How to Buy a Car To Flip for a Profit ($$$ Side Hustle)

hey guys Chris fix here and today I'm going to show you how to flip a car to make some extra money and under this car cover right here is my newest purchase and this is the perfect example of a car any of you guys could easily buy and flip it's relatively inexpensive under three thousand dollars for this car and we should be able to make a couple thousand dollars in profit by fixing it up over the weekend it's not gonna be a long-term fix it's gonna be pretty quick to do and a couple grand for a weekend's worth of work that's not too shabby so let me show you how to get this done now I don't want to mislead you guys flipping a car isn't as easy as everybody makes it look on the internet there are some risks to it but to help you get the best possible chance of getting a profit on your first flip I made a checklist for you that has things that I like to see on a car when I'm trying to buy it and things I want to be cautious of and make sure that I get that discounted price if I am going to buy the car and I'll be sure to link this down in the description it's free it's a nice checklist you can print out again to try to increase your odds and we're going to go through this in a second but like with anything else with risk comes reward you could use this extra money to buy car parts or you could use the extra cash to help pay for the expensive Hobbies you have or maybe you want to be responsible and use it to pay off the pile of bills that are stacking up so this checklist is going to be very helpful and before we uncover what this car is let me show you some really good examples of flips I've done in the past one of my favorite examples because you guys could totally flip this car yourself is this non-running Trailblazer I found on Auto Tempest the guy was asking a thousand dollars I offered him 500 he took it and well you're about to see why now the biggest problem was this car did not start it didn't even crank nothing at all luckily this was an easy one to figure out because the first thing I always do in a situation like this is check the fuse box and if you check the owner's manual you can see that the fuses for the powertrain control module is right here and here and then if you look at this fuse right here you can clearly see this fuse looks like it got a little hot and from the side you can see this fuse is blown and this is what a good view should look like so I put the new fuse in making sure to push it in all the way and I tried starting the car again okay that's a good sign the fuel pump is humming let's see if she'll start come on all right yes that is awesome okay we got this we got the car started that's so good so the car started this is a huge weight lifted off my shoulders and as I backed onto the ramps you could clearly hear the exhaust is leaking badly so that's what I needed to figure out next and under the car I quickly saw the badge Muffler so I cut the back of the muffler off and on the other side I unbolted the muffler and then out with the old and in with the new after bolting up the new muffler and sliding the stock pipe over the back of the muffler and then clamping it down we no longer had a giant exhaust leak and it was time to replace the old fuel tank which I'll show you why so out with the old and in with the new well kinda new and check this out because there's a broken muffler the fuel tank ended up melting because the hot exhaust gases so I cleaned up the new junkyard fuel tank with some soapy water and made it look basically new then although I didn't need it I installed a brand new OEM fuel pump assembly that way the new owner won't have any issues and the car will start every single time finally I installed that new fuel tank and fuel pump back into the car then I added some fuel so we could start her up all right now this is what it's all about Moment of Truth all this work a 500 car we fixed the fuel pump we fixed the exhaust okay all right man she started right up no problem at all man she's running great no lights on the dash at all this is exciting we got ourselves a really nice car here so with the running car it was time to replace the old rusty brakes then I cleaned up and fixed some small interior pieces that were missing or broken so the interior looked amazing and always remember cleaning the car is the best bang for the buck you could get when flipping a car like these exterior Plastics that are faded this is easily fixed using a ceramic coating that revitalizes that plastic long term and makes it look brand new what a difference and finally my favorite transformation look at how faded this car's paint is but I showed you guys how to do a full paint correction by hand with compound and polish and look at how amazing it turned out it's like a mirror now so I took a risk on this car for 500 bucks since it wasn't running and I fixed it all up using common hand tools for under 500 in parts so for a thousand dollars all in the car is now worth a little over four thousand dollars so the total profit is three thousand dollars not bad for a couple days where worth of work another example of a great flip is a childhood favorite of mine the Honda del Sol which I found on Auto Tempest for a thousand dollars this car is perfect for a flip because it needed a head gasket and while many cars a head gasket replacement is a pain for this Honda it's simple and the parts are cheap and I knew once this was done I could sell this car for about two thousand dollars so I negotiated the car down to 300 bucks and don't think there wasn't any risk there was a chance the head was warped and there's always other problems that you uncover so after trailering at home I immediately set off to replace the head gasket because that was the most serious problem so I removed the bolts from the exhaust manifold then I unbolted the intake manifold and moved it off the head then I carefully removed the timing belt from the sprocket and finally I unscrewed the head bolts working my way from the outside inwards so I don't work the head and with the head bolts removed now the head could be removed next I cleaned up the block and head surface so the new head gasket could go right on like that and then the head could be placed over the block and here's the old head gasket you can see where the gasket failed and it allowed the coolant to pour into the engine so with the new head gasket in I torqued down all the head bolts from the center outwards that way the head seats evenly and won't warp then I put the timing belt back in place I tightened down the intake back into the head and torque down the exhaust manifold in a crisscross pattern and finally I installed the valve cover so I could start her up and here we go Moment of Truth all right that is awesome now in pretty much