Have you ever purchased a used car and got a big discount from the seller b/c of what turns out later to be a problem needing only a very simple fix?
Well yes but Iām a mechanic and thatās what I can do.
Several years ago I bought a Grand Cherokee that had a battery that would die overnight, an engine that died if you let the RPM go below 1200, and brakes that didnāt work. I replaced a leaky brake booster that fixed the stalling and brakes, and fixed a broken wire at the driver door hinge that caused excessive parasitic draw and dead battery.
When my son started driving I found a car that āneeded a transmission overhaul or replacementā. I gave the owner a lowball offer which he took, and then replaced a $60 sensor. Transmission works beautifully.
Just 2 examples of many.
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Discount for a later problem ? Not likely . A private seller is going to say they had no idea and the deal is done . A used dealer will have you sign a form stating the vehicle is Sold as is . So a call would be a waste of time.
I didnāt do nearly as well as you, but I negotiated a $50 discount from my truckās seller b/c the fuel gauge always read āEā. Seller said dealer would fix under warranty, but he never bothered to take it to dealership to have it fixed. I discovered the problem myself, took 5 minutes of looking under the dash, loose electrical connector.
I bought a beaten up (NYC) 68 GTO for a small price. Left rear turn signal could not be fixed by an automotive electric shop. I got under the dash to pull out fifty feet of aftermarket speaker wire and I saw two factory wires fused together, separated them and taped. Then the signal light worked. I traded it for a 72 New Yorker (big and undamaged but no carb). I put a Holley on it and drove it out of the ice patch and into summer to sell it in the fall.Everything worked and It had a Pioneer super tuner cassette player and I listened to Rumours all summer.
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O bought a 56 Studebaker Commander V8 from Delaware Motors in1963.for $45. It had a cracked side window (saftey plate glass), no trunk key and some rust blotches on the upper body. I sudpect it had been parked in Lackawanna where the fumes from the Bethlem Stee plant ate the paint. They were moving the dealership and did not want to bother taking this car with them. I offered them $59 for it, all the money I had until payday and when they accepted, they said they would not do a NY State Inspection. I then told them I could only pay $45 because I needed to get it inspected.
They took it and I drove to the nearby Buick dealer and asked for an inspection. The service manager looked dubiously at the car and said that I did not want to get it inspected there. I had rolled the drivers window down into the door and they passed the car, charged me the $2.50 and gave me two tickets to the Delaware Drive in.
Later when I got home and forced the trunk lock, I found two brand new Atlas snow tires.
It was one of the best driving cars I ever had, it was fast , great in the snow and got great fuel economy.
I sold it to a friend a few years later when I wanted a station wagon.
I also found a great little 64 Valiant for my oldest son in in 1976 for $75 at a small used car dealer who had tried unsuccessfully to fix the brake lights and was going to send the car to auction.
My 76 Aspen was bought at a Dodge dealership. It was advertised for $3650 and I bought it for $2600 because it had a 4 soeed manual and the salesman did not know you had to put the clutch all the way down to open the interlock. when he got back with the mechanic I told him I had got it to start and I thought I could deal with the problem. It was a cold, rainy and windy Saturday and the had a free hot dog, and pop for everyone and balloon animals for the kids but I was the only customer there. I MADE MY $2600 offer and the countered several times and when I went to leave, they said they had lost the keys to my trade in (which I had no intention of trading in).
I told them tat was OK, I had my spare set in mypocket and they could either find them or make me new ones. I went out to my car and the salesman ran after me and accepted my offer.
A couple years later I got a tebate offer for $1200 on a rear wheel drive car or $750 on a front drive car because the lack of inner fenders on the Aspen caused the fenfers to rust prematurely. I used it to buy an 81 Horizon.
This was basically my modus operandi when I was younger. Itās how I saved a ton of money not buying new cars and fixing up used cars instead.
Some of the more notable instances-
The absolute best deal ever was a Grand Am that had persistent mildew smell the owner could not tolerate and almost gave the car to me for $800. The trunk well was full of water so there was a leak somewhere. It took me 15 minutes to locate the source and zero dollars to fix it. Someone had apparently hit the car and bent the metal surrounding the tail lamps. The gasket wasnāt touching the metal frame around the lamp. I worked the metal back into position, dried out the trunk and used that car for 5 or 6 years without any other repairs being needed.
