Come summer when Amanda is driving her Mustang, I will try and clean up the break/fuel lines and coat them in POR15 (hopefully prevent any further damage to those). All in all, a little sweat equity and this car is a great beater for her to drive in the winter.
Best of all, she loves this car so far (and I hope that despite it's high miles we can make this a sweet ride for a few years).

 

Congrats on the buy, i love those body styles of the imps, too bad they changed up in 06+ .

 

My fiance picked up an 04 SS for his winter beater - a little more money than what you paid though.

 

I'm sorry Amy, that's no winter beater.

 

I would bet you could easily get 1500 to 2000 for that car. Great find good luck cleaning it up and workin out all the kinks. Then just sell the grand am and make your money back.

 

Congrats! That was one heck of a deal!

 

He'll flip it at the end of the season and probably get all his money back from what he paid for it. He only commutes about 16 miles a day to work.

 

Well, I dropped the Impala off at the transmission shop on Saturday.
Today, I got the call. They confirmed, the transmission is toast. For them to repair it, he said the high end estimate is $1700 (that's a full rebuild). The guy said it may be less when they rip it apart, but figured it's best to throw the high end number out there.

THis shop has a great reputation. I gave him the green light to fix the trans. So it looks like we're going to have $2200 invested into the car. Still not bad, lowest KBB value is $3,310 and the highest is $4,735. So, we're still alright in the cost invested.
The trans shop figures this can be wrapped up by Wednesday, so I will keep everyone posted on the final price tag on fixing the transmission.

 

OK, my transmission plans have changed!!
I am having a salvage trans with 68K on it shipped from another spot in Ohio (roughly an hour away) for $700 and the transmission shop will swap it for $400. Net savings of $600!!

The salvage transmission at that price includes a 1 year warranty that covers parts and labor! The salvage yard will cover labor at $65 hour per what the AllData book says time should take (this warranty was $150, otherwise the transmission would have ran $550 delivered).

If I had the transmission shop rebuild my existing transmission, they warranty the work for 90 days. They do great work, I am certain the car would not see them ever again.... But I'm thinking this salvage transmission is just as good and cheaper.

Now, the shop with the car already has the transmission out of it and the salvage transmission is due to arrive Wednesday. And time is not a huge factor to me so much as price.

 

Very good deal. Good luck!