95 Neon did I get ripped off

I bought a 95 2 door, SOHO manual transmission Neon with 134,000km on
it. Bought the car for $1700 cert. and e-tested. (These are required
in Ontario to obtain license plates). I have now had the car two
months, and put about 2000km on it.
The car has the following problems with it;
1. Minor oil leak that appears to be the oil drain plug (it only
leaves a mark on the driveway when left over night.)
2. Front wheel bearings are noisy at or above 60kmph
3. Gas gauge goes from reading full, to reading empty, 100km after
filling up
4. Shifter difficult to get into lower gear when slowing down
(specially 2nd and 1st gear)
5. Minor exhaust leak somewhere around the Cat and manafold area
6. AC does not work (I do not use AC anyway unless it is raining)
7. There is a scratch in the winshield on the passenger side, where it
appears that the wiper arm had been dragged accross the windshield
without a blade.
8. Pritty sure the motor mounts are due to be changed. After changing
the spark plugs, I noticed that the engine shifts a fair bit when
lightly applying the thottle.

I am also starting to wonder if the odometer had been rolled back, as
when I took the gauge cluster out to clean the contacts (was hoping
this would solve the gas gauge issue) there was a screw missing from
the bottom left side of the cluster. (This has to be the hardest screw
to install into the cluster.)
I know when I bought the car that I was buying an old car. The body is
in perfect shape, with no rush, dents or anything. I was also only
looking for something to last one to two years with maintenence and
maybe some work. It was bought primarly to drive too and from work
(approx 15km each way).
Any ideas on fixes or things to try to resolve some of these issues in
order to get atleast a year out of it without spending alot of cash?
Would replacing the motor mount inserts maybe resolve, or reduce the
shifting problem?

Mike
e-mail mlawrenc(at)rcc.on.ca

 

Just an update, was looking over the sellers info, and found this
interesting.
I purchased the car on 04/06/24 with 134,000km. The person I bought it from,
who said he had it for a year, registered the car with the ministry of
transportation on 04/06/18 with 363,576kms on it. He owned it for less then
a week. The person before it registered it on 04/06/03 with 203660km on it.
So ultimately, I got taken. Anyone from Ontario have any idea what I can do
about this. I think I was screwed as the fact it was purchased through a
private sale.
I am sure this will never happen again.

 

You might want to get in contact withthe local Police dept as this sounds a
lot like fraud to these ears!

 

I plan too. I am waiting for the Ministry of transportation office to open
tomorrow to talk to them first.

 

Charge the bugger with Fraud, and take him to Small Claims Court with
proof of the actual mileage. You WILL win.
Speedo tampering is a criminal offense in Ontario.

 

None of the problems you descirbe would prevent the car from making it
another year or two. You might have to address the wheel bearings at
some point in the future. Heh its a cheap car... if it didn't have
problems it wouldn't have been cheap!

Sounds like somebody bought it and flipped it. Thats a very common
thing to have happen but I would have expected the seller to be honest
about it. I don't know the laws of your land so I don't know if there
is anything that can be done about it.

Steve B.