every flip you're gonna uncover hidden problems that you didn't expect and this rust hole is one of them luckily it's a pretty simple fix you just gotta cut out all the rust and then get a piece of sheet metal that's cut to shape to fill the hole and now you can weld the sheet metal into the car just make sure you spread that heat out by welding in different spots so you don't overheat the metal and warp it and finally I'm coating the entire top and Underside with a special rust preventative paint and that looks amazing so the car was 300 bucks and the parts were around 200 giving me a total of 500 and I could have easily sold this car for two thousand dollars which is a fifteen hundred dollar profit but not only did I love this car you guys loved it so I kept it to show you some more fixes next I showed you guys how to paint the valve cover to go from this to this then I showed you guys how to rebuild the entire front suspension and finally I got rid of these steelies and put on some new wheels and tires now I have myself a nice peppy fun car to mess around with and you guys know what's next for her so stay tuned it's happening I promise and one more example of a great flip is the vandalized 2016 Chrysler 200 I paid four thousand dollars for which fixed up is worth about twelve thousand dollars but as you can see I have a challenge ahead of me so I spent the day removing the spray paint from the body of the car with a pressure washer which took a lot of time but it removed most of the spray paint without damaging the car's paint which is the most important thing then I used a clay bar and quick detailer to remove the spray paint embedded into the paintwork and finally I polished and waxed the paint to finish off the process and make it look like it was never vandalized before the results speak for themselves it came out awesome you would never have known that this car was spray painted I mean just look at these before and after shots after removing the spray paint I also had to clean the sugar out of the gas tank so I dropped the tank and cleaned it out by hand and although the original fuel pump was fine I put a new OEM fuel pump in there just because I didn't want the next owner to have any issues also just to be safe I cleaned out the fuel lines to make sure any sugar that got past the fuel filter was cleaned out finally the clean fuel tank was ready to get installed back under the car so I got it in place and torqued it down and now the entire fuel system was sugar-free the last thing to do is clean up the vandalized interior which was covered in mud but again having a car that's super dirty is great you buy it at a cheap price since nobody wants a dirty disgusting car and cleaning it is very inexpensive it's almost fresh just some products that you already have it takes some time it takes some skill I show you how to clean it perfectly in all my super clean videos so you can get an amazing transformation just take a look at these before and after shots it's not difficult to make your car look brand new something as simple as cleaning the car increases the value and my favorite part is anybody could do it so after cleaning the car getting all the sugar out of the tank I spent about five hundred dollars and now the car is worth twelve thousand dollars easily that's around a seven thousand dollar profit for about four days worth of work so those are some of the flips that I've done and it gives you a pretty good idea of what you could expect now you're probably wondering what's under the cover let me introduce you guys to my 2013 Toyota Prius now when getting a car to flip it's not only important to find the right car to buy but it's also important to find the right car to sell because that's half the battle honestly selling the car is even harder than buying the car and this is the perfect car because it'll sell easily it's economical it's relatively inexpensive with such high fuel prices this thing gets over 50 miles a gallon no problem it's cheap to maintain seats five people and check out the size of this trunk once I fix this up this car is going to be an easy sell now I'll show you guys what on this car needs to be fixed in a second but first I want to show you guys where you could buy cars and my strategy for finding cars like this at a low price so to find a good car to flip it all starts right here on your computer and my secret weapon for finding cars quickly is a site called Auto Tempest so this website searches a bunch of different car for sale websites all in one click you can see right here searches sites like ebaymotors cars.com TrueCar and you can see some of the other sites up here that they use it even helps you search sites like Craigslist in a larger area not just your local town and same thing for Facebook Marketplace that that way you don't miss out on any of the cars you're looking for now this site searches so many cars you really need to narrow it down otherwise you have way too many listings so I use keywords and here's a list of keywords that I like to use and you can pause the screen and screenshot it to save it but there's a ton more and I'm sure you could come up with some really good ones anything you come up with be sure to comment down below but I like to use stuff like needs breaks or won't start or bring a trailer or brake lines these are all good Search terms that might find their way into listings for cars that need some work so we're going to try searching needs work and you can see there are tons of listings of cars that need work not all these are going to be amazing deals or cars you want to flip but this search is going to help you narrow that down here's a good example of one that I found that would work well for a flip it's a 2009 four-wheel drive Ford Escape with 118 000 miles asking 3500 it also has the make an offer button now this car looks pretty good it could use a good exterior detail but looks to be in decent shape inside and out the interior definitely needs some cleaning but nothing horrible and we could easily clean up this engine bay to make it look brand new in the seller's description it says the car won't start and the shop says it's a bad fuel pump they also said that the muffler needs to be replaced because it's loud now my strategy here would be to try to get this car for 2100 which is fair because the trade-in value for a working car is 2200 and then a new fuel pump assembly is a hundred bucks a new muffler is another hundred dollars and then add another 200 or so in extra stuff that might be bad so all in you're about twenty five hundred dollars and then fixed up you could quickly sell this car for forty five hundred dollars so that's a two thousand dollar profit for a weekend's worth of work now that's just one example let's do another one and instead of needs work