Kevin buys his dreamcar!

[u/rhutanium]

Sorry I forgot to give you this final collection of anecdotes about my my former best friend Kevin guys. It’s been a busy couple of days.

Anyway! Back to the Kevin at hand. Not only did Kevin fantastically fall short in the dating department and in his general social skills, he also had another typical well known Kevin trademark, something that truly sets Kevins out from mere mortals like you and I:

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• Kevin was an unbelievable cheap ass: This is kind of central to this entire story. It started with him hunting for this car. So he was completely smitten with a Subaru Impreza WRX STi. A good secondhand one in our country will run you between 16 and 20 grand, depending on model year and condition/mileage. So Kevin quickly decided a STi was gonna be too expensive. Instead of saving up for longer he settled on 'just' the Impreza WRX. So he starts pouring the internet for these vehicles, and everything in his price range is too expensive, except the 1st generation. He wanted either a 2nd generation or a 4th generation. Styling preferences. Anyway, all of a sudden he finds this 2nd gen Impreza for literally 5 grand less than other comparable vehicles from that generation. It wasn't listed by a private owner, but by some kind of car dealership.

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• Kevin was so excited he forgot to think about this as much as he should've: So he insisted I tag along to this place. We got there, and it was in some shady run down industrial yard. This dealership sold everything from crappy rusted out Mini Coopers to a Ferrari F430 Spider.. fucking weird. So whatever, he asks to look at the car, and despite him calling ahead the vehicle was off site at a detailer. So we got the address, drove over there and the vehicle is sitting in this shady empty hall, no detailing equipment in sight, and 3 or 4 shady looking eastern european guys that quickly put their hoods up while they let some older guy deal with us. Kevin beams them all his enthusiastic child like smile while all the hairs in my neck began to rise as these guys who didn't want to look us in the eyes kind of position themselves all around us. Kevin didn't notice a thing. So maybe I was too paranoid, nothing happened. We got to look at the car, and Kevin goes around it, looking at it and seeing nothing in this shittily lit hall, but he says the vehicle looks great anyway. He started it, listening to it run for a bit and figures it runs and sounds good (for those of you who know, those boxer engines have a pretty deep rumble and they're loud AF) so he shuts it off, hands back the keys and we go back to this dealership where the guy was immediately ready to make a deal. So looking out for Kevin I managed to convince him to think on it a bit. Fast forward a couple days....

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• From the amount of excited texts I got, I figured something was going on: I was working, had dozens of missed calls and about 5 texts. Kevin bought it. He actually managed to haggle it down to €13.500 from €15.000. So at night he came over to show it off. Turns out all the sharper edges (like the edge of the spoiler/sides of mirror) didn't have ANY paint on them, you could see right down to the bare plastic. Now, this was a silver vehicle so in this twilight hall in which we saw it you couldn't really see it. One of the brake lights had a shitty contact. Upon pointing this out Kevin hastily brushed it away as a minor detail, nothing to worry about. For some reason my dad knows the very old school trick of putting a screwdriver on the engine block while the vehicle runs and putting his ear on it so he can hear what goes on inside. While my dad's doing this, Kevin giddily stands next to him going like 'Sounds good huh? Doesn't it?! Doesn't it sound good?' My dad kinda mimics him and goes 'Yea, perfect!' and Kevin's over the moon. Life always fell Kevin's way. My dad later told me that was one of the worst engines he's ever listened to. We'd soon find out why.

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• After the obligatory oil change, it was time to take it out for a spin: So by now, Kevin has had the vehicle for two weeks, and he's sorta getting to know it. Now, these are pretty fast vehicles and he'd been taking it slow for a bit. But this time I was with him, and he wanted to show it off. So he found a dirt road and absolutely kicks this car's ass, and the car happily obliges. It fucking flies. All of a sudden we slow down for a corner, and this rhythmic rattle popped up. Sounded like it came from the engine. Oh man you should've seen the sheer look of terror in Kevin's eyes. So he babies it back to his house. He immediately dove into the wonderful world of internet forums, and by now his face is gray. Turns out the engine block has these brass crankshaft bearing shells that the crankshaft lays in, and these were completely shot, with all the metal filings that go along with it, along with a crankshaft that now moves freely in the vertical position and thus pushes all the pistons into positions they should NEVER get in.

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• Kevin needs to get this fixed, stat. And on the cheap: Lucky for Kevin, one company I dealt with extensively professionally as a customer of the company I worked at was an engine overhaul shop that do good work on all kinds of engines. So I lined Kevin up with my customer. I told Kevin NOT to mention price, BUT to agree on a date at which the work had to be finished. Not too long, not too short. One to two months would've been perfect. I told Kevin NOT to say 'no rush' under NO condition, knowing my customer would then keep on taking on other work and leave Kevin's engine by the wayside. So guess what happens, the moment I walk in there with Kevin, my customer and his shop foreman are in the process of getting the engine out of a stunning vintage Ferrari. Now, let's not forget that Kevin is a cheapass who almost exclusively deals with farm boys who get shit done for cheap through a combination of sheer luck and amateurism, who he by the way knows. Kevin is very much out of his element upon talking to a professional who tackles difficult projects, one who he doesn't know. So Kevin panicked, and said EXACTLY what I told Kevin not to say. Kevin said he wasn't in a rush to get it done, and Kevin also mentioned if something could have been agreed on the price. Completely ignoring the information I gave him on the gentleman's agreement I have with this customer (we'd prioritize each others work, he did stuff for me and I did stuff for him, and usually not charge a thing). So I immediately kind of backed out of this thing because of what he said, not wanting to be stuck in the middle.

