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Used car receipt for Quality Assurance

hey this is josh with budget mechanic if you are looking at buying a used car there's a long list of standard practices such as making sure the title is clean getting a background check done taking it for a test drive looking for mechanical or physical signs of damage but in this video i want to share with you some of the biggest and most overlooked red flags when looking at a used car that could cost you an arm and a leg down the road so let's take a look at this one so we're going to start on the outside of the car besides all the obvious cosmetic stuff that you want to be looking for what i'm interested in is do my does my body match and does my body kind of fit together so what i'm talking about is do the doors close properly and are the lines correct if i look down the edge of the car are there any big wavy dents or anything like that because those kind of things are going to indicate potential collision damage that could be deeper than just cosmetic and that could be extremely expensive if you find that your car has frame damage or internal damage like that another thing is if you look at the paint is the paint all one color or has someone tried to hide an accident by doing like a little garage paint job one little trick you can do is you can pop the gas cap and you can look at the color inside the gas cap door and make sure it's the same as the rest of the car sometimes people will repaint the car but they'll miss inside here so if you haven't already got a background check on a car that you see some of these things in definitely want to make sure you check that out and make sure that something fishy is not going on in the car's history one thing you need to know when looking at a used car is how long before you need to replace these tires because tires are actually quite expensive minimum you're paying a hundred dollars per tire for a new tire on a car but often if they're more sporty tires or if you have a truck um you can rack up a thousand dollar bill just on tires alone so besides looking at the tread wear which is kind of what everybody knows to look for i'm looking at the inside edge which is really hard to see from the outside so i try to get the the wheel turned to the right or the left really far so i can get a look at the inside edge so even though the tread looks pretty good on the middle of this tire because it's wearing so badly on the inside it not only means that you're going to have to replace this tire sooner but you're also going to need to get your car aligned which is another expense that you're going to have to pay that you may not have known about if you just looked at the outside of the tire so when we get under the hood obviously there's lots of things that you want to be looking for in a used car dangers but i want to really go after three red flags which are fluids right now it's going to be your transmission fluid your oil and your coolant and i'm going to show you specifically what i'm looking for so you want to check your coolant don't make the mistake of checking your reservoir sometimes cars have coolant reservoirs other places but you want to try to find the high pressure cap that has a big danger warning sign on it and don't open it when it's hot because you'll get hurt you're looking to make sure that you know the guy selling it is keeping the car full of coolant that it is coolant and not water you don't want it to be full of water it's really bad for the system and you want to make sure that it's clear so dangerous signs would be oily residue or skunk floating in this coolant and that can point to bigger stuff like a head gasket break and oils getting into your coolant which can be very expensive also that it's not super rusty really rusty coolant again probably coming from using water in your system instead of coolant but um you're just looking at stuff like that that gives you indication of how well it's been taken care of or any kind of abuse that it's suffered so if you're seeing any of those signs in your engine coolant it's a good indication that you could have some expensive repairs in the future the next fluid that i'm looking at is a little more obvious it's the oil and not only am i looking for a good oil level because if there's an oil on the dipstick then the car's been running without the proper level of lubrication and the engine life is being shortened i'm also looking at the color has the guy changed the oil before like is it too dark is it completely black and super dirty really hard on the engine but i'm a big danger sign i'm looking for is white milky oil so oil should be clear if it's got any white or milkiness to it that indicates coolant getting through into the into the oil system which is extremely bad for the engine usually indicates some sort of like a head gasket leak or something like that also can look under the filler cap i can see down in the engine looking for signs of of water or really bad carbon buildup from bad oil so checking out your oil really well is going to give you an indication if this car has been taken care of as well as if you have a potential head gasket problem which could be very expensive so the last fluid i want to check is the transmission fluid on a lot of cars you have to check it with the car running there's a few models out there a car that doesn't have any way to access the transmission fluid and you can't do this but on most cars you find the transmission or the transaxle and the dipstick is going to be somewhere on top of it i'm looking at the transmission fluid level first this says that this is uh indicating the hot level so i would want to make sure that the car was heated up before i really determined the level um but if it's extremely low like if the fluid wasn't even on the dipstick who knows how long it's been running that way that would be extremely bad for your transmission and obviously a transmission is extremely expensive to replace another thing i'm looking for is the color if it's kind of a clear red that's great if it's a really dark brown or a black that indicates really dirty fluid that is going to need to be flushed out of the system which requires a special machine