Buying a new car? Here's what happens behind the scenes.

do you ever wonder what happens to your car to your new toyota when it leaves the factory until you take delivery of it well today we are a toyota dealership with two brand new cars that just came off the hauler that came from the factory and i'm going to show you the process from when it comes off the hauler goes through the shop and everything in between but before we get started if you're new to the channel welcome consider subscribing to the channel check out some of my other videos if you're a returning subscriber well thank you so much for watching another one of my videos and without further ado let's get to work so after the car gets off the hall or into the dealership lot the first person that gets a hold of it is a toyota technician like myself there's a service that toyota requires for all new cars called pdi or pds pdi stands for pre-delivery inspection pds which is actually the official term from toyota is pre-delivery service so it's basically one last chance at quality control because toyota is all about quality all their quality checks through the factory they want one last quality check before the car actually goes out to the new buyer and my regular viewers will notice that we are not in the usual setup where i film in my home garage we are actually at a toyota dealership which i'd like to give a huge thanks to to breedom and toyota in park ridge illinois for allowing me to come in use their cars use their facilities after hours to film this for use having said that i want to say one thing before we start the procedure or the service the pre-delivery service two cars behind me 2021 corolla hatchback and 2021 rav4 hybrid xle one of them is made in japan and one of them is made in canada we're gonna go through the motions and you'll see both cars leave a comment which one do you think was made in japan and which one is made in canada having said that let's get the cars on the lift and let's start working on the pre-delivery service so the first thing under the hood and you notice everything is nice and new and shiny however that doesn't mean everything is perfect that's the whole reason why toyota is paying for the shop so we got to carry out according to their instruction which by the way there is a check sheet that all technicians really have memorized over the years doing this job over and over but there is a check sheet that gives you exactly what they want you to check and how so starting off we're going to do a general inspection just make sure there's nothing standing out no abnormal leaks nothing not tighten not put right which from experience i can tell you i don't remember the the last time i saw a leak on a new toyota or a problem i mean toyota takes their quality of production to the next level and my head goes off to the people that work at the factory because they really do a phenomenal job and i see it firsthand when the cars come in first thing just basic fluid checks we're going to check the oil level we're going to check the coolant level we're going to run a battery test now typically with the batteries the battery might pass right now but this car might sit on the lot for two weeks three weeks up to a month so right before delivery to the customer these batteries will actually get tested charged if needed and then life is good because these are new batteries now at the time of filming this video we have the microchip shortage so actually all these cars are sold to customers so we're gonna test the battery and that'll be that and also last but not least the washer fluid these cars never come full with washer fluid we always have to add washer fluid that's just how they come from the factory so we make sure the washer fluid is full now for the case of hybrids it is the same thing we have a little bit more inspection to do make sure everything around the inverter all the red wires everything looks good really we're not going to do anything extra the only thing extra we're going to do under the hood for a hybrid is going to be the second coolant make sure that's topped off and that's at the correct level and usually i've never really seen problems with the hybrid system when the car is new one thing that i left intentionally toward the end there is one thing essential that we have to do under the hood which is install the short pin depends where the car comes from if it comes from close by like where i live in illinois if it comes from kentucky from indiana plants they're very close by and literally we get them the same day they're ready to go from the factory so the short pin is not installed the short pin is a pin the toyota removes it's programmed to shut off all the accessories in the car so the battery wouldn't drain the 12 volt battery when the car is in transit so that's the first thing we're going to install and actually both of these cars need the short pin installed because one came from canada that's pretty far away and the other one came from all the way from japan now you might not see this on camera because this car is white there's actually a wrap guard and you notice this car is very dirty that's how they come from the holder they never come shiny or covered otherwise but this car has a wrap guard the rav4 behind me does not so let's go ahead and remove the wrap guard and i'll show you the beautiful pink quality and that's why they put these rap guards for transport especially for cars that come from far away hint here so moving on inside the car the first thing you will get some a lot of papers thrown around the biggest one that is the most important for me is this one which has the vin stickers i'm not going to show it to you up close because we don't want to show them the vid number of this car but another thing is some models now you notice this one is a manual transmission it's actually a pretty cool still see a manual transmission in 2021 but the automatics some of them the cover for the park interlock override the cover sometimes will not be installed so we gotta install that in this car we don't have that some of them actually do come pre-installed but some don't so this is the variance between the difference model but one thing we have to retrieve from inside the car is from the glove box the body plugs and we'll talk about those when we lift the car up and i'll show you where these go and how important they are now we go to the back of the car you have some all-weather floor mats let's remove those you also have the big mat for the trunk let's remove that for those unfortunate ones of us that have to put a front plate like me in my state we're gonna have to use this one and install it so i'll show you how that goes but those that don't