FeistyPants said:
My other half was buying a car which, for us anyway, means trawling round lots of second hand car dealers with either no or dubious facilities and lots of standing around outside looking interested in tyres and oil levels and things. Having a diaper on just makes the whole day better - no worrying about where to pee, or limiting what I drink, and a nice warm bum all day with occasional floodings of hot pee - fabulous
Just some excellent, totally unsolicited advice from a lifelong professional (over educated certified to the hilt) automotive/truck & heavy equipment technician/mechanic (or whatever the PC people want to call us today) who has seen so many pieces of shit purchased by customers that I ALWAYS advised every single one of my customers to bring the vehicle to my shop or if the business you're buying from won't allow you to bring it, have them bring it for me to inspect BEFORE penny #1 gets deposited on said vehicle. IF a car lot/dealership refuses to have the vehicle sent to me to be inspected then RUN! I understand some places may be leery of allowing a total stranger to drive one of their vehicles to a shop to be inspected though they're perfectly capable of bringing it themselves. IF they have nothing to hide, they'll come out of this looking reputable, which went a long ways towards me recommending them to customers looking to buy a used vehicle. I likely "sold" a couple thousand cars over the years by recommending places I KNEW would at least believe the vehicle they put on their lots was in fact in serviceable condition and they weren't trying to hide anything. I had many dealerships/car lots who'd send me Christmas gifts, liquor etc. everytime one of my customers bought from them.
There's simply too much literal SHIT on the market these days and FAR TOO MANY people without a smidgeon of a conscience willing to knowingly sell a vehicle to someone that has so many things wrong with it that it will never be right.
The best example I can possibly offer was on a Dodge Dakota one of my customers owned. Despite only being 8 years old the frame was literally disintegrating like a sand castle as waves lap against it. My lift would had been driven through the frame where the lift arms/pads made contact and on the L/R section of the rotted frame literally did. NO WAY this truck would EVER pass PA's rigorous State Inspection and I told my customer to trade it, this being when "Cash for Clunkers" was going on after the near total collapse of the new car industry in the US after 2008's economic crash. So he only received $3500 credit on a trade but that was more related to the fact he was never going to buy a brand new truck as they're pretty much priced out of the working mans' price range and traded it on a used truck that was 4 years old and in VG condition. Book on his truck when he traded it was a shade over 5k.
Now, whenever dealerships take on a trade many times they simply send them to used car auctions without ever looking at them. This means that NO ONE EVER knew the frame on this was able to be ripped apart by hand over at least 50-60% of the frame.
Imagine my surprise maybe 2 months later when another of my customers shows up in his "new" truck for tires and an alignment! As soon as I saw this thing I KNEW it looked mighty familiar. I pulled it on the alignment rack and see that someone (whoever bought it at the auction) used fiberglass cloth & resin to replace the missing pieces of the frame then undercoated the hell out of it so that it would look "good" by eye, and it really did. I then grabbed a piece of the frame right underneath the back of the cab and ripped a rotted chunk of frame rail off in my hands to show my customer. YES SIR! This was the SAME ******* TRUCK!!!
This poor SOB had to get a lawyer and I had to testify as an expert witness which took almost 2 years before it was settled. Meanwhile he has to continue paying on that loan or else default and destroy his credit! Now he had TWO car payments for a bit of time. PENN DOT & the PA State Police had to become involved as well as it had brand new state inspection stickers on the windshield, and there's NO WAY it could had possibly passed ANY inspection. The place he bought it from didn't give a shit as they have lawyers in their employ so court costs and everything are already paid for and many people can not afford to fight a case out in court like this...and they (along with insurance companies) know this all too well!
He eventually did receive a settlement that covered time lost, principal & interest paid in as well as a small punitive award. TRUST ME....not worth the time or aggravation. The LARGE used car dealer that sold it was eventually shut down by the State's Atty. General as they were also "washing titles" which is a way (AND NOT ILLEGAL in some places, especially on state to state transactions!) as they had countless flood vehicles from Katrina resold with clean titles. Once a modern vehicle gets flooded, you can rest assured that it will be an electronic NIGHTMARE from that point onwards unless every single electrical component (as well as the engine/transmission/transfer cases etc. etc.) gets replaced. They never do! I've found innumerable marine life skeletons above vehicle headliners, behind dash boards etc. from vehicles that were flooded at one time or another. The garage that "hung paper" (applied inspection & emissions stickers without EVER so much as putting the truck in the air) also lost everything as this was NOT their 1st offense. The "Quality Assurance Officer" (Pa's ex-St Policeman) who inspected our books and would pay professionals (such as myself, numerous times) to do a complete & THOROUGH inspection on vehicles to see IF the problem simply "just happened" or was dangerous when the vehicle was physically supposed to have been inspected and I'd have to document EVERY SINGLE failure which is incredibly time consuming, especially for the PITTANCE we get to do a PA St Inspection as that's loosely regulated by the state and is supposed to be no higher than 1/2 hour's worth of shop labor.
IF you do one of these inspections "by the book" no way you can do it properly in 30 minutes or less. My labor rate was $105/hour in 2010 yet I charged $21.95 for a St. Inspection as that brings in untold amounts of work. When I personally inspect anything I'm more or less looking at it from the perspective of "Is the vehicle safe?". That means the brake system HAS to be passable, emergency or parking brake HAS to function and hold the vehicle on a slight incline, there can be no holes in the body that could potentially allow exhaust gasses to enter the passenger compartment, the steering/suspension & tires must all pass the "by the book" definition of "safe". I would allow minor "failures" such as "rough/jagged" parts of a vehicle (rusted out panels & such) so long as they did not affect collision worthiness OR allow exhaust gasses to enter the passenger compartment. I'd allow a lenses with cracks in it (that didn't show white light unless it was supposed to) as that has no affect on safety at all. Same with a small crack in a windshield that was NOT in the drivers' line of sight. I could not afford to lose my inspection license personally and ESPECIALLY could not afford to lose the shop's inspection license.
OK..going off track here... just wanted to let everyone know that YOU HAVE THE RIGHT to have a vehicle inspected by a shop (or person) of your choice and if the seller refuses to accommodate that, RUN! It literally is the least expensive decision you can make that can save you untold thousands of dollars as well as TONS of time & aggravation.