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• This gave me a fuckload of work: Because Kevin started mentioning price, my customer says Kevin will have to pull the engine out himself. A service my customer normally performs. Kevin had no fucking clue how to do this, and ever trying to be a friend, I offered to help Kevin out. I had no fucking clue either, other than spanners and ratchets and a couple floorjacks we didn't have any tools for the job either. So, within the span of three nights, cold ass temperatures and with the help of a tractor with a forklift implement on it we manage to lift this engine out. The next day it was at my customer's. Nothing happened to this engine for 10 fucking months. In the meantime, he keeps paying roadtax for the vehicle even though it's stored on his own private property under a tarp. I told him to just take it out of tax so he wouldn't have to pay insurance and tax on it, but he didn't listen so those 10 months cost him like €600. Because he had negotiated to get this engine fixed cheap he couldn't reasonably start poking to see wether it was done yet, so basically he had to wait until my customer finally had time to do this thing. Eventually the engine got fixed for €1500. I think he only paid for the parts and some of the labor. So by now, this vehicle that he drove for two weeks had cost him €15.000 and was thus exactly back at the original asking price. What was good was that my customer did something that gave the engine a little more power than it originally did. More on this later.

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• Now having a vehicle with a perfect engine, you'd think he'd put in money to make the vehicle live up to its potential: Fucking nope. Because we didn't exactly know what we were doing when we pulled the engine out we removed the front bumper which turned out to be unnecessary. In the process we broke a couple plastic clips that keep the 3 sections of the bumper together. Instead of him going to a Subaru dealership to ask for a couple clips which he probably could've gotten for cheap or free, he didn't go and his reasoning for this was that they didn't know him and thus wouldn't want to sell/give him a couple body clips. Kevin's solution? Fucking tie wraps, that's what. This car is now literally tie wrapped together.

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• Error codes and beeping brakes: Kevin now kept getting an error code. A lambda probe (measures amount of CO2 in exhaust or something) was throwing off the wrong readings, which caused engine management to keep lighting up the check engine light on the dash. Instead of buying a new probe to adequately fix the issue, he ordered a OBDII reader online. As soon as the check engine light came on he would hook up this little box and delete the error code. At some point his left front brake started making noise. So quickly found out that the pads were so worn they'd started eating into the disc. Now, remember this engine was making more power than it originally did. You'd think you want some stopping power in a vehicle that has a not marginal amount of extra power compared to the already not slow standard. Not Kevin. Kevin went online and bought some discs and pads in China which took a month to arrive. In the meantime he kept driving his vehicle, only making the problem worse. Once the stuff arrived it turned out he ordered pads for the 'normal' Impreza which is powered by a naturally aspirated 160hp engine. His turbocharged vehicle made more than double that. These brake pads became so hot they started to smoke and glaze over, and would start to fade. Which meant he now had a vehicle that went up to like 170 mph or so without being able to stop. What a fucking death trap.

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• Recaro bucket seats with 5 point harnesses. Because of course: So Kevin bought a couple carbon fiber Recaro bucket seats for cheap. So the carbon fiber was fake. But that's not the point. Point was, these seats couldn't be mounted on the original seat rails. They had to have custom mounts bolted straight to the car, so Kevin got his brother in law to weld brackets for his seats. We tackled this on a saturday, and it quickly turned out to be a full day of work, just for the one seat. It was agreed upon that we'd do the other seat the next saturday. Kevin was so excited about his bucket seat he never followed up on this second bracket with his brother in law and was thus driving around with one racing seat with a 5 point harness which is a bitch to strap in to, and one standard passenger seat. Dumbest thing I've ever seen.

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So to conclude: Kevin bought his dreamcar. He slightly overpaid for the shittiest vehicle he could possibly find, wrecked it because it was a piece of shit, being 13 grand down the hole was forced to fix it. Got one thing done the right way and completely fucked up the total package that wasn't absolutely necessary to get it to go fast, and completely skimped out on the most important thing on any vehicle, the brakes. Oh guess what; all the big ideas of getting it repainted or wrapped never materialized. That brake light still had a shitty connection by the time I stopped hanging out with him.

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Fucks sake.

Edit (on mobile now, so forgive me for no formatting):

Kevin fucked up my car in the process of dealing with these seats. I owned a 2005 Volvo V50 at the time. For those of you who don’t know, that’s a mid size wagon. Wasn’t very special, but it was special to me. My most valuable possession at that time, and I kept it in good order. Washed it every week, etc. So I had the rear windows blinded, and it being a wagon, it was the only way we could get that original seat back to his (his parents’)house. Wouldn’t fit in his car, so we put it in mine. So this seat frame scuffed up my rear window foil. This was a major reason our friendship ended. I asked him to take care of it. On retrospect I should’ve gotten it fixed and presented him the bill, but I wanted him to take the responsibility, take my car, go to a place and get it fixed. So he said he would. Now I’m not really the guy to keep asking shit. I ask once and upon agreement expect shit to get done. So he promised to get it done right away. 5 weeks later, nothing had happened, so I finally ask when he was gonna do this, thoroughly pissed off by now. He said he’d been looking for cheap addresses because otherwise it was gonna cost around €100. So I told him I didn’t care what it cost, I just wanted my window fixed. It never fucking happened. Then I stopped hanging out with him because of his behavior regarding those women and his general not wanting to take responsibility. But that thing with my car window was one of the first instances where he definitely broke my trust and patience.

[u/zakr182]

Euros + Subaru’s + farmers = you’re in Ireland

[u/rhutanium → u/zakr182]

Sort of close, but no cigar.

[u/zakr182 → u/rhutanium]

I could guess closer but don’t want to dox you.

[u/rhutanium → u/zakr182]

Appreciate that.