Ebay and I have a love-hate relationship: As a seller the fees are getting ridiculous, and as a buyer it’s getting increasingly difficult to find what you’re looking for among all of the power sellers hocking Chinese-manufactured trinkets using auctions with a million keywords in them. At the same time, there’s nothing quite as satisfying as the rush of watching an auction tick down to the final seconds before sniping it away from the next highest bidder.

For the past few weeks, I’ve been casually searching the local Craigslist and Ebay for a G-body rear end, more specifically a 7.5″ with 3.42 gears and a factory limited slip in good working order. I’m not in a rush to buy one, which is why I’m taking my time to find the “right” one, which would ideally have lower milage and include good drum brakes.

Searching for car and truck parts on Ebay is like playing a giant version of the game Battleship, only the other players are jerks and either lie and tell you that you have a hit, or worse have no freaking clue where their ships are or if they even have any ships left on the board.

Still, having faith in my fellow gearheads’ ability to list items for sale with accurate descriptions, I searched for “Monte Carlo Rear End”, which returned over three hundred hits. I was pretty stoked until I actually started scrolling through the results and saw that there were only a few auctions actually for a rear end.

There is no logical explanation as to why a search for “Monte Carlo Rear End” should return auctions for socks, but I swear that I saw one in the list of results. I also got a hit for a pretty sweet wall clock with a Chevy Bowtie (Correct fitment for a Monte Carlo, Ebay stated helpfully), along with what seemed like one hundred listings for lug nuts, a few differential cover gaskets, and a limited slip unit or two, but no listings for anything close to what I was actually looking for, which is that seemingly elusive G-body posi rear with the correct gear ratio.

Hmmm, how about “Gbody rear end“? Few more hits, but still not exactly what I was looking for. “Monte Carlo axle“? Bunch of front-wheel-drive Monte Carlo parts and axle shafts.

“Dave, you’re smarter than this”, I muttered to myself, and began typing in every possible variation of “rear end” and year/make/model of G-body that I could think of. With the knowledge that there is a sizable minority of Ebay sellers that evidently cannot spell their own name correctly, let alone auction titles and descriptions (“monte calro” turned up a depressing number of hits), I kept searching.

Then, the inevitable happened: After boiling down my search terms to “Gbody rear”, I found a listing unrelated to my original goal that grabbed my attention.

GNX rear differential cradle

I understand that I A) do not own a GNX and B) have no need for GNX parts, but man is that cool, and it only has two bids! Besides, a GNX is on my automotive bucket list, and owning a big chunk of aluminum with “GNX” cast into it is one step closer to my actually owning one (I get that this logic is completely broken, but I can’t be the only one that thinks like this).

From there, it was a downward spiral into searching for parts that are either really neat looking or for cars that I want to own someday.

Do I need this Taurus SHO manifold (Which is beautiful, by the way) or an Evo IV half cut for that Mitsubishi Mirage to Evo conversion that I keep fantasizing about? About as badly as I need another hole on my head, but they’re both now on my watch list anyway.

Then, I rediscovered the greatest thing that Ebay Motors has contributed to the world, the “Salvage Parts Cars” section.

This section is like the shady used car dealership down the street where the deals are just a little too good to be true, but you’re still convinced that you can come out with a real score. “No title, no problem! Why? Because race car!”

Most of the vehicles listed really are parts cars at best, like this ’85 Firebird, and others are pipe dreams that are out of my reach, like this “rebuildable” Lambo Murcielago

Others may be the right car but at the wrong time, like this ’63 Riviera (You shall be mine one day, oh yes), or are a history lesson in of themselves: 1919 Dodge Brothers Touring car and 1936 Ford Firetruck.

Ferrari 330 with no engine? Perfect LS motor swap candidate! (Yup, I went there)

Mopar “more door” sleeper? BangShift’s fleet of cars could use a little more Mopar influence…

I’ve always needed an old tow truck: 1964 GMC Dually

Scratch that, I found a fire truck.

I could keep going with all of the cool junk that I found, but after three hours of late night Ebay Motors browsing I still had not turned up the Gbody rear that I was looking for, although I did bookmark a “barn find” K-car ’84 Dodge Rampage and what I think would be a killer project to swap into a non-hybrid body, a wrecked Chevy Volt. The Volt won the prize for Best Description with the following: “Wife fell asleep at the wheel and endoed the Volt at about 35mph, she came out fairly well, considering.” It is unclear if he is referring to the car or his wife, but good to know that at least one of them came out of the wreck ok.

So, I’m dying to know: Do any other BangShifters out there have the same addiction to Ebay Motors that I do, and if so have you found any real diamonds in the rough? I’ve yet to pull the trigger on one of these, but that GNX cradle sure is tempting…

Also, a reader really needs to buy that Plymouth Fury. That thing would be a sweet sleeper project.