I finally did it. I've been wanting a 2002 for years. After having kids and starting a new career, life is finally settling into a more predictable routine and after some searching I managed to find a 73 locally. The owner was asking $20k on CL. I reached out and mentioned how inflated the price was, he agreed and said he wanted to keep the riff raff away and knew that it would sell for less. Here's a couple shots from the advertisement:

When I came to look at it, it was idling in the driveway. Sounded great. The body was in pretty good condition, door skins have rust, but a lot of the other problem areas looked good. The drivers side frame rail was mostly not there, and the car had no brakes. It had a set of Campagnolo wheels on it, but I'm not a fan of 4 spoke wheels (reminds me of Mazda). So eventually we struck a deal where he kept the wheels and threw in another 4 speed transmission, and I bought the car. It was a lot less than the asking price, but a bit more than I wanted to spend. I listed the reasons why I liked the car and kept telling myself that everything was going to be ok.

I grabbed a trailer and picked the car up and drove it directly to MooreSpeed. There are a couple of 2002 legends working there (Rob and Brandon) and I wanted them to help me get this car road worthy so that I could drive it and slowly tackle smaller jobs. After a few months the car was ready to pick up and my wallet was lightened even further than I had originally expected. The work that Rob and Brandon did was fantastic and they were super helpful with giving me their perspective on filling out my punch list. I drove the car home and it was rough! Lots of clunks coming out of the rear end, second gear isn't meshing and so it's really tough to get it to go in without grinding. The tires were about ready to pop and were split and wavy, but I had the biggest grin on my face all the way home!

And that's how things started. Here's a couple more pictures of the earliest state that I got it in