Hello everyone,

After stumbling into here and reading the wealth of information (and saving me a lot of time and money), I decided to join and say hi!

My journey to getting "Arthur" (the Aerostar) started a few weeks ago when I took the family to the auto swap meet in Portland, OR (shoutout to any other Portlanders here). In the back of my mind, I toyed with trying to find a cheap cash car for a few months, but wasn't able to find anything.

Then I stumbled upon a 1985 Toyota Corolla in near-mint condition.



I ultimately didn't wind up getting that, but it set the wheels into motion...I had to get a cash car!

I had bid on a few Escort ZX2s and Escort wagons, but none of them ever panned out.

I was going to buy a 1990 Geo Prizm, but right when I was about to leave to go and look at/buy it, the seller texted me to let me know that her mom had called, stating that her cousin wanted it for a derby car, so it was a no-go in her end.

Feeling a little frustrated, I checked CL one more time before calling it quits...that's when this gem popped up, having been just listed.

I quickly emailed the buyer, and after a few email exchanges, I met up with her husband at a nearby grocery store to check it out.

I'm still amazed at how good the condition is overall, and how well it runs for having 200K miles. I can tell that they had been taking care of it, but it had been sitting for a bit before they decided to sell it.

There is one issue though...there's a leak somewhere (I think that it's on the driver's side sliding glass window) that had soaked the carpets, just underneath the floor mats.

Upon further inspection, I realised that the carpet and sound deadening material were completely soaked. So, I ripped both of them out (I managed to keep the carpet in mostly one piece) and threw away the sound deadening material.



I'm going to confirm that the sliding glass window is leaking, then I'm going to hit the seals with some sealant. Once that's fixed, I'm going to spray the floor with some "flex-seal" type stuff, lay down some new sound deadening material (it's on the way here), and after I throughly clean the carpet, lay that back in there.

Hopefully I can get all of this done in the wat week or so. Any tips/comments/suggestions would be gladly appreciated.

Also, in the first pic, you can kind of make out my other two vehicles: 2007 Honda Civic LX coupé, aka "Stella", and a 2003 Toyota RAV4 L, aka "Pip".

Stella is my car that is being replaced with Arthur, and Pip is my wife's car.

 

You got the color correct.
I would also like to say you also got the vehicle correct, but you didn't explain exactly what life circumstances you were trying to solve by this acquisition.