I'm casually looking at a '93 240 from a fly-by-night dealership. They have no records besides the clutch having been recently replaced. They say everything about it is great. Little old lady sold it to them. Price is top-of-market.

Assuming it all looks and feels good (no rust, drives straight on the highway, engine runs flawlessly), what would you do to this car upon purchase? Timing belt? All fluids and filters? Just wait for cheap stuff to break and upgrade...?

 

just curious what is the 'top of market' for 180k miles manual trans? and what general area are you in?
as for maintenance, i'd look at if you can determine when t-belt was done, tune up parts fluids and filters and brakes for a start.

 

ask the seller to provide a car fax. If the car was ever serviced by a dealer or by a reputable shop, service records will appear. If you know the VIN, you can go to the car fax web site and they will tell you how many records they have for that car (in case you're trying to judge the value of the carfax report)

 

Do you know anyone who brings a 240 to a dealership?

I wound up passing in favor of a modern ****box. Extremely clean slick-top manual wagon in Los Angelas:

https://losangeles.craigslist.org/sf...077940088.html

No evidence of damage, minor surface rust, very little on the chassis itself. Clean, original interior. Orange peel on the paint, but it did look excellent.

It started and idled smooth, pulled to redline no prob. Soft in the suspension, but comfortable.

Bad stuff is pretty much no records. Smelled like someone may have smoked in it. AC "needed a recharge" which of course should never be the case in a 134a system, but.

A very nice example.

 

Pretty steep price for a far from perfect car, orange peel, minor rust?
Most shops today report to Carfax... Also CF shows emissions test and registrations and ownership records, etc. so a lot of info there. With 240s mileage record is important since the odos are problematic.
I don't care for records, several Volvos and other cars I have bought had perfect records, thousands spent but the cars were far from what you'd expect. Many owners today spend the money based on shops' recommendations without a clue what needs to be done or if it got done at all...

 

agree on the DMV records. those will tell you important stuff like the car spent 15 years in upstate NY collecting salt or that the car had xx miles when it had the last change of ownership. To note, I saw a car fax for my old 95 850T and sure enough, it had pretty complete records going all that way back. And yes, my mom took her 240 to the dealer for years :-)

 

You don't need anybody to tell you if the was in snow, just look at it.