have this if you buy one you make sure they don't toss this out because you never know you might move to another state and now you have to buy this these can get a little expensive and you paid for them when you bought the car new so always make sure you find these in the trunk even if you don't have a front plate because it's part of your car another thing is the center caps now some of the this model has alloy wheels the models that have hubcaps will you'll just find a big old roll of hubcaps here but in this one we have center caps let's take them out and the last but not least we're gonna make sure that nothing was forgotten that the spare tire is here and it's secure that all this jack and the tools and everything is here nothing was forgotten and in fairness to all the awesome employees of the toyota manufacturing i've never seen one missing maybe one that was a very long time ago but everything is always here but doesn't hurt to double check because this is after all quality control let's lift the car up and look underneath it [Music] then we're gonna check underneath the car make sure nothing is leaking nothing is missing nothing seems out of the ordinary but the most important check is this one this folks is the most important check the front of the bumper this is the most common damage area in new cars when they get off the hauler these new cars are getting lower and lower thanks to tnga so this area is extremely important even as a buyer when you go buy a car before you sign that paperwork i always tell you this check this area this is the front this is the lower part of the front bumper you want to check it for scratches every technician should check them and note them because if this scratched yes some of the scratches might not be a big deal but you're paying a small fortune for this car you need to know about that this is one area that is very important during the pds to check now another area to check is the engine area and transmission now in the newer cars everything is all covered up and you can't really see much but as a technician we'll look through the openings we'll make sure everything is covered there's nothing missed before the car leaves because if there's something missed a little oil lick little coolant leak now is the time to fix it not after you take delivery and then you have a giant puddle in your driveway after paying a small fortune and then the most important thing is the body plugs these are this is how they look they're basically openings in the body now i don't need to explain why this is a bad idea not to install these because this is open to the frame and then you're gonna get water rust everything goes south from there one thing i will note not all of these cars will have the body plugs some of them will have two like this corolla some of them will have none this will depend on the factory initially the 2018 camry did have them but then as we progressed by 2021 we don't have them anymore they're pre-installed and they're different so these will change based on when the car is made what's going on but if you're buying one i would look underneath and if you see open holes like this without the cover bring it up to the dealership because this is a big deal another one that is famous for this rental cars i am yet to find a rental car that has these installed that's just usually you find them in the glove box in a nice pack if you see that these have to be installed they're so simple to install i don't understand why they're not installed sometimes that's all it takes that's it and let's do the other side here's the other side as simple as that that's it the car is protected now i don't have to worry let's go look at the rav4 if you look at the rav4 it is already installed from the factory i did not install this one so these are the variances but still you always want to check if you see an open hole they're a lot harder to take out than put in see an open hole like that in your rav4 that's no good this is much better so then tires very simple the cars that are shipped from far away they have over inflated tires the reason for that is over inflation of the tires keeps the tire prevents the tires from getting flat spot i've talked about this in one of my storage videos and this is actually a brilliant idea because we rarely get tires with flat spots some of these cars will sit a lot in the port depends on the situation so toyota when these cars are shipped from far away they'll do that so we have to deflate these because these are way over the max that the tire allows for driving of course for storage different story they also come with this cover if you have disc brakes you'll have this wrap cover just to protect your orders from splashing from transport basically so we're going to want to remove those because this car is getting delivered and we're ready to go so there we go it also protects your wheel keeps everything nice and shiny let's go ahead and do the same for all four wheels and then we'll check the tire pressure and then we'll move on to the license plates front license plates very simple they're usually marked you'll see two marks some of them will have six seven eight marks depends some of these bumpers will be shared with other models across the world which will have different dimensions than the us one for the u.s one it's as simple as that two screws you'll put your plate put the screws through life is good as we near the end of the pds service we're going to do health check we're going to connect the tech stream which is a toyota official scan tool we're going to do a health check now people wonder why are you checking codes on a brand new car well usually when these cars not all the time but most of the time these cars come with codes for manufacturing they're usually all history codes they're not current codes you don't have warning lights and mainly they're set because of the short pin so toyota wants us to go in check for codes make sure that all history erase all of them so should the customer at any point check for codes themselves another shop whatever the case may be they would find none they wouldn't find history and assume there was a problem because all these were caused by the short pin being removed and all these other systems disabled so right now we are running a health check on the rav4 all 51 computers that it has yes toyotas have progressed with numbers of computers used to have three two even one at some point now we have 51 computers so now this process takes a while all this is gonna do show me all the codes i'm gonna make sure they're all history erase them and then move on so at this point we're all done with the inspections of the car part of the inspection that i didn't