info on 88 festy needed

[loknlode]

guy calls me wanting to sell his 88 because he can't get a title for it. so its a parts car. anyway he says its a FI car. so he either has his years wrong or the car has had an engine swap, correct? he says its a great runner with a clean body and int. and he wants $500. it has auto trans.

if the drive train is in great shape then I think its worth 4-500 ballpark. I'm going to look at it this weekend.

[Ham'nEggs]

Yeah, o.k.

[TominMO]

Maybe the build date was late 88, making it actually an 89; so an auto would be the special 1989-only EFI.

[FestYboy]

^ if that's the case, GET IT!!!

titles can be had, if you're patient.

[loknlode]

^ if that's the case, GET IT!!!

titles can be had, if you're patient.

I actually have a title on the 89 car I bought for parts. it needs so much work (about $1200 min) to put it on the road that I think its better off staying a parts car. so the automatics all had EFI? sounds like I might want to swap it to a 5 speed trans down the road.

[FestYboy]

^ yup!!!

[georgeb]

Betcha it's an '89.

[blkfordsedan]

Why doesn't he have the title? If he lost it, he can get another copy. Sounds like he bought it and never got the title himself? Stolen property? You could indeed get a title, if you go through all the procedures and everything checks out.....which is somewhat of a pain. I could see going through all that for a classic car, but not a $500 Festiva. Obviously, he feels the same way, which is why he's selling it. I would use all this as leverage to negotiate the price. Once you buy it, I would just swap everything you could over to the '89 that you do have a title for (or maybe just one particular part that would correspond to the title, wink, wink, wink).

[loknlode]

in SC if the title is messed up and you can not locate the person whos name is on the title then you are screwed. the ONLY other way to "fix" it would be to forge statements and signatures. the original owner is supposedly dead.
I already went round and round with the dmv on an aspire 3 years ago. since I have 2 aspires I just put the tag on which ever one I needed to drive. drove it for 3 years and 15k miles before retiring it when I found an aspire with a good title and a bad engine I was needing to rebuild the front end on the "good" aspire so I drove the "bad" one till I could save the $ to do the job.
I figure since I'm an old guy anyway and if I did get caught I could claim it was an "honest" mistake, that I titled and tagged the wrong car, ("omg officer I'm sorry"), and "promise" to fix the mistake. probably get away with that ONCE. the "good" car was on blocks in the yard at the time so the "story" would have looked legit.
would NEVER do that kind of thing again, (unless I had to).:nono:,,,,

[blkfordsedan]

Sounds like something I would do, LOL. The only bad part is what would happen if you get into an accident. The insurance policy is based on the VIN# of the car. You need to insure the proper VIN#...and it should match the little (cough..removable..cough) tag behind the windshield. I just don't like giving the insurance company any opportunity to deny a claim.

[windy1]

word to the wise

never get or by a car,without its title,unless u,just use it for parts

[loknlode]

looked at it today - I offered $350 and I don't know why. the motor wasn't firing on one cylinder and he said one of the contacts on inside of distributor was worn pretty bad but he put new plugs on it so I wonder why IF he thought a new cap would solve the problem why didn't he replace it it?, especially if you were wanting to sell it.
interior was really nice (grey) body was rust free but the drivers door and fender were dented up. passenger door had 2 holes drilled in it for a side mirror but mirror was gone.
it had a man. date of 2/88

he gave me 2 trim rings for me driving 50 miles one way to look at it. that was nice of him.