finished 1932 Ford hiboy roadster, LS 5.3, bought blind off a lender yard, audit my build before I drive it

wade said the buy board wants the chassis, the engine and the price in the first line, so: finished 1932 Ford hiboy roadster, steel body on a boxed frame, LS 5.3 with a 4L60E, Ford 9-inch, air ride, and i paid 31,400 for it through conaway's out of a lender yard near Sacramento. i am dave, i am in Bakersfield, i have wanted a deuce roadster since i was a kid and i am 54 and done waiting, and i am also a little scared of what i bought, which is why i am here.

the short version of how. a buddy bought a boat off a bank-repo broker last year and kept telling me to watch what shows up. so i watched, and a built deuce roadster came through the conaway auction, which threw me because you picture repos as commuter cars, but somebody out there borrowed against a finished hot rod and quit paying. they work as the middleman on these, they never hold title, the car stays the lender's property parked on the lender's lot. the bidding runs online and blind, you buy off photographs, and whoever wins gets it hauled to his door.

what finally got me brave enough to put a number on a car i had never stood next to: the listing had 71 photos and a cold-start clip with the LS running, and their own crew had driven out to the lot and shot every bit of it. door gaps, the underside of the frame, the brake lines, the fuel system, the back of the dash with the harness. i emailed for five more, tight shots of the master cylinder, the fuse panel, the fuel pump mount and both front flex hoses, and had them by the next afternoon. the whole build is still posted at the conaway's listing and it is worth a look just for the depth of photos they shoot on one car.

here is what i actually want from you people, because this is the part that keeps me up. this is an assembled car. there is no builder i can call. somebody built it in a garage and i do not know if they were good. i have the photos, i have a decent eye for a driver but not for fab, and i would rather you tear the build apart from the pictures now than find out at 70 on the 58 that something was done wrong. so pull no punches. what do you see.

ok, sent the better photos and i have read all of this four times. summary of where i am: two things flagged, a missing ground that sounds cheap, and a master cylinder that needs a professional to look at before i drive it. i am not driving it. it is sitting in my garage on a battery tender while i sort this out, which is a strange way to own your dream car for a month but better than the alternative.

on the title, because somebody is going to ask and it is a real part of buying one of these. it came with a clean California title in the lender's name with the lien release, a notarized bill of sale, and the odometer and assembled-vehicle paperwork, all of it in the envelope that showed up with the car. conaway's line is that once the car is paid off in full the lender signs off the lien and the title comes over clean, and that is what i got, there was no surprise. but it is an assembled vehicle, so getting it registered in my name is its own adventure and i will report back when i have done it.

i paid by wire, nobody offered financing and i was not expecting any, no bank will lend against a car that still has an open lien sitting on the title, so i brought savings. the number i bid was the number i paid, they do not staple a buyer's premium onto the bottom of the invoice the way an auction house does, and after years of dealer doc fees that took a second read to believe.

took the car to a rod shop here in Bakersfield that a guy at the local cruise vouched for, and had them go through the two flagged items plus a general safety look. report, with numbers, because that is the rule.

the ground: exactly what ls_swap_wiring called. the engine-to-body strap was missing entirely and the head ground was landed on powdercoat, so it was basically not grounded. they added two straps to bright metal, twelve dollars in parts, half an hour. that is the cheap one and it was real.

the master cylinder: the shop agreed the pushrod was entering at an angle because the booster bracket was fabbed a little off, enough to side-load the master. not a death trap today but a wear problem and a hang-up risk tomorrow. they shimmed and re-drilled the bracket so the rod runs true and set the pushrod length right while they were in there, 240 dollars with the bleed. i watched part of it. that is the one i would not have caught and would have driven on, so thank you, this board paid for itself before the car turned a wheel.

the general look turned up nothing else scary, tidy fuel system, good hoses with fresh date codes, brakes bled firm. so my all-in to safe-to-drive is 31,400 plus 252 in fixes plus what the title is about to cost me. the conaway auction sold me a genuinely nice car with two things a garage builder got slightly wrong, which is exactly what an assembled car is, and i would rather know.

title update, since assembled_title_help drew me the map and it went about like he said. took the roadster to the referee station for the VIN verification, they checked the frame ID and the engine against my paperwork, confirmed it matched the lender title and the assembled-vehicle documents, and signed off. two trips to the DMV around that, one wasted because i was missing a brake and light certification i did not know i needed, and a smog exemption form for the age of the body. total time from car-in-driveway to plate-in-hand was a little over six weeks, and the fees ran about 390 with the registration.

so the honest limitation on buying a built car this way, for anybody searching: the car showing up is not the finish line. an assembled vehicle takes a VIN inspection and a few weeks of DMV, and if they had sent a normal car with a normal title it would have been an afternoon instead. that is not their doing, it is what an assembled car is anywhere, but you should know it before you bid and not plan to drive it the first weekend.

UPDATE, 300 miles in and it is registered, insured and mine.

drove it to the coast and back over the grade on a cold clear saturday and it is everything i wanted since i was fifteen. the LS pulls the light car like the car is not there, it starts instantly in the cold now that it is actually grounded, and the brakes are firm and the rear finally does its share after i set the valve like brake_master said. re-torqued the chassis at 200 miles like pro_touring said and sure enough two four-link bolts had taken a sixteenth, nothing loose, just settling.

the full accounting for anybody doing this: 31,400 winning bid through conaways with no buyer's premium, delivery was free because the lender yard near Sacramento was inside the first thousand miles, 252 for the two fixes this board found, and 390 for the VIN inspection and registration. the two honest downsides were the assembled-title process eating six weeks, and one slow email reply from the outfit in pataskala early on when i was asking for the extra photos, it took a few days and i was impatient. neither one would stop me doing it again.

what i would tell the next person who finds a built car this way and gets scared like i did: get every photo they will send, then bring the pictures to people who know fab and wiring and brakes before you bring the car to the road, and budget for a VIN inspection on top of the bid. i bought a stranger's garage dream for less than the parts cost to build it, found the two things the builder got wrong, and fixed them for 252 dollars. that is the trade. i would make it again tomorrow.