My luck is heavily favored to finding great parts deals on Classifieds here, though checking out the page 10 times a day will move the needle.
My best get lucky project car though is a 73 T that was on CL for two months for very reasonable money. I kept wondering why it hadn't sold especially seeing that it had been special ordered with no headrest sport seats. I finally emailed, they said it runs fine but there's something wrong with the motor, it bogs down. It had Zenith carbs so I thought that was an easy fix. Went out to see it, not much rust but some ugly welds underneath. Great interior. Bad black respray over Gemini Blue.
Owner gave me the key, it started right up, I put it in first, it bogged down and not 2 seconds later he came running over yelling to turn it off. Did that, got out, there was a huge puddle of gas under the motor.
We found a broken line, very brittle. I told him I'd give him half his asking price. He happily agreed. I drove home and got a trailer.
Getting it to the shop, $5 worth of fuel line fixed the fuel system. I said to myself when I originally started and shifted into "first" how sloppy it was, so I pulled of the shift coupler plate and found the coupler completely disintegrate. Gone. Going into first it was actually going into 3rd, hence the bogging. Brass bushinging and it became a great little car. I later put a 3.2 into it and lightened it down to 2174 lbs making it insanely fun to drive.
