No sooner had I sold our 2006 Chevrolet Tahoe that my wife and I found this 2004 Mitsubishi Eclipse GTS Spyder after a test drive of a 2013 Honda CR-V at a Honda dealership just west of our home near Cleveland, Ohio. More than half the price of the Honda with none of the quirks of an early hybrid and ten times the fun, although it's probably not the best vehicle in a "snow-city" (at least it's front-wheel-drive), we're madly in love and the plan is it will (eventually) replace my medieval 2002 Dale Earnhardt Chevrolet Monte Carlo. Replace an old car with one that's almost as old? Dave Ramsey would be so proud of us.
She was not perfect. Couple of parking lot dings, the driver's seat was worn pretty bad and the trim on the driver's door (above) was badly scratched. The driver's door wouldn't stay propped open either. Still, with only 61,000 miles on her seventeen-year old digital odometer and not a hint of rust anywhere, she was quite, dare I say in an insane used-car market, the bargain. And I was determined to make it the most perfect 2004 Eclipse GTS Spyder it could be be.
It wasn't easy. Mitsubishi hasn't made this generation of their Eclipse since 2005 and "new-old-stock" (NOS) parts are not available even in dealerships. Sundries like disparate engine and transmission paraphernalia, perhaps, but replacement seat covers, interior baubles and what are referred to as "hinge-checks" so doors stay open aren't even available at Autozone; the gang at Autozone didn't even know what hinge-checks were. Would I have still bought this car had I known all this prior? It's convenient for me to say "no" at this point but what good would that do? We're stuck with this now. Good thing we like it as much as we do.
First things first since it was a real thron in my side - the worn driver's seat (above). I called my upholstery guy before I bought the car and he said if I could find seat covers the cost of them plus the install would run around $1,500. I used that as a bargaining chip and, in retrospect not so amazingly, it worked; the dealership knocked about a grand off the asking price. Go. Me. I mean, how hard would it be to find replacement seat covers, right? Turned out, again, impossible. Well, to find "new" ones.
I found what I thought was this luscious but dirty all-black leather interior out of an Eclipse I found in the Pull-A-Part lot in Cleveland. I could have had this for under two-hundred bucks (!) but my wife insisted we stick with the black and blue motif our car has.
That left me scrolling through Facebook Marketplace and Craigslist for an Eclipse with an interior the same as ours that wasn't torn up. And in a car that wasn't going to cost me a small fortune. Good luck with that, right?
Akin to searching for a needle in a haystack, after weeks of fruitless searching I found this '03 Spyder prostrate after a collision with...a cow; the poor thing was upended and landed on the hood crushing it; explains what ever this hideous blue replacement thing is. The radiator got knocked out too and the frame behind the front fascia took quite a wallop. While not sold as a parts car, for $999, I thought it a good deal seeing if I bought it, took the interior parts I needed and then junked the whole thing I'd be ahead of the game. I offered the seller $750. He countered with $800 plus a $50 tow to where I needed it taken. Within reason.
Things got interesting because the car was in Moraine, Ohio, a suburb of Dayton; a brisk three-and-a-half hour drive southwest of us. The seller said "no" to my parting it out where it was and $50 wouldn't cover his tow guy hauling it up here. AAA would cover two-hundred miles of the two-hundred fifteen mile jaunt as part of my membership, but they charge approximately twenty-five bucks a mile above two-hundred. Ugh. Still, might be a reasonable investment considering how nice the interior of this car is but I couldn't make the math work in my head.
Unfazed by logistical details, I called my old friend Pete who lives in the bucolic hinterland between Dayton and Cincinnati and asked if he'd mind if I had a "parts-car" towed to his house that I'd gut and have towed away. He obliged although I could tell that he and his wife Charlotte thought my plan hair-brained if not slightly crazy. Objectively, I couldn't disagree but my rabid focus on fixing my car's interior, particularly since I saw a means to an end, turned me into a Rube Goldberg-esque madman. I was on a mission from god and this had to get done.