let's do needs breaks again there are tons of results but this time let's go check Facebook Marketplace and you can search wherever you want let's do Texas because there has to be some big deals in Texas so again you can see there's tons of results you're gonna have to filter through them but this 2008 Ram 1500 with a hundred and seventy Thousand Miles asking thirty nine hundred dollars caught my eye because it seemed pretty nice and has exactly what we're looking for at the right price the seller says it needs to break calipers and brake lines in the front and that you're going to have to tow it which I love seeing and from his description you can tell he's sick and tired of selling this truck it's been listed for a while now and he says don't waste my time the car is priced right and I'm not going to answer to is this still available now for once the car actually is Priced Right he is slightly under the trade-in value so I'd offer him thirty seven hundred dollars and tow it away that same day then all we have to do is some new brake pads and rotors brake calipers and brake lines and that cost about 400 bucks total and then add another 400 for random problems you might find giving us an all-in price of forty five hundred dollars now fixed up this truck could quickly sell for seven thousand dollars so it's a quick twenty five hundred dollars for a weekend's worth of work and finally let me show you the Prius listing this listing caught my eye because the price was lower than most other Priuses on the market in good shape this is an eight or nine thousand dollar car so I checked the description and it said the Hybrid battery was bad which is a five thousand dollar fix from Toyota there's also a rattle which he thinks could be the engine so I called up the seller he told me a bunch about the car and he said recently he's been having issues with the transmission slipping and the car just doesn't accelerate anymore he also sent me a video of a new problem where the engine clunked really hard when you shut it down since he sent me that video I asked him for a video of the rattling noise and this could be an engine noise but it sort of sounds a little more like an exhaust rattle to me so the car definitely needs a bunch of work and that's exactly what I want for a flip so I offered him 2500 he came back to me at 3 500 and in a classic negotiation we met in the middle at twenty seven hundred dollars and just like that I have another project car now take your time with this deals like this are hard to find sometimes it takes two three weeks to find the diamond in the rough like this one and that's exactly why I use Auto Tempest because it makes it a lot easier and quicker but I want to thank them for creating the website supporting the video and supporting my car buying addiction so let's go check out the new Prius okay so here's my 2013 Toyota Prius I purchased for twenty seven hundred dollars site unseen now normally I don't like to buy cars sight unseen because you could easily get burned with problems you didn't expect but in this case I kind of had to I negotiated on the phone I told the guy listen I'm gonna come right now with the money you give me the title I drive the car away no tire kicking no test drives that's exactly what I did it and sometimes you gotta do that to get a good deal the bigger the risk the bigger the reward so in this case am I going to get burned or did I find an awesome car that I'll be able to flip for a profit well we're about to find out now this is a list I've come up with over the years from buying cars and fixing them up and it's helped me tremendously normally you'd use this list before you go and buy the car but in this case I'm going to show you the process with the car I just got now up here are all things that I like to see in a car that I'm buying and down here are all things I like to try to avoid and the first thing I like to do is scan the computer and see what trouble codes there are so this is really simple this is an awesome way for your car to tell you what's wrong with it all you have to do is grab an OBD2 scanner in this case I'm using a Bluetooth one it plugs in right underneath the dashboard right over here just like that and then with your foot off the brake just hit the ignition switch twice or turn the car to the Run position if you have a key then get your phone or tablet open up the app and we want to read the codes now we could scan for simple check engine lights or we could scan for dash lights like transmission airbag and ABS codes or we could run a full system scan which is exactly what we're going to do so after a couple minutes we're almost done okay so the entire car has been scanned and here are the results and you can see all the trouble codes that popped up are Hybrid battery related if we look down at the permanent codes it shows block 1 and block 3 are weak and this is exactly what we wanted to see because there's no other fault codes with the engine or the transmission airbags the ABS Etc so now that we know we only have bad Hybrid battery codes next let me show you how to check for a head gasket leak and this is very helpful to making a lot of profit because a head gasket like this is only 50 to 100 plus some fluids and maybe some other small gaskets and the charge for labor is thousands of dollars sometimes that's why I like to see head gaskets as one of the problems with cars because if you have the skills to do it you can make a lot of money now in this case we don't want to have a bad head gasket because we weren't planning on it and it would just cost more time and more money but I still need a test because these Generation 3 Priuses are known to have bad head gaskets it's a factory defect so if I'm looking over here at the reservoir you could see we are definitely low on coolant which isn't a good sign so with a cold engine let's remove the reservoir cap then place the head gasket tester over the opening and start the car foreign as the car warms up we could add the test fluid to the fill line and then we could put the bulb on top about 10 minutes later or once the engine's at operating temperature we could squeeze that bulb and that aerates the test fluid do this for about a minute and if there's a head gasket leak the exhaust fumes in the cooling system will turn this fluid yellow but as you can see this is staying nice and blue so we know we don't have a head gasket leak now we can shut off the engine and I really hope that vibration gets sorted once we replace that Hybrid battery okay so now we want to top off the coolant to the correct level and to do this it's very very important that you use the correct coolant this coolant is made specifically for hybrids and has all the proper additives to prevent corrosion in the cooling system now we just want to add coolant