In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
fyi, another R63 just popped up on BaT
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
fyi, another R63 just popped up on BaT
In reply to honda1 :
Thanks for the heads up. This is the auction for anyone that enjoys watching these things, which apparently I do. I'm very curious as to why so many of these are ending up on BAT.
mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to honda1 :
Thanks for the heads up. This is the auction for anyone that enjoys watching these things, which apparently I do. I'm very curious as to why so many of these are ending up on BAT.
Cuz of this thread/forum 
759NRNG said:mazdeuce - Seth said:In reply to honda1 :
Thanks for the heads up. This is the auction for anyone that enjoys watching these things, which apparently I do. I'm very curious as to why so many of these are ending up on BAT.
Cuz of this thread/forum
Funny that there's a bunch of credit given to DeMuro despite the fact that he obviously sought one out because of this thread.
Doug was trying to find one of these to drive before mine broke, and he actually contacted me about mine just a couple of weeks after it let go, before anyone but you guys knew about it. He has an audience, he knows cars, the fact that he and I overlap on the R63 thing is just one of those fun oddities of the car world.
mazdeuce - Seth said:Doug was trying to find one of these to drive before mine broke, and he actually contacted me about mine just a couple of weeks after it let go, before anyone but you guys knew about it. He has an audience, he knows cars, the fact that he and I overlap on the R63 thing is just one of those fun oddities of the car world.
Those are fair points but I hardly think Doug was responsible for the attention the last four on BAT got since his R63 video came out after the previous auctions ended and his video is dated Aug 3rd 2017. Though he does have a 2015 Oppositelock article on one looking through the search results, and a comment on an R63 on TTAC in 2013, so perhaps I was a little harsh.
Wow, what a ride I missed! Nice work Mazdeuce.
In reply to bgkast :
Thanks. Things turned out much differently than they were supposed to be when I picked it up in Florida. Projects are like that.
Just wanted to report I read all 111 pages in the span of two nights. What an adventure. Motivates me to put my bike engine back together soon.
Great job.
In reply to Zozr :
Reassembly is the reverse as they say. 
About four hours to go in the R63 auction on BAT. A couple of interesting things have come out of the comments on this one. The seller says the head bolts were replaced at 60k. He's not offering proof, but there must be a MB dealer record of it somewhere, so let's take him at his word. In addition a commenter posted up another R63 that was for sale in Denver. The interesting thing about that is the seller of that van says it had a new motor put in by MB at 20k. I really wish there was some way to track down the history of each of the R63's in the US. It's such a small population.
Perhaps VinWiki.com ?
Seth-
Do you think we'll see a big jump in bidding on this? I'll be honest and say I really don't know the market on these things. Not that anyone would truly "know" the market given the super low transactions. Even Manheim just shrugged it's shoulders and said there's not enough data. Just curious since I'm sure you follow these more than most.
In reply to thedanimal :
I think there will be a jump, but I don't think this one will sell. My feeling is that the open market (not BAT hyped) price for these is right around $30k. Maybe a bit more for a nice one, less for one with a sketchy history, so say $25-35K. I might be wrong, but there isn't a huge market for collectable weird Mercedes, and that leaves you with people who buy them to drive, like me, and I see that market getting smaller as these cars age. Unless we see an uptick in people adding these cars to their "parked in a barn" collections, I don't see the value on these being the $40k+ that people seem to hope they are which is what I expect the seller of this one wants. Having said that, if anyone wants to prove me wrong by writing me a check for $40k+, I'm all about helping to establish the market.
In reply to mazdeuce - Seth :
Kind of my thoughts too. Even with the miles, it seems to have a decent history to it, but $40k+ seems like a lot of coin. Yours is internet famous Though! Surely that counts for something right?
For what it's worth, that BAT van just sold for $25k. Can you not put a reserve price on BAT auctions?
mazdeuce - Seth said:For what it's worth, that BAT van just sold for $25k. Can you not put a reserve price on BAT auctions?
You can, things fail to meet reserve there pretty frequently. AIUI, the BAT staff will try pretty hard to convince you not to put one on, though.
BAT wanted to set the reserve price on my LS 951 really low. I declined and didn't list it with them.
I've made a decision.
I love the R63. It's special and amazing for what it is, but I'm not using in how it should be used. Because most of my driving is fairly brutal local kid picking up with long waits in line and tight parking lots, I almost always choose something else in the fleet. As a family we're uncomfortable with it on long road trips. Not because of reliability, but because if something does happen, fixing it locally and in reasonable time is probably impossible and dealing with that with four kids and a dog isn't on my fun list.
I feel like it's become a trophy car, and that makes me sad. The car is too special to sit in a garage. It needs to be loved.
I'm not listing it for sale anywhere. I don't quite have the heart to do that, but it's for sale here. $35k, which is what I paid for it. Anyone can ask me anything they want about it but this thread is about the longest ad in the world. There is still a fresh set of front rotors and pads in the boxes that I didn't put on because I thought it would jinx things when I put it all back together. And..... well, it's been gone through. That's either a positive because you kow that it has new head bolts and lifters and a timing chain and all of the internal rubber seals, or it's a negative because all that work was done by some dude in a shed instead of at a shop.
So it's for sale. I don't want to sell it so much as I want someone to enjoy it and I'm not really doing that properly.
Sell me the 964 for $15k. 
Good luck with the sale! Seems like it would be the logical choice for kid hauling around town tho? I hear you on the "if something happens", that's a matter of faith. You either have it for the car or you don't....
A pair of broken paintball guns and a grilled cheese sandwich.
Someone had to be craigslist guy....
docwyte said:Sell me the 964 for $15k.
Good luck with the sale! Seems like it would be the logical choice for kid hauling around town tho? I hear you on the "if something happens", that's a matter of faith. You either have it for the car or you don't....
It's great for kid hauling around town. I just don't like sitting and idling in line for 45 minutes between pickup at elementary and middle school. It feels wrong.
I'm not going to actively try and sell it. I just remember being a dad with young kids and not having any real energy but tons of mental energy and finding out about these and thinking "this would make my life AWESOME!" And it did. And it continues to, but what that really makes me want to do is pass it on to someone else and make them hop in and make sure everyone is buckled up and push the button and hear the engine fire. It's magic and it's not being appreciated the way it should be.
That's the issue with having too many cars to choose from... My cayenne is my DD, so I get to think "This thing is awesome!" everyday when I fire it up
Oh no!!!
I totally feel you though. I feel the same way about road tripping in heavily customised cars for the same reason.
The car isn't a trophy, it's worth $25 -$35K.
By far the best future* would be for you to drive it all the time, everywhere, like it was a car, and continue to write about it. Maybe set a "dollars/hours spent" limit and see how long it takes to get there.
*for us.
- Another dude on the interwebs with a shed.
In reply to coexist :
In a different world I'd be in the van blasting around the country taking people to lunch and talking. Writing and recording the stories of driving around in the twilight years of internal combustion. And if experience is anything to go by we'd end up talking about the insides of wind towers an a new three month old and that internship at NASA as much as cars.
My kids were making fun of my stories the other night and one says "you could tell a story about a ladder" I argued that I didn't have any ladder stories at all, until I remembered that I did.That's what I'd do use the van for, to visit, talk, listen to and tell stories, but life is what it is and I have another decade of my wonderful life instead. But maybe there is someone who wants to take the van on these trips. It doesn't need to be my story to be good.
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