Hi All,
Well after a 4am start and 7 hours drive we arrived at the dealers yard. The car was in the at the front gate, doors open waiting for me. After many e-mails with the dealer and according to his ads the car is fully restored and in amazing condition.
First look inside, broken & worn rubbers & trim with some holes, screws missing around the broken dash, drivers side headlight didn't come up all the way,doors were open to dry the wet carpet, passenger electric window wouldn't come back up on its own, mysterious oil around the diff and under floor area that didn't look or smell like diff oil. obvious rust repairs simply painted over, rust around the radiator surround, passenger wiper fell apart in one swoop, bonnet wouldn't release without two people because of the lock adjust & release trigger's poor attachment. poor panel alignment down the passenger side was probably because of the bent chassis rail down that had signs of rust in a crackline, drivers side panels looked great except for the fibreglass lifting away from the frame. spare wheel missing.
All this and I was still willing to test drive it - remember it's an old car I told myself, maybe the drive will be worth it because the engine note was beautiful.
Within a few metres down the road I was scared in a straight line - constantly chasing the steering and then a few small bumps sent it wayward, I was only doing 60 and proceeded to 80 but wasn't game to push up to 100. Turning a normal RH corner at an intersection, move the steering and the wheels followed soon after and then kept on going, and so did I back to the yard with the car shaking with what we thought could be a totally worn shocky,maybe a bent driveshaft, an extreme miss in the engine or a combo of all the above. The worked 383 engine had much less go than my wife's 4 cylinder
More items I had planned on checking I didn't bother with.
Please tell me this is just a very bad example and not to lose faith in the Corvette life dream.