mention is look at the body make sure i talked about the front of the bumper but part of it also is look at the whole body make sure nothing's scratched nothing's dinged the paint is in excellent condition and from experience the paint is always good toyota is some of the top of the class paint quality in their paint now we're going to do the function check and the function check basically is i'm going to turn on every single feature of the car radio ic all the accessories everything check that everything works perfectly that nothing needs to be initialized the seats work we have electric seats that the memory seat works everything in the car sunroof is equipped all the features i'm going to check them make sure they work properly and me personally i usually combine this with the test drive which will follow after the function check now the dealership that allowed me to do this they did not allow me to test drive the cars of course i will not push their generosity but in the test drive a few things that i want you to note and know that sometimes are common the steering wheel being center now most people will buy the car drive it for years and years and never notice that the steering wheel is slightly off center i notice because i am the car care nut and i am ocd so if you're paying a small fortune for the car the technician decides ah they won't notice that's not good practice the steering wheel should be always perfect and this is usually what gets technicians in hot waters when the customer buys the car spends a small fortune then the very next day come back for something like that now if the car developed a new problem or something happened that could be not on the technician but the steering wheel off center 100 on the technician and i love my brother ins but we're humans we make mistakes too part of the test drive another thing on the test drive is noises vibrations pulling from the steering wheel does the car pull left and right any abnormal noises is the power good any warning lights that come on while the drive now all of these are things that are not common i don't remember the last time i drove a toyota and had a problem in the test drive of the pds however i've seen small rattles here and there which usually they are very active on on new cars especially new models they want to know they want to fix them they're very proactive this is what makes folks this is what makes toyota toyota they're really on top of their game with this good quality so there you have it folks this is the pds service of course there are a lot of little details that i missed out i just wanted to make this general video so you can see what gets done to these cars when they come from the factory what we check what we look at the car actually goes up on the lift a lot of people assume that no greasy mechanic will sit in the car well as you've seen the seats are covered things are clean usually technicians when they sit in new cars they're aware that these are new cars and you notice that these cars are not very clean because they came from far away one of them came from canada and one of them came from japan and we will leave the conversation of japan versus north american made cars into another video however they all come like this they've been transported they come out of the factory they give them a quick wash and they arrive here now after i am done with the pds these cars could go two ways they're either gonna go sit on the lot until they're sold every month they if they stay for a month they will come back for battery charge and a general inspection again if they get sold then they will go to a soft detail now we're not talking about we're going to shampoo the carpet and all that because the car is new it's already clean and nobody sits in these cars when they're sitting on the lot so we're talking about cleaning the outside making sure nothing happened keep everything clean and the cars with the wrap guard you notice and i hope the camera can pick this up this car had no wrap guard look how dirty this paint is i don't even want to touch it because you're going to scratch it this paint is very is new it's essentially new it has not a single speck of dirt because this came from the factory and the wrap guard was on top of it and before we wrap up this video i want to bring a few things when you're buying a new car 99 of dealerships will do all this right but it's that one percent that ruin it for all of us as technicians as people we are people too we work very hard and we try to make things right for everybody however here is uh a breakdown of things that you might want to know about when you're going to buy a new car in case you happen to be the one dealing with the one percent of dealerships check your tire pressures when you buy the car drive the car don't drive a demo drive the actual car you're buying and before you sign the paperwork walk around the car make sure there's no scratches after it was cleaned and done and ready to be delivered to you just before you go sign the paperwork if there's any dings that would be the time to talk about them if there's any scratches that would be the time to talk about them not after you've signed the paperwork and it's yours another thing you want to check the body plugs and this might be more into if you're a car guy maybe not a mechanic but a car guy lean underneath the car make sure you don't see open big holes the only exception to that is trucks trucks will not have body plugs because their body on frame that's a whole different story make sure your caps are sitting right make sure basically everything you've seen in this video looks similar that everything works that everything is been done folks i hope this video is helpful informative i hope you like this little tour inside the dealership see how these cars are prepped and again thank you bremen toyota for allowing us to do this if you like this video consider giving it a thumbs up if you're not a subscriber consider subscribing to the channel check out some of my other videos and until the next video guys may the lord bless you and keep you and you have a wonderful day

Channel: The Car Care Nut

Views: 536,268

Keywords: buying a new car, new car buying, new toyota buying, new car tips, toyota dealership, dealership tour, toyota dealership tour, buying a new car tips, tips after buying a new car, new rav4 hybrid, new corolla hatchback, toyota quality control, toyota quality control explained, before you buy a car, toyota mechanic, toyota technician, toyota maintenance, toyota hybrid system, the car care nut, new car advise, new car advice, should you, here's why, toyota hybrid, lexus

Id: U3HeLrL0XYU

Length: 19min 51sec (1191 seconds)

Published: Wed May 26 2021