Hello everyone, just registered here and first off wanted to say hi. If this place is as hospitable as the forums for the kind my now dead car was, it'll be awesome.

My dead car I mentioned is a '96 Ford Probe GT. Short story, it spun a rod bearing, costs too much to fix compared to what its worth... This put me in the market for getting another car. My dad has a '94 cobra and I've always liked how mustangs look and sound. After looking around for a bit I found one I might wanna get but wanted to ask a few questions of people who have owned the cars. (I made the mistake of not doing that before buying the probe). I already searched the forums a bit and found a thread on the V6 cars reliability including the year of the one I'm looking at (2003) and it appears to be pretty good.

The specific car I'm looking at is an 03 V6 coupe, 75k miles, full set of new brake pads & rotors were just installed, New high performance tires were installed less than a year ago, Oil/filter just changed, New clutch installed about 1.5 yrs ago, After-market exhaust, car just fully detailed (interior/exterior/engine). Its being sold by private party, haven't gotten a carfax report yet, but going to if it still looks good after I go to see it in person and test drive it. The guy is asking $6500 for it and I was wondering what anyone here thought of that, good/bad/average, ect.

Any advice is welcome and greatly appreciated!

Thank you,
Bryan

 

I would say more like 5k-6k tops, in my area (Houston), based on kbb private party value + what I have seen for sale in the area.

You won't regret owning a mustang. There is a huge community of really cool and friendly people that can help you out, not to mention tons of aftermarket support. Good luck.

 

prices very by location really but around here it would have to be in absolute perfect condition to fetch that much money. you said there was a new clutch installed which means either its been raced or he didnt know how to drive so there may be some problems you dont know about. if your ok with the condition when you check it out then i say go for it.

be sure to check for body work or welds that look out of place

EDIT: i drive a 2003 v6 and its definitely a good idea

 

depending on the clutch he put on it, the fact that he replaced it a year ago i wouldn't put in the "plus" column.. simply because you dont know what was installed, and if it was a cheapo, you can destroy them pretty good in a year depending on your driving...

i dont know about everyone else, but i usually replace my tires yearly anyway.. so if you try and talk him down at all, that might even play to your advantage (you've got to buy new tires)...

75k is about average...

depending on what exactly he considers "after market exhaust".. just replacing the muffler? or did he go though and build it from the headers back

but overall 6500 is probaby about average around here.. but i'd personally talk him down...

 

if its sold by a private party, try to figure out who its previous owner was. Say if he was like a 20 year old kid who got it for his first car and beat the **** out of it, hence the new clutch. But if that isnnt the case, then i say definitely keep in your sights

 

Thanks for the warm welcome guys. I can add some info too help clarify, based on what you've said so far. I'm also going to ask him about the clutch and exhaust specifically, although I can obviously look at the exhaust myself when I see it. I also learned from not trying to talk down (like an idiot) when I got my Probe, so definitely doing that

-he's the second owner (going to college now like me), 1st was some middle aged woman, the current owner got it from a dealership when he bought it, so he doesn't know how it was treated before he owned it.
-according to his description & pics, tho I'll see for myself later, the interior is practically new, exterior looked great except for a few chips on the front/hood (which he mentioned).

When I was searching the forums, I saw some people requesting carfax reports. Is that just something some people here do when they're on a month of the unlimited ones? Or something having to do with the forum site itself?

 

I saw the mileage is good, 75K isnt to high. If the interior, and exterior are in good shape the price doesnt seem to high. If you have any pics you can post them and let us see....if possible that is. Is there anything leaking under the car? Can you get under the car to look at the tranny, and the oil pan to see if an oil is built up? As for the carfax report you can see if someone will do it for you. Its not something related to the forum itself.

Good luck,
Matthew

 

I can't see about anything leaking till I go see it in person in about a week, but definitely will look. Here are some pictures:

 

looks like it may have been painted... take a look under the front bumper (people usually run up over sidewalks and what now when they're parking, and it'll scrape some paint off).. if you see different colors along the sides of the scratch, it has..

other then that.. i'd ram it up the tail pipe...

 

I will check that out when I see it. Also gonna ask the guy as well.

To answer your earlier questions about the clutch and exhaust, he got back to me with a rather lengthy response which will be easier for my to jsut copy and paste in here than summarize.

My questions to him:
-What exactly do you mean by "aftermarket exhaust"? Just a muffler at the end, a cat-back system, or all the way up to the headers?
-What prompted the new clutch to be installed? Was it worn out or just done for an upgrade? And what kind of clutch was put in, the stock one or an aftermarket one and if aftermarket, what specifically? Was the flywheel resurfaced or replaced when the clutch was replaced?
-Did you ever race the car?
-Was it your first manual car?

His response:
I have to say that these are some great questions.

As far as the aftermarket exhaust, basically what I got done was at Meineke which is called a custom performance exhaust system. This wasn't as pricey as a cat-back system or all the way up to the headers, but it did involve installation of a new tailpipe/muffler/exhaust pipe/resonator up to the catalytic converter. I avoided the cat-back mainly because it was a little too throaty sounding exhaust, and stuck to this one which I had customed to be slight louder than the stock version (not too loud though), but a bit smoother sounding as well. It's not a huge upgrade to the car, but it is definitely much better than what Ford starts you out with. I explain down below why I got this done in the first place.

I drove an old 5-speed Ford Escort for about 5 years before I purchased this Mustang so it wasn't my first experience with a manual transmission. When I first purchased this car it ran great but it was a little touchy for shifting. To me it wasn't a big deal since I had already had a lot of experience with manual transmission and was managing just fine with it, but over time it start to get even more difficult to shift and something didn't feel right about the clutch. So long story short I found out that the owner before me wasn't a great shifter and so I decided after all just to have a whole clutch pack installed along with the fly wheel resurfaced. After I got it done I was quite happy with the done. The clutch pack I had installed is a Zoom MU70152-1 Clutch Kit, Organic, 1 1/16 in. Diameter Shaft, 10-spline, 11-in. Diameter Disc. Along with the clutch pack and the resurfacing, this cost about $650 to get done. After I had this clutch installed I tried very hard to just keep the car as steady as possible with minimal acceleration shifting.

Brian, I graduated from Shippensburg University with finance/economics degree and after getting my first official real-world job which was at a bank in Mercersburg, I decided to buy the car I always wanted to have, of course a Mustang. This car served 2 purposes when I owned it (commuting from Chambersburg to Mercersburg for work) and (commuting from Chambersburg to Philadelphia on some weekends to visit my girlfriend). I wanted to show up to work with a car that would make peoples heads turn as I pulled up in the parking lot (which it did), but after two and a half years I decided that my career at the bank wasn't working out for me so I decided to pursue a Master's Degree at Millersville University. This new direction I am taking has been putting a lot of a financial strain on me so of course the first thing I decided to let go was the one thing that wasn't built to commute 2hrs total a day is this car. I think we talked about that a little bit on the phone.

I understand your concern, but I assure you that this car was only used for general commuting and has never been raced.

I hope all of this helps. I am very sorry for having wrote you a book to read, but I just wanted to answer all of your questions as thoroughly as possible.
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Except for consistently spelling my name wrong, lol, I can't find any faults or suspicious parts. He seems confused about the exact definition of a cat-back exhaust tho. What he described seems just like one, yet he says he didn't get one. I think he thought it included replacing the cat, which as far as my knowledge goes, isn't the case.

Oh, and heres a link to the clutch that I found from googling it: http://store.summitracing.com/partde...5&autoview=sku

Thanks again for your help!