Hi, first time car buyer, female & no mechanic on hand - that would be my dad (he currently can’t assist w. vehicle). I test drove a 2011 Suburban w. 11k miles on it & the Chevy seemed to pull to the right. CarFax report states no prior car accident, apparently an executive dealer used the car. It had traction control on & 4WD, but I took it off and it felt off. I called Les Schwab and they say they can look at it, but that’s only brakes, shocks & battery.
Could this be an alignment issue? Bigger car, hence bigger wheel issue, I drive a smaller SUV and putting it into 4WD I know it feels “heavier/beefy”. Axle problems?
If I take to mechanic, what should I ask him to look at? The car comes with warranty & CPO.THANKS for any advice!
Tell the dealer the car was pulling to the right and you want this corrected and then you’ll test drive the car again. If the problem is resolved then you can see if you can make a deal on the car.
At 11K miles there isn’t much a mechanic can inspect mechanically on the car. You should have a body shop inspect the car for evidence of body damage and repair due to an accident.
You can’t rely on carfax, if a dealer executive crunched the car the dealer repair shop could fix it and never invoice the work - and there is no insurance claim - carfax would therefore not pick up and report the accident repair.
Any vehicle with only 11K on the clock that exhibits problem behavior of any type during the test drive should be walked away from. Assume that if the problem were correctable the first owner/operator would have had it corrected.
Forget Carfax. They present themselves as if they had access to some universal database that contains a complete history of the vehicle, but that’s very, very far from the truth. The truth is that there is no such database, and no universal mandatory reporting requirement of any kind, and they have access to only the tidbits of data that are reported to them.
“You might check the tire pressure as a first step.”
The Suburban should have the tire pressure monitoring system on it. You can just push the inf button to scroll through the recorded data until you get to the tire pressure. If you own a tie pressure gauge, you can use that, too. But I think the TPMs are getting better. My daughter bought a 2012 Chevy Ctuze. She checked tire pressure several times over the first few months with the TPM and a dial gauge. Both showed the same results every time. She uses the TPM exclusively now.
The CarFax can be useful. I bought a low mileage car for yet another daughter recently. It had only 14,500 miles after 2 years. But the CarFax showed that the mileage between visits to the shop (routine maintenance) was the same. This meant that it didn’t spend a lot of time off the road. If there were a couple-a-three visits to the shop, you could check this out, too.
You have to take that as a warning sign and walk away. I test drove a used vehicle, looked great price was right but there was a near inaudible thumping I heard, I mentioned it to the dealer, oh there was a stick stuck under the car, following test drive no change no sale.