Now that would be a MUCH better deal. Then you would have $4000 left over to upgrade the fuel system and put a turbo on there.
You're right. People don't realize that they're not going to get every dollar spent on a vehicle back out of it when they sell it (except for maybe a few rare exceptions). "New tires and rims" don't add much to the overall value of a vehicle despite what they just cost you. "New engine" doesn't automatically add the entire cost of the new engine plus the labor to install it to the vehicle either. All that does is to add a little bit to the value. What most people don't realize is that most vehicles without an engine aren't worth much more than scrap price to most people. These are just a couple of examples of things that people like to push in their advertisements thinking that they've really got something special. Just ask them how much value these "custom" goodies will be added by Kelly Blue Book or NADA. It doesn't matter how much money the extras cost, banks only go "by the book" from my experience.
very very true. I just picked up another late 90's TDI. I've been wanting a block so I could rebuild it as a backup for my current TDI which is at 370K mileage. The seller wanted the upper bound of KBB (around $3K) for his whole car. While the car was rustfree, it was not "mint." I said I'm literally only buying this for the engine, so I'm offering a few hundred bucks. He got upset and I gave him my contact info. I knew no one was going to pay his number, let alone "good" or "fair" KBB prices. The demand here in L.A. for TDI's dropped to nil after Dieselgate.
After three months of no takers, he was getting desperate. He dipped to $2500, and $2100. He reached out to me to see if I'm interested in $1700, and I still turned it down. He didn't realize this TDI had non-CA emissions and it would take some work to register and inspect it here in CA. People were not interested in the TDI, even though he did a bunch of decent engine work on the TDI and put in something like $3000 in TDI parts on the vehicle in the last 2 years (receipts as proof).
Eventually I got it for my original asking price because he wanted it gone before he had to pay for another month of garage parking. Also, he couldn't get it started because of an IP issue and dead battery. He was upset because he put so much money in that car but didn't get any of that money back. That's just how it goes. You can toss so much money at a vehicle, but you probably won't get any of that back when you sell.
I had the TDI towed to my garage, and within 45 minutes I had boosted the battery, jumped the fuel solenoid, installed a clean fuel filter, and purged the air from the injector lines. Got it running.
