brentalan said:
"Is there plenty of sunlight, hardly no cloud cover or snow?"
No, but there are plenty of rusty Gen II Marks!
lol, i would imagine so. Rusty ones can be anywhere though. I flew from Arkansas down to Tampa Florida to buy a car about a month+ ago. The car was absolutely MINT inside, outside, and under the hood. Underneath was another story. It had the worst saltwater corrosion I have seen yet. It will literally fall apart on itself in the next few years. And that car was a lifetime Florida car too. I got it up on a lift and it appeared to me that at some point it had sat in maybe a foot or so of salty water, and never washed/cleaned after that. Needless to say I came home empty handed from that trip. I was able to get a decent priced plane ticket and flew home the same day I went.
I also flew to Charleston, SC last weekend to buy another car. At first it appeared very nice. The leather, including the drivers seat, looked damn near new. The drivers seat was not even wrinkled or cracked. The body needed a good buff job but was super straight with original paint, no scratches, etc. The headlights needed buffed in a BAD way, no big deal.
The first thing I noticed when I opened the passenger door was a rusty passenger seat track. I started examining closer and both tracks including some of the bracing under the seat was rusty. I knew they had gotten wet somehow and started looking for where the water came from. I Loosened up the back seat and pulled up the carpet, and there was water standing in the floorboard about 1/8" deep, and the carpet padding was soaked. I went to the front of the car to see if I could tell if the windshield or maybe sunroof was leaking. I pulled the carpet back in the front, and some electronic box that is behind the glovebox and above the under-dash cover fell down. There was an exposed circuit board on the box and the surface of it was a bit corroded (it would eventually need to be replaced.) I got the owner of the dealership and asked him to come look. When I showed him the water in the floorboard, he tells me "Oh yeah, the cowl was leaking when I got the car and water was sloshing around back there. I got the cowl fixed and it doesn't leak anymore." I showed him the corroded box, and he didn't really understand what I was concerned with I guess. I ended up renting a car and driving 15 hours home empty handed again.
I wouldn't say I have wasted time or money going after them though. It was well worth the trip to look at the cars 1st hand. If I had bought one of them and had it shipped in, I would have been devastated to find that after the transaction was completed.