to the fill line just like that beautiful now let's remove the funnel and we can tighten down the cap all the way so it seals the system and now we know this car does not have a head gasket leak what a relief okay so the next two things I like to look for with used cars that I'm trying to buy to flip are bad suspension parts and also bad brakes because I could buy the car at a discount since they're broken it's easy for me to fix and I could sell at a profit but in this case the car suspension and brakes are supposedly fine so let's go for a test drive and find out all right so I've been driving this car around for a while now and she is a solid car she doesn't pull there's no clunks no strange sounds and everything feels pretty good so we have a good alignment and good suspension and when we hit the brakes she brakes nice and straight there's no vibrations and that probably means the brake system's in good shape now there is a major problem watch this I don't know if you could feel that that juddering I'm accelerating right now I am completely floored and this car is I mean we're at 20 miles an hour 25 miles an hour she is not accelerating and there's a vibration from that transmission it feels like it's slipping we are just about to hit 35 miles an hour the speed limit so there is definitely some sort of problem and I did some research and it said that when the Hybrid battery goes bad you get this juddering you get this uh this effect from the electric motor not working because the battery's bad so I'm hoping when we replace the battery that fixes that we get our acceleration back otherwise we have a really nice car all the buttons work the heat the AC the radio is great another thing is check out that miles per gallon 29 almost 30 miles a gallon with a bad Hybrid battery just using the gas motor that is awesome let's head back to the house let's go do some repairs and get this car in Tip-Top shape so we could flip it so back from our test drive I kept the engine running because I want you guys to listen to this this sounds horrible you can hear there's a rattling noise which is not good so let's go get this car up on ramps and figure out what the problem is because it sounds horrible and before we go under the car always chalk off the rear wheels so the car doesn't roll by accident and now we could go safely head under the car and let's see what's making this noise okay so we'll start from the front and that right there is the expensive catalytic converter thieves like to steal and as we head back you could hear the rattle coming from the back of the car which is great because my gamble with that noise not being an engine problem just paid off and look at that it's a rusted exhaust bracket that broke off so let me shut the car and no wonder that broke off look at how much the engine shakes when it shuts off hopefully that's fixed once we put the new battery in okay so we're gonna weld this together right here like that so first we need to grab our 80 grit sandpaper and sand down the metal to remove all the rust and get down to Bare shiny metal also sand down the exhaust pipe to Bear shiny metal as well and then these two pieces fit together like that and that's what we're gonna weld but before we weld we have something important that we need to do now anytime you weld you always want to disconnect the negative terminal on the battery the battery is located the trunk on this car and there's the negative terminal but this does have a hybrid battery so should you disconnect the Hybrid battery when you weld on a hybrid and to disconnect the Hybrid battery you pull that out just like that and the answer is no you do not need to disconnect the Hybrid battery to weld on a hybrid you only need to disconnect the 12 volt battery the ground right here that way we don't damage any electrical systems so let's loosen this 10 millimeter bolt and now we can slide the negative cable off the terminal and tuck it away so it won't touch the battery next we could get the welder ground clamp onto the exhaust and let's weld this up and as they say grinder and paint makes me the welder I ain't now is this a beautiful weld absolutely not that's why I ground it down is it gonna hold yes that's gonna hold no problem at all that is not going anywhere and now all we need to do since this is down to Bare Metal we don't want this to rust so we're gonna hit it with some high temperature spray paint so with the exhaust protected with high temp paint let's start up the car and make sure our noise is gone [Applause] we're embarrassing loud exhaust rattle is completely gone so we're good to go here now the next thing on the list that I look for in every single car I buy is a dirty interior the dirtier the better and the reason being is cars with dirty Interiors are usually not taken care of as well so they sell for a lower price and then you're able to clean and detail the interior make it look almost brand new and sell it for a higher price giving you that profit margin think about it from the buyer's perspective you're coming to buy a car and cars aren't cheap you're going to spend a lot of money do you really want to see carpets that look like that do you want to have stains in the center console tray would you even put your arm on this armrest if there's stains on the seat would you want to sit in the seat no you want to have something that's clean that's inviting that way you could sell the car easier and sell it for more money so here are my tips and tricks on how to clean the interior of your car and make a huge difference so first I always start by vacuuming all the carpets in the car this is so easy to do and I don't know why anybody selling a car wouldn't take the extra five minutes to vacuum everything and make it look nice now every once in a while some debris will get stuck in the fibers and the vacuum is not going to pull it out so let's get a small pick and we'll pick that pine needle out just like that and this might seem tedious but the attention to detail is what it's all about who wants to see a fingernail stuck in the carpet when they're going to look at a used car and finally I thought this spot was caked on mud but after trying to brush this a lot I've come to realize it's a wear spot through the carpet because the previous owner didn't use floor mats so to make this less of an eyesore grab a black paint marker and we're going to color in that bare spot then get a towel and rub it in to feather it into the carpet and surrounding area to make it match check out the before and after and since we're right here another attention to detail people Overlook is cleaning the petals so grab some soapy water spray the pedal down and use a brush to agitate all the dirt that's stuck in that texture and make sure you never use any type of slippery protectant