed which will be getting done at the same time as the transmission. The car has a misfire which is being caused by plugs which I am replacing tonight. Previous owner stated that there was a coolant leak I will dig more into this however from initial checking I have found no leak to be spoken of. Parking break cable needs to be replaced. I have the part and will be swapping out soon. As of now that is all I can think of for this post I will be doing a second one of what we have found when we got the car into the shop. Pictures of are when we were bringing the car home. This is one of those cases where sadly I do not think this car was almost ever washed. The outside is caked with dirt, mud, dust and all kinds of crap as well as dust covering the trunk. That will be changing.
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