UTE042_NZ
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2017
- Messages
- 808
- Reaction score
- 4,828
- Points
- 93
- Location
- New Zealand
- Members Ride
- MY17 Magnum Ute
No, it's not a Commodore, not even a Holden, therefore this seems the least risky place to post about it and not get busted for breaking a forum rule.
Yes, it's a Ford, and it's probably older than your Mum. But, now that we've lost losh's ute, I'll try to fill the yawning gap and risk the mockery that miserable failure deserves.
Last year a diagnosis caused me to have a change of attitude towards mortality, money and risk. I decided (bucketlist) I wanted to own a flathead V8 hotrod and and I started researching. I placed an order for an 8x6 shed. Then I broke that other rule and bought a car sight-unseen from the internet. Yup, just from looking at bunch of photos and some to-and-fro emails between me and some car salesman guy I didn't know in Tennessee. He had a few Google reviews, one or two of which were quite unflattering but I liked the photos and I was looking for a "project" not perfection. I figured he was probably guilding the lilly a bit and so I downloaded all eighty 2048 × 1536 jpeg images (including 14 of the underside on a hoist) and two videos. For a week or more I zoomed in on the images, pulled still some frames from the videos and examined those. Saw some things in there that would definitely fail the NZ LVVTA certification, but also saw that it had components and mods that would cost more than twice the asking price of the vehicle in NZ. Plus it looked like it had a clean bum, rustless.
*Cunning plan* Buy this, put it in the shed, take it apart and put it back together fixing/replacing the parts that would fail inspection/certification. Thereby giving me a project to keep me busy for 2 to 3 years that I can (hopefully) afford and end up with a hotrod I can cruise in and/or sell to fund a next project.
So, I bit the bullet and found a shipping company that offered an escrow service. Late November I wired them the purchase price, plus collection fee, plus escrow fee, and they contracted a transporter driver who went to the pickup address in Soddy Daisy, Tennessee on 25th November 2020 and met the seller with the car. The driver got the title paper and bill of sale and verified that they matched the VIN number on the car's chassis, took some pictures of the car, and phoned the shipping company to say "ok." The shipping company then wired the money to the car seller's bank. The driver waited while the seller phoned his bank to get confirmation, then loaded the car and drove it to New Jersey, arriving 4th December 2020.
My car was placed in a 40 foot container with two others and loaded onto a ship on 19th January 2021 and off they sailed, supposedly to land in Auckland about 2nd March 2021. Nope. The container was eventually offloaded a little over 3 weeks late and 200 kilometres south in Tauranga March 25th. KiwiRail had it up to Auckland in another two and a half weeks on April 12th. The 3 cars were unpacked and mine was inspected, failed, vacuumed, reinspected, and passed by 16th April. I paid all the charges, levies, fees, taxes, rented an oil-burner and a trialer then set off at 5am last Wdnesday to drive down to Auckland and pick up this mysterious vehicle I have never seen before which has cost me several tens of thousands of dollars.
VOILA!
To be continued...
Yes, it's a Ford, and it's probably older than your Mum. But, now that we've lost losh's ute, I'll try to fill the yawning gap and risk the mockery that miserable failure deserves.
Last year a diagnosis caused me to have a change of attitude towards mortality, money and risk. I decided (bucketlist) I wanted to own a flathead V8 hotrod and and I started researching. I placed an order for an 8x6 shed. Then I broke that other rule and bought a car sight-unseen from the internet. Yup, just from looking at bunch of photos and some to-and-fro emails between me and some car salesman guy I didn't know in Tennessee. He had a few Google reviews, one or two of which were quite unflattering but I liked the photos and I was looking for a "project" not perfection. I figured he was probably guilding the lilly a bit and so I downloaded all eighty 2048 × 1536 jpeg images (including 14 of the underside on a hoist) and two videos. For a week or more I zoomed in on the images, pulled still some frames from the videos and examined those. Saw some things in there that would definitely fail the NZ LVVTA certification, but also saw that it had components and mods that would cost more than twice the asking price of the vehicle in NZ. Plus it looked like it had a clean bum, rustless.
*Cunning plan* Buy this, put it in the shed, take it apart and put it back together fixing/replacing the parts that would fail inspection/certification. Thereby giving me a project to keep me busy for 2 to 3 years that I can (hopefully) afford and end up with a hotrod I can cruise in and/or sell to fund a next project.
So, I bit the bullet and found a shipping company that offered an escrow service. Late November I wired them the purchase price, plus collection fee, plus escrow fee, and they contracted a transporter driver who went to the pickup address in Soddy Daisy, Tennessee on 25th November 2020 and met the seller with the car. The driver got the title paper and bill of sale and verified that they matched the VIN number on the car's chassis, took some pictures of the car, and phoned the shipping company to say "ok." The shipping company then wired the money to the car seller's bank. The driver waited while the seller phoned his bank to get confirmation, then loaded the car and drove it to New Jersey, arriving 4th December 2020.
My car was placed in a 40 foot container with two others and loaded onto a ship on 19th January 2021 and off they sailed, supposedly to land in Auckland about 2nd March 2021. Nope. The container was eventually offloaded a little over 3 weeks late and 200 kilometres south in Tauranga March 25th. KiwiRail had it up to Auckland in another two and a half weeks on April 12th. The 3 cars were unpacked and mine was inspected, failed, vacuumed, reinspected, and passed by 16th April. I paid all the charges, levies, fees, taxes, rented an oil-burner and a trialer then set off at 5am last Wdnesday to drive down to Auckland and pick up this mysterious vehicle I have never seen before which has cost me several tens of thousands of dollars.
VOILA!
To be continued...
