I’ve posted about this before but I have always been lucky finding 911s. One example is a 73T that was on Craig’s List for two months for very reasonable money. I kept wondering why it hadn't sold especially seeing that it had been special ordered with ‘67 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 was nice, said a lot of people had seen the car but mostly low-balled him which I thought was strange since it was worth the asking price all day long.
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 and in the most nonchalant way, I told him I’d give him half his asking price. He happily agreed. I took the Ducati home and got a trailer.
Getting it to my 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 off the shift coupler cover plate and found the coupler completely disintegrate. It was dust in the floor pan. Going into first it was actually going into 3rd, hence the bogging. Put in new brass bushing 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.
I have a lot of other stories like a $2K “parts” car that the owner thought he had fleeced me on but it had about $20K of rare parts on it. Sold the tail for $3500 alone. Well over $30K in parting it out.
Very lucky with 911s.