because that could be very dangerous as you see all you need is some soapy water and one more spot people don't think about cleaning is in between the seats and the center console which as you can see collects a ton of dirt so get your vacuum in here and I bet this hasn't been cleaned since the car was brand new so vacuum up the dirt and cleaning spots like this might seem trivia and unnecessary but trust me it makes the difference now after vacuuming in all the hidden spots like between a center console and see under the seats and also spots like this between the seat and the door jamb here the carpet is looking absolutely amazing but we're not done yet now one last thing to do to really transform the interior of the car is to clean the carpets with an extractor vacuum like this while the carpets might look pretty clean there's still stains and dirt dissolved into the carpet fibers that you didn't remove so let me show you how this works the extractor vacuum has a nozzle on it that sprays the carpet cleaner onto the carpet and then I like to get a nylon brush and agitate the cleaner into the carpet and this dissolves the dirt and the smells trapped deep in this carpet and then after you're done agitating with the brush all you do is extract that now dirty cleaning solution out of the carpet and look at how clean this carpet's looking now and I know you can't smell through your screen but the carpet had a slight odor before nothing bad but now it's smelling fresh and clean and I know the carpets of this car look pretty clean after just using a regular vacuum but look at all the dirt we just pulled out of the carpets and just to give you an idea here's a comparison to the Clean Water we used now what a difference a little cleaning and vacuuming could make I do have floor mats on order and they should be here today so that'll cover up any of the wear through spots that are inevitable when you don't use floor mats now with all the carpets in the car cleaned next let's move on to detailing all the Plastics and we'll start right here at these door Sills which are not only dirty but are stained and scratched up from wear and tear and I have a trick to make these look brand new so let me show you now if your Plastics aren't stained all you would do is brush them down with some soapy water and then use a towel to clean it off but as you can see this dirt is really in those scratches and it's stained so a little trick is to use melamine foam but you need to be very careful and test on a small inconspicuous spot first and the perfect place to test is right down here on the bottom of the door card it has the same textured plastic and if we do mess it up we don't have to worry about it because you can't see it melamine foam is an abrasive so make sure you don't use it on painted Plastics or smooth Plastics because it will scratch it this is textured and you can see it cleans up all this dirt and there are no scratches so we could use use this no problem at all so now let me show you how amazing this works on the door Sills so with light pressure just Glide the sponge over the sill working back and forth and not only is it cleaning the stains out of the scratches but it's also smoothing the sharp edges of the scratches to make them less visible now with it clean what you'd want to do is use a protectant like this and always spray the protectant on a towel not directly onto the plastic that way you prevent overspray and look at how amazing this looks here's a before and after now let's clean off the other Plastics in the car like the seat belt button you can see the indented letters have some dirt in it and this is something you're going to touch and see every time you use the car so we want it clean so use a brush with some soapy water on it and brush away all that dirt then we could wipe it clean good now we want to grab a brush and work some protectant into that plastic and then finally we could wipe the excess protectant away and check it out before and after next I want to clean the infotainment system because it's very dusty and has fingerprints all over it now the protectant is great at removing the dust and fingerprints but it also leaves smudges on the screen so follow up with a clean lean buffing towel and now the screen looks great so I wiped down the entire Center stack with the protectant and it looks awesome but I want to drill this into your head pay attention to the details and you can see right down here it's dirty inside the crevice of the cup holder a brush with some soapy water does quick work at loosening up that dirt and then we can wipe the Dirt away with the microfiber towel and follow up with a brush and some protectant and then wipe off the excess and check it out here's a before and after now for the dash I don't use anything but a towel that's lightly misted with some soapy water make sure you don't use anything that leaves a shine because that could cause a reflection and blind you as you drive and since we're talking about the dash another place to clean are the vents and you can see all the dirt in there so get a brush and loosen up that dirt and vacuum it out and this brush is designed to fit into the vents which makes cleaning this very simple with that clean now we can brush some protectant into the vent and that makes the plastic look rich and dark just like when it was new and then finally use something like a Q-tip to soak up the excess protectant just like so and here's a before and after and one last thing I want to mention is cleaning the door switches you can see there's some standing on the black plastic and there's dirt in the switch so let's vacuum out the dirt and then we can brush the whole panel down with some soapy water to remove the stains and finally you can brush some protectant into the Plastics including the switch and let that soak in so it brings back that deep color of the Plastics now we can wipe off the excess protectant and here's the before and after okay so all the Plastics in the car have been cleaned and protected they are looking great so let's move on to cleaning the seats and cleaning the seats is simple you can see how dirty and stained these seats are well first use a vacuum and suck up all the loose dirt and dog hair and make sure you get into the crevices and in between the seats then use the extractor vacuum to dampen the seats with carpet cleaner you don't want to soak the seats too much otherwise they'll never get dry but you want just enough to evenly wet the surface then use a nylon brush to work that cleaner into the fabric and agitate any of the dirt in there and finally use the extractor to suck out all the dirty water out of the seats and I love seeing that clean Trail after you suck out all that dirty water and even if your seats don't look dirty still hit it with the