I am new to the these forums, but in my area a black 1991 z28 is now for sale. It has 60,xxx miles and has a soft ticking, owner says it is from the exaust manifold, he took it to a shop and had them check it out but he didn't have money to put headers on it instead yet. He is asking $6,000 but I think I could probably get him down to $5,500. Its a 5 speed, has all new gaskets, rocker arms, Jvc head unit, sony xplode 600 watt amp, ttops with bag, heat/ac, clean title.

Any and all thoughts are appreciated.

 

Have a mechanic listen to the noise. If it needs a new Cam/Lifter it is going to cost you $1000 unless you do the work yourself. It will cost you almost $1000 to get headers installed. If it is a exhaust leak you need to get it fixed because if Air enters through the gap it will mess up the O2 sensor reading.

I would say in my area (area defines values of lower end cars) that is a $5000-$6000 Full retail without the noise. Full retail is what a dealer asks for a car. At auction that car would go just north of 3K unless there was 2 guys that wanted for themselves. I would think $4500-$5000 would be reasonable in my area. The 5 speeds are desirable but not as desirable as the Z that came with the 350’s.

 

I would say $4000-$5000 is good offer from your side to this car

 

The story sounds a little fishy. Not having money to have a shop add headers kind of makes sense but why not fix it? A used stock exhaust manifolds can be bough for next to nothing and the process to swap the manifold would take less then 2 hours. This should be an under $250 repair. Unless the mechanic warned the owner that the bolts where in poor should and would most likely break. If he knows that head is going to need pulled that would add $600-800 to the repair. It would also add that to anything else like a header install.

When selling a mint, low miles car a problem like this is going to cost the seller way more then $250 on the sale price. People buying older low miles mint cars want to be sure the owners did maintained the car the last thing they was to see is the car in need of a repair. The only people that look at cars the need something are guys looking for a deal and those tend to not pay full retail.