A friend was going to look at a vintage Jaguar, 69 if I recall. When we got there, it was a guy selling it for his son who was away. He couldnāt get it started but insisted it ran when they put it into storage. We hammered him down on price since it wouldnāt run and bought it for $550. It was in otherwise great shape and even had the repair manuals in the back seat. We towed it to his place and I found the problem in less than an hour. Looking in the trunk area, a wire harness did not look right. One wire was stretched really tight and some others very loose. Iām a little vague on the specifics but I recall it was the fuel pump wiring. Without even looking in the manuals, I just connected them where they looked like they should go and it fired right up. My friend drove it for a few months and then sold it for a decent profit.
When we were really young, a buddy was going to look at his first car. Motor was ticking really bad so there was a lot of back and forth over the price and ended up buying it for cheap. Drove it out of his driveway and parked across the street. Pulled the valve covers and adjusted the valve clearances and voila! quiet as a mouse. The guy watched the goings on and when he saw it running, was fairly upset at my friend but my friend wasnāt renegotiating. He had that car for several years after that.
Pioneer Supertuner! My first car was a 77 Cutlass and it had a Supertuner, that was the one to have back then. Mine even had the auto-reverse so I didnāt have to flip the cassette back and forth.
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In 1958, my father bought '55 Plymouth Belvedere from the local Chevy dealer. The price was supposedly firmāuntil 10 year old me pointed-out that there was an area of faded paint on the trunk lid. While looking daggers at me, the salesman cut the price by $75.
Just the opposite for me. My first car was a 1960 Morris. Rather than the rambler dealer not knowing what was wrong, they knew the trans was shot, brakes shot, engine problems, and bad tires. So they discounted it from $175 to $125 just to take the piece of junk off their hands. I was 17 and just learning.
I had a friend who was like a sister and when I told her she said you didnāt buy his car did you? He was a band member and used to take corners on two wheels. I just liked the way it looked and it was during the British Invasion. At the end of the summer, I sold it at break even for money for college. Bought a vw next year thinking the Germans were better engineers.
I bought a Ford Taurus MT 5 (5 speed manual) used from a dealer. since it was a manual they had trouble moving it. I made a low ball offer figuring that would meet me half way, the sales person stepped out to ātalk to the managerā came back and accepted my offer. I was stunned and did not know what to say, but got it together enough to offer my hand to shake on the deal.
If I recall correctly that car was a 2.5 4 cylinder, wasnāt it? Gosh they were rare, I think more owing to the underpowered engine than the fact it was a manual.
Yes the Taurus MT5 was a 4 cyl. Definitely not to be confused with the SHO. But it gave decent gas mileage
Bought a 1929 Ford model A coupe from a neighbor for $25 in 1949. He had been cranking it by hand for two weeks to try to get it to start to no avail. Pushed it into my driveway and I cranked it by hand for two weeks, checking every reason why it would not even fire once. As a last resort, I decided to replace the one item that I could not check or test, the capacitor in the distributor. First crank, it fired up and ran perfectly. Drove it around for a couple of months until the police stopped me for having no plates and being too young to get a drivers license. They told me to take it home and leave there until I had both.
Well you were lucky. They gave me six months for similar. Thatās why I donāt trust the court system.
A friend of mine has an early 2000ās VW Beetle (New version , water cooled). He got it as a freebie, the prior owner couldnāt fix it so it could pass emissions, and gave up. Thereās actually nothing wrong with it (thatās obviously anyway) except that the check engine light keeps turning on, w/a code saying the mixture is incorrect and the engine is misfiring. But thereās no indication at all of a mixture or misfiring problem when driving it. He keeps replacing stuff, resets the check engine light, but it always turns back on after 30 miles ā¦ lol ā¦ He say heās not giving up, will continue to replace stuff until the fix does the trick.
Itās possible to diy-test that item in many cases. As part of a tune-up I always do a quick-test of the ignition capacitor on my Ford truck using a DVM & capacitance meter. 50 years of testing, still good. One time I bought a new one just to see if there was any difference in performance. No difference, and the new one was quite expensive, so I took it back for a refund.
Had no meters or instruments. Check compression with thumb over plug holes. Check for spark by plug wire near engine. Check timing and cam and valves with timing mark and observation through spark plug hole. Check fuel with a few drops of gas through plug holes.