If you’re thinking about buying a used car, then stay tuned because today am going to show you how to quickly check out a used car for purchase.
Now all modern cars are computerized, so if you have one of these OBD2 readers, plug it into the car and you’ll learn a lot. And realize that these OBD2 scanners will fit in any car from 1996 to the present, so if you don’t have one, it’s a good idea to get one, some are as cheap as cheap as 40 bucks. Now in this Toyota, you go under the dash and here is the plug that it plugs into right here, you just plug the right in, it snaps in, then start the car, then the first thing you want to do is see if there is any codes, so we choose read codes, well there is no codes, so that’s good, now if there were any trouble codes that means that there is a problem with the car, there aren’t any so we know at least that there’s no in trouble codes.
Then you also want to check the thing that is called “drive cycle monitor”, and in this case it says all monitors are ok, and that’s really important to check also because sometimes the owner will have the computer reset and it will have problems, then it would say some of the monitors weren’t ok yet, you wouldn’t want to buy the car then. Now the next thing to do is to park in a nice flat surface and then look under to see if there is any kind of oil leak which is just dripping down on the ground, and in this case its dry as a bone but we’re going to jack up the front end anyway to check things. You can learn a lot by jacking up a car and looking at the underside.
You want to look at the CV joints to make sure they are not ripped or torn, and you can check the bottom of the engine and transmission, in this case, they are bone dry, so they are not leaking at all. And while they are jacked up in the air you can pull on the tires, see if there is any suspension where the tire would wobble back and forth. Now this car is pretty new, its only about a year old, so I know that it runs pretty good, we’re mainly going to be looking for body damage to see if the car has been wrecked or flooded, so you slam the and then see if its aligned correctly the whole way around.
Look at the seam on one side of the hood and compare with the seam on the other side of the hood, and in this case, the right seam and the left seam look exactly the same, so the hood hasn’t been crumpled in, and do the same on all the door seams to make sure they look the same, front to back and side to side, so we’re going over to the other side, and they all match, so from one side to the other.
Now we pop the trunk open and look inside to see if it’s been rear ended, well the seam inside are clean and they are all factory looking, and now we pick up the rugs and look inside, but more importantly all these factory seams are still exactly as the car was built, they haven’t been touched and done over, so it hasn’t rear ended. Then you want to go up and down the car looking at the paint, and look at the reflections because that way you can see if there are any little dings. If you walk down the car here, you can see here this looks strange, there is a little ding on the door right here, you’re only going to see it when you look at the reflections so look closely. Now of course you don’t buy a car just because it has a few dings but you knock some money off the price.
Then the last thing you want to do is quick check, is look at all four tires, make sure they are not cupped or have gauges in them showing there’s a problem, these are flat and evenly worn, and then of course, take it for a good road test, drive it for a good 10 minutes in town and 10 miles on the highway, listen for buzzing noise, humming noise, clicking noises, and see how the vehicle tracks on highway speeds, if the steering will go straight and whether it and then if you are really serious about the car, do like my bring the car to a mechanic like me to do the final check, because you’re going to be saving thousands and thousands of dollars buying a used car, so spend 80 or 90 to have a pro check it out before you buy, and aside from a little dent on the side of the door and some cracked cardboard on the trunk, this Toyota passed with flying colors.
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