The drive to Moraine was a breeze on a freakishly warm, mid-autumn central-Ohio day. I'd made it countless times visiting our older son at the University of Dayton and the route through there my wife and I had taken on traipses to see Pete and Charlotte as well as on dashes to Nashville and beyond. Things got a little sideways, though, when I got to the "house" or compound of sorts where the Eclipse I wanted to buy was and the seller was nowhere to be found. The "tow-truck" driver was, his name was Raymond, but he had no idea he was to be towing anything that day let alone the car I wanted to buy. At that point my emotional micro-processor went into over-drive trying to rationalize that I wasn't wasting upwards of eight hours of my life.
Thankfully, Raymond was friendly and amenable. Especially after I told him I was to pay him fifty-bucks to haul the Eclipse I wanted some thirty miles south. He contacted the seller who was out notarizing the title and apologized for not looping Raymond in on what was going on. Raymond and I cleared his trailer off of car parts, lawn furniture, animal traps and leaves and we loaded "my car" on it. I paid the owner $800, he gave me the notarized title, I paid Raymond $50 for the tow and off we went.
I thought about asking Raymond himself what he'd want for a tow to Cleveland but after seeing his "truck", I knew it was best I hadn't. A 1999-ish Chevrolet S-10 pickup with a 4.3-liter V-6 that sounded like it was running on four cylinders, five at the most and with a nasty knock, I knew it was best I didn't ask him. He claimed the noise it made was from a "Borla" muffler and the knocking was from a "spun rod bearing" that he hadn't "gotten around to fixin' jus' yit". Best was, he had me tail him to block the chance a cop would "pop him" for driving with an expired temporary tag. Would my knowledge of such make me complicit?
With his exhaust blaring, the engine knocking and his transmission screaming as we bobbed up and down the rolling hills of back-roads southern Ohio, we arrived at my friend's house about forty-five minutes later and way later in the day than I originally planned; the activities prior to us leaving Moraine sucking roughly three hours out of my afternoon. That meant I'd be fighting darkness to dismantle the car. First, though, I had to flip the title over to myself.
That was important because I promised Pete and Charlotte the car would be gone as soon as possible and to even junk a car in the state of Ohio, the "owner", that would be me, has to have the title in their name and the title notarized with the name of the buyer on it. Thankfully, there was title bureau nearby and there was all but no line.
How I missed our cavernous Tahoe as Pete and I stuffed my Monte Carlo with way more parts off this thing than I needed. After about three hours of wrenching, I thanked him and Charlotte for their generosity, passed on dinner and hit the road northeast, title-in-hand, having no idea how I was going to get rid of the junker sitting at the end of their driveway. I told them I'd figure that out first thing in the morning.
In the morning I off-loaded my bounty and marveled at my accomplishment. Sure, it was a lot of work and it took an entire day, but I had my replacement drivers seat, door-trim, and hinge-checks. I got greedy taking the passenger front seat and rear seats, although I have no idea what I'm going to do with that stuff. Bonus, the junker had a pair of JVC 6X9 speakers that would be a significant upgrade to the factory "Infinity" speakers my car had. So, all in for $800 plus the tow and the title office bilking me to flip the title, I was still in the black as far as I was concerned.
Just as I was about to call a junkyard near Pete and Charlotte's house to get the particulars on getting rid of the car, Raymond, my tow-truck driver, called me and said he'd offer me $300 for the "shell" that I left behind. Well, that was near double what a junkyard would pay me and I jumpedon on his offer. I got his last name and address and promised to "over-night" the notarized title to him as soon as he paid Pete and Charlotte cash for the car. Which he promptly did. Pete Venmo'd me $300 and that, anti-climatically, was that.
One last challenge was the seat out of the "donor car" was manual while my seat was "power". I called my upholstery guy who said he could flip them over for a hundred-bucks. After doing so he said the leather was dry-rotting and I needed to treat it with saddle-soap and the same conditioner you'd use on a high quality leather coat or sofa. And be sure to let everything dry thoroughly before sitting on it. Good to know. The fruits of my labor are above.
By the way, I have no idea what ever happened to the poor cow.
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