extractor vacuum it only takes a few minutes and it always makes them look and smell so much cleaner and check out all the dirt we removed from both the front and rear seats those seats didn't even look that bad yet look at all that dirt we sucked out of them so using an extractor vacuum is a great tool when you're flipping cars because it makes them look extra clean and make some smell extra fresh and one final piece to clean is this material in the center console tray so spray it down with some soapy water then we could brush down the entire piece and finally extract all that dirty soapy water out of the material and that's all there is to it before this was dirty and disgusting and now it's fresh and clean and with that looking amazing there's not too much more we have to do with this interior except we need to get rid of this steering wheel cover I don't know about you guys I hate steering wheel covers you don't feel like you're grabbing onto the actual steering wheel you don't feel connected to the car and also this is all cracked and doesn't look good so let's see what we got underneath hopefully it's in good shape all right moment of truth let's see what we get all right actually that's not bad a little bit of soapy water on a towel clean up this steering wheel never use any protectant on a steering wheel because it'll make it slippery and that's dangerous just a little bit of soapy water and a microfiber towel will clean this up nicely beautiful so with that steering wheel looking way better the last thing I want to address is this right here now no matter how many times I tried I just couldn't get this clean that's as clean as I could get it and that's just because this is completely worn out and since this is such a common problem on many cars I'm gonna make a completely dedicated video on how to remove this old material the foam underneath and recover it with new foam and new material to make brand new on a budget so that video will come out soon I think it'll be very helpful now we have one more thing we need to do to finish this interior and install brand new flats that just got delivered and I'd say this was 50 bucks well spent these really complete the interior and just like that our interior is clean it looks amazing and now we're ready for the next step cleaning the exterior but before we do that real quick a lot of people don't think about this but inside the door jambs here is all dirt that collects and you just worked so hard to clean the interior and when somebody opens the door they're going to see this beautiful interior but they're also going to see all this dirt and debris here that doesn't look good and we could easily clean this quickly so let me show you how to do it so the trick to cleaning this is using a waterless wash and wax so spray down the dirty door jamb and I like to use a brush to work out the dirt in the tight spaces where the door hinge area is then all we need to do is wipe away the dirt and the chemicals in the wash and wax help you clean but then leave behind a protected glossy surface that looks great check out this before and after and you can't forget to spray the inside of the door as well then we need to wipe that off and check out this before and after and the paint in the door jambs cleans up really easily and looks great because this is hidden and not exposed to sunlight so once you wipe away the dirt you have paintwork that's in great condition like the day this car rolled off the factory line and now when somebody opens the door they're not going to be distracted by dirt in the door jambs they're going to just see that beautiful interior just cleaned so the interior is done the door jambs are done now let's move on to the next step and that is clean the exterior now when you go buy a car the first thing you see is the exterior so I try to find cars that have faded paint that has swirl marks that has staining in the paintwork that has little imperfections maybe some light scratching in the clear coat some paint transfer stuff I could remove at home you see this paint work this was covered by a sticker or something so it's nice and glossy and clean that's what we could get this faded paintwork down to so buy cheap because it's all faded and then clean it up make it look really good and you could sell it for a profit that's the whole goal and that's exactly why I love finding cars that are dirty and need a good paint correction so the first thing to do is spray down the entire car with water to remove all the loose dirt off the surface of the paint just like this dirt here under the high hybrid lettering as well as the dirt here collected at the bottom of the doors and after you rinse off the entire car next we want to soap it up so we can wash it off I like to use a microfiber wash mitt like this and work your way from the top of the car to the bottom you want to make sure that you wipe down the entire car to loosen up any dirt stuck on the paint and then finally you can give it a quick rinse to wash off all the dirt and this car is looking better already alright so now the car is pretty clean and looking pretty good right well kinda so faded paints almost always going to have contamination in the paintwork and here's how you could tell besides seeing little specks this is what you do you just run your hand back and forth across the paint like this and listen you hear that sound it sounds gritty well it also feels gritty because this is pretty bad that means our paint is contaminated so to remove these contaminants you could use clay bar and iron Decon spray down the panel with iron Decon which not only removes the iron particles but acts as a lubricant for the clay bar then with medium pressure Glide the clay bar back and forth along the paint surface in One Direction and then do the same thing in the perpendicular direction that way you attack the embedded contaminants at different angles to make sure the paint is clean and let's check out how we did this clay was Pure White when we started and now look at all the dirt we pulled out of the paint and is embedded in the clay bar so with this door clayed let's rinse off the body panel and then dry it down with a microfiber towel all right so the entire door is clayed and listen to this I'm gonna compare this clay door right here with this unclaimed door right here now the clade side feels nice and smooth and also you could hear that there's no grittiness anymore now let's do the unclaimed side and that feels rough and you can hear that it's gritty so now this is probably the most time consuming part of any paint correction and that's clay barring the entire car get comfortable and work your way along the car one panel at a time claying the panel and then rinsing it off until the whole car is done so with the car completely clayed let me