Thought I'd follow up here.
Once again, thanks for everyone's help. I will surely need more moving forward.
So I got it. Here's the Cliff's notes...
After I saw the posts made here, I asked the seller for my deposit back since things were questionable. He basically told me to get screwed and if I didn't come and get it in seven days, he would put it in a parking lot and it would be my responsibility to get it out and pay the storage fees. Kinda hard to do when I am in Detroit and he is in California. I knew that I screwed myself.
It showed up...and other than the VIN issues (and a clear case of title jumping)...it is pretty much as it was stated in the eBay listing. I cannot find any rust on it. The frame is clean with no rust either. It starts right up, no smoke, no noise. Drives decent...although VERY VERY PAINFULLY slow...and wanders a bit. It does have some issues like there is some hardware missing from the dash (some bolts and such) but overall...not in bad shape at all!
I took it to my local off-road shop and had the dude look it over and he couldn't see anything really wrong with it mechanically. He said it was one of the cleanest if not THE cleanest Samurais he had ever seen.
So, even though there are issues with the VIN, it seems very solid. Since I plan to swap out the engine and more, mileage doesn't really matter I guess. I am stuck with it, that is for sure and I am going to make the best of it. I built a blog for it that will go into more detail of the story of how I royally screwed up when I bought it, plus will chronicle what I do to it from here on out. I just got started but if you want to check it out so far, it is at
http://www.suzukalypse.com.
Thanks again for everyone's advice! I'll definitely be asking questions and posting updates!
