I see cars for sale for $500, but they don't run and drive. My $800 Civic runs and drives, but not very fast, and probably not very far, so I couldn't Dukes of Hazzard it and make a video like he did.
With SAVE4SUMMER AutoZone will sell me a Fel-Pro head gasket set for $163.19.
Amazon has it for $109, though.
O'Reilly charges $221, RockAuto wants $153, and the dealerships that I saw ask between $237 and $362.
His Lancer looked fine and honestly, his Civic looked pretty good. Even with [gestures vaguely] if someone who can rebuild engines and transmissions thinks that a car needs to go a junkyard, I don't know that there is an ROI in fixing it, but I have watched videos and read about people parting out cars.
It usually works out to about the minimum wage, but if you are making money from documenting it, well, it probably isn't much more.
I bet that if 1,000 YouTubists begged, bought, or stole $500 cars and destroyed them in various ways, their demolition profits would be somewhat proportional to their previous videos--until this gets old.
If I do something crazy with a $500 car I might turn a profit, but that would depend on how expensive the craziness is.
WatchJRGo has dozens of videos of fixing up cheap cars. This is his most popular video:
It has 1.6M views after 3 years.
He had also already published videos for 10 years.
Our AutoZone has the $153 kit. I could wait 8 days on Amazon or at least that long to get a Chinese part which will inevitably fail.
Quote:
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Today we're replacing the camshaft plug that is the cause of many Civic oil leaks, spark plugs, the valve cover gasket and seals, and one coil pack.
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All of those add up to $80 and a valve cover gasket is vastly easier than a head cover gasket. I will replace everything he changed and more on top of replacing the head gasket.
Kelley says that in very good shape the car is worth around $2,146.
$800 for the car.
$120 to have Crazy J say "Yup, the head gasket is blown" and reverse-flush it.
I was thinking that I should go ahead and order this. Amazon recommended a Gates timing belt kit for $82.
Is that the one with the OE belt and the Chinese bearings?
It is rated 4.6/5 and it looks like the pump is Chinese. There are 10 1-star reviews claiming the pump failed.
The Aisin kit is $130. CapitalOne said that I can save $13 by buying it from eBay, but both ship for $141.72.
The head gasket kit and the timing belt kit total $260 out the door.
I cannot imagine getting the car operating within specified parameters without further replacements and who knows how long it will take me to replace all of this, but my total cost for this will be $1,180 so far, and I may be able to sell it for twice that.
If I make a video about it I may recover some of that, but maybe not.
JR always said he bought cars for $300 or $500, but who knows if he did and if he did, how he got them that cheap.