show you how to restore this faded scratched up paintwork so it has a nice deep glossy shine and normally we would start with a compound then use a Polish and then finish up with a sealant but this is a long tedious process so instead we're going to be using a cleaner wax which does all three steps in one it has that polish built into it to bring back The Faded paint so it's nice and glossy and it also has a wax built into it so it'll protect the paint when we're done so let's get started and to compare the before and after I'm taping the door in half now we could add an X of the cleaner wax to our da polishing pad and spread it out on the panel so it won't fling everywhere when you turn it on then crank up the speed to around 5000 RPMs and move the polisher about one inch per second you want to polish in One Direction in this case I'm going up and down and make sure you overlap each pass about 50 then after you're done doing that polish in the perpendicular direction again overlapping each pass about 50 and that just makes sure that you don't miss any spots and finally we could buff off the cleaner wax and oh man this looks amazing wait till you see the difference and I don't know if I could give you guys any better of an example take a look at this difference look at the reflection you can see the Maserati there watch this oh baby look at that look at that deep rich glossy paint holy smokes we're able to bring this paintwork back and make it look amazing I can't believe how awesome this came out this is exciting this is what I love this makes this so much fun because you can see this huge transformation right in front of your eyes so let's get the rest of the the car polished and let's make it look like this so now just like clay barring the car work your way around the entire car polishing one panel at a time and real quick I just want to show you guys a big benefit of doing basic paint correction see all these scratches in the clear coat right here watch this just do a couple passes over the scratched area with the da polisher then buff it off and check it out the scratches are completely gone here's a before and after so polish the entire car and this really shouldn't be difficult at all you're going to let the da polisher do all the work you just need a light pressure on the polisher and make sure you don't miss any spots so the finished result is smooth and even and then once you're done get a fresh microfiber towel and buff off all the cleaner wax residue to reveal the beautiful paintwork beneath this is my favorite part and oh how good this came out looks abs absolutely amazing it is nice and glossy check this out look at that reflection the entire car looks dripping wet the scratches are removed the faded paint is now a deep cherry red and just to remind you this is what the paintwork looked like before we did the paint correction and this is what it looks like now what a transformation so now with a drastically improved curb appeal the exterior is done and this looks great but you know the future buyer is going to want to check under the hood so let me show you how to detail the engine bay and check it out this dirty messy engine bay probably hasn't been touched since the car rolled off the lot when it was brand new but that's okay because with a little bit of cleaning and detailing we can make this engine look brand new now this engine bay is pretty messy so we're going to be using a strong Degreaser and a brush so spray the entire engine bay down with Degreaser and don't be afraid to use a lot of this and let it really soak in there then use a brush to loosen up all the dirt and dust and be sure to brush every surface you can then you could use the shower setting on a hose and gently rinse away all the dirt and dust and don't use high pressure water in the engine bay because it could force itself into electrical connections and that could cause problems in the future and finally just wipe everything down with an absorbent microfiber towel this further removes any of the dirt that's left on there and it also helps with drying the area that we just got wet next let's remove this engine cover and clean it off the car follow the same process of spraying it down with a strong Degreaser then you're going to brush it down to loosen up all the dirt that way the dirt rinses right off with a hose like that and now that this is clean let's install it back in the engine like so now one last spot you want to make sure you clean is up here at the wiper cow because this always collects dirt and leaves and pollen and many times this is where the air conditioner and the heater in your car sucks the air from so it's good for this area to be clean okay so after you clean the whole engine bay I like to use a leaf blower and blow the water off the engine that way it dries faster this is a lot quicker than trying to dry it with a towel and don't worry about getting it perfectly dry just blow away any of those large pockets of standing water now now this is looking way better this is nice and clean but once this is all dry from the heat of the engine bay these Plastics are going to turn that grayish or that brownish color it's going to look dull so we want to prevent that so to do that we're using this water-based dressing and just spray down the entire engine bay making sure you coat everything with the dressing then you want to use a clean brush and work that dressing into all the Plastics hoses literally everything in the engine bay since the engine bay is still damped the water-based dressing spreads out easier and it gets a nice even coat on everything now after you let this soak for a few minutes you could grab a microfiber towel and wipe down the dressing that didn't get absorbed and what a huge difference this makes this is the before and after we went from this incredibly dirty engine bay that's probably never been touched since it was brand new to this beautifully detailed engine bay that looks brand new check this out it came out amazing and this is going to help you sell the car quicker and maybe even for a little bit more money so with the engine bay clean the next thing I like to look for in a used car is oxidized headlights now I really like seeing oxide headlights because you could easily make them look brand new but when they're oxidized they look pretty bad and that lowers the value of the car a little so we could buy it at a cheaper price so let me show you how to restore these so first grab some tape and we're going to tape the paintwork around the headlight that way we don't scratch it when we restore the headlights the next step is to sand down the headlight lenses to remove all the oxidation and get to clear plastic now these lenses aren't too bad if you have bad lenses you might want to start with a thousand grit then move