so transmission services are often very expensive as well so obviously when you're checking out the car at some point you're going to want to get inside it and start it up and take it on a test drive so here's a couple things to look for that not many people would think of so the next red flag to be aware of is going to be instrument panel i've actually been personally burned by buying a used car one time where they managed to disable the check engine light itself so there was engine codes but nothing was showing up on the dash so what you want to do is turn the key to the accessory position and make sure that the end that the lights actually physically work so airbag check engine and oil are the main culprits that you want to make sure that the the indicators are actually working and then when you start the car you know they may disappear but you want to make sure that the lights themselves are functioning properly so like i said before once you get the car started all those warning lights should disappear if they don't for example the check engine light is still on you know you have a problem don't just take the previous owner's word for what the problem is get the code red with either your own code reader go on amazon get a 10 code reader or take the card to an auto parts store that offers free code reading and find out what the code is write it down do some research and see what's actually going on the obd2 code reader is what it's called hooks into a port that's usually under your steering wheel somewhere just under the plastic oh there's the one for this car is right here you're going to plug it in and you're going to make sure the car is either running or it's in the accessory position so this is also a good way to find out if there have been codes in the car but the owner just cleared the codes before you got there so you can actually find out some history if your code reader will support that so another light that i take very seriously on the dash is the airbag light just like the engine light the repairs for the airbag system can range from really simple to extremely expensive the trick with the airbag light is you can't just scan that system with a normal scan tool you have to have some advanced equipment as well as they don't recommend you work on airbag systems a lot yourself but in some states you can't even get your car registered if that light is on it will not pass safety inspections or what have you so if that's on you really want to be careful because that could run you into some expensive repairs so while i'm talking about the instrument panel i want to bring up mileage because everybody knows that the higher the mileage of a car the less it's worth etc etc but what a lot of people don't realize is that while cars if they're well maintained can go for hundreds of thousands of miles the components that make them up especially the engine parts aren't designed to go that long i hear a lot of stories of people that all of a sudden they feel like everything's breaking on their car so many problems and they bought a lemon when in fact they're just hitting that 90 to 120 000 mile window where a lot of the components wear out need to be replaced there's a reason car companies often only offer a 100 000 mile warranty because that's kind of when stuff will start needing to be replaced so if you're looking at a car that's got 90 000 100 000 miles and the previous owner hasn't really done any work on it chances are you're going to be the one that's going to start needing to replacing starters alternators suspension elements a big one is a lot of cars have a timing belt which is a rubber belt that wears out often around 100 000 miles that if it breaks before you replace it can be catastrophic for your motor but to get your timing belt replaced is actually quite expensive so if you're looking at a car that's around that hundred thousand mile range it's just really important to know what the owner has done maintenance wise repairs that he's done it's really great to see records of that because if it's not something they've done you're probably looking at doing it pretty soon this one may be a little bit more obvious to people but when you're on your test drive you are feeling the car out for transmission trouble what i mean by that is uh if the car is hesitating to shift into the next gear or if it shifts really hard and kind of slams into the next gear or if there's any hesitation you shift into reverse the car waits a second before it gets into gear all those things especially if it's in conjunction with really dirty or low transmission fluid that you looked at before big red flag for the transmission and as you can imagine getting your transmission repaired or replaced extremely expensive the next big red flag that i hear about a lot is the owner says the ac is a little warm sometimes but i refill it with a can from the auto parts store and it works great problem with that is ac systems usually get worse not better and some parts of it are extremely expensive like the evaporator core in this car probably costs you twelve hundred dollars to get replaced so if cold air is important to you this is a big red flag and the last trouble area i'm looking for in a used car is customizations non-stock add-ons that someone has done to the car especially if they haven't been professionally installed suspension or racing parts engine mods uh electrical stuff like big sound systems or electrical accessories if they haven't been installed professionally there's a really good chance that they've messed up the electronics of a car or the suspension of a car so if the owner is bragging to you about all the performance parts that he's added or accessories that he's wired in chances are you're going to be inheriting a problem that he doesn't want to work on anymore and or the car has been raced driven hard really not well taken care of and it's not going to last much longer so might be one you want to walk away from again this is not a comprehensive list of what you should be looking for in a used car but if you look for these few trouble areas you can avoid a lot of expensive surprises thanks for watching i hope this was helpful as always please subscribe and we'll see you next time