to 1500 then move to 2000 then you'd move up to three thousand and then finally finish with 5000 but in this case our lenses aren't that bad so I'm going to start with 3000 and then I'm going to move the 5000. so grab your soapy water and 3000 grit sandpaper and I'm going to spray down the 3000 grit sandpaper and then spray down the lens that way we could do a wet sand now you just want to sand the lens in a back and forth motion not circles making sure to get complete coverage of the lens and then after that change your direction so it's perpendicular to what you just did that way you could attack that oxidation at another Angle now once you're done sanding wipe the lens down and remove all that sanding residue and then the lens should have a nice uniform Haze like this if it does that means we can move to the 5000 grit wet sand again you want to sand in a straight back and forth motion you're basically trying to smooth out any of those 3000 grit scratches we just put in then we want to wipe down the lens again to remove the sanding residue and the last step is to get a little bit of Polish in this case we're using a plastic polish which works really well on these plastic lenses so add a little polish to the polishing pad like this and work that polish into the lens using a medium heavy pressure if you're doing this by hand you really can't overwork it so the more you work it in the clearer it's going to get after you're done we could buff this polish off with a clean microfiber towel and check out these results at this point you could also remove the tape from around the lens because we don't need this anymore now the headlights look great and we can leave them like this but the problem is in a couple of months the UV rays from the Sun are going to damage this headlight lens and it's going to fade back to the way it was maybe even worse because we removed that protective UV layer that was oxidized so to prevent that from happening first I'm going to get isopropyl alcohol on a rag and wipe down the lens really good the to clean it off make sure there's none of that polishing residue on there then I'm going to get some ceramic coating and put it on an applicator pad and I'm going to coat these lenses with ceramic coating that way it'll protect the lens from the sunlight and it won't get oxidized quickly so now you just need to let that cure for 24 hours and that looks so good let's go and do the other side so here's a before and after what a difference and just like that now the car is looking even better all right now this next thing isn't on the list but it needs to be addressed and it's these hideous Wheels they do not look good at all so luckily this is an easy fix for this car I headed to the junkyard and for 25 I picked up four hubcaps in great condition so let's get them on this car now installing a hubcap is simple you just look for where the valve stem goes and find the valve stem on the wheel and you line both of those up like that slide one side in and Hammer around the end of the Hub Cap until it completely seats in place and I always like to pull on the center of the hubcap to make sure it's not going to pop off when you're driving and then I'm going to add some Tire protectant on the side wall of the tire to make it look just a little bit nicer check out this before and after and that's looking a lot better I do gotta say a nice set of black wheels would look really good on this red car it's just not in our budget so for now these are good to go and they really set the car off they make it look complete so these are the problems I like to search for when trying to find a used car to flip because as you just saw we can fix them pretty easily and inexpensively to make the car look amazing now there's a couple more problems down here on the checklist that didn't really apply to this car but there's still something you want to keep in mind when you're looking for your flip so those are all the things I like to look for when I'm buying a car to flip here are all the things that I try to avoid or at least I try to make myself aware of so I don't get burnt and the first one is right here make sure the car runs drives and shifts correctly because Transmissions are not cheap now in this case the transmission is definitely shuttering or vibrating or slipping whatever you want to call it but I'm pretty confident that has to do with the bad Hybrid battery otherwise the car runs drives and shifts correctly now the next thing I try to avoid or at least pay attention to are chips and cracks on the windshield especially in the driver's field of view now even though the car is in great condition it could have a chip or crack and if you miss it it could cut into your profit because windshields aren't cheap and for the most part this isn't something you're going to replace yourself and since chips and cracks are so common make sure you give your car a good inspection before you buy it that way you're aware of it and hopefully can negotiate that into the price and the next thing on my list that I try to avoid are damaged seats this is where you sit every time you get into the car so I don't mind seats that are dirty because I could clean those up but if they're damaged there's tears there's cracks there's rips anything that will require a replacement I try to avoid that because seats get expensive and they'll cut into your profits and the next thing on the list that I try to avoid are old worn out tires whether they're old and dry rotted or they're old and the Treads are worn out either way I try to avoid tires that I'm going to have to replace because tires get expensive and I want to teach you guys a quick trick I use using a quarter to tell if you're going to need tires soon or not so grab the quarter George Washington's head facing down and put it in the tire tread like that if you could see the top of George Washington's head that means you have less than four thirty seconds worth of tire and at two thirty seconds they legally have to be replaced so that gives you a little wiggle room you can see that's kind of close if it was like that then there would be a problem so here we're good here we're definitely good and here we're definitely good as well another thing to check with tires is the alignment and you can check this pretty quick and easy just by looking at the tire tread across the tire if it looks even all the way across you don't see any wear marks on the outside or the inside your alignment is probably pretty good I check all four tires because it only takes one to be messed up and then you need at least two tires the next thing I tried to avoid is a bad 12 volt battery if the seller has to jump start the car that probably means the battery is bad and I don't know if you guys have seen battery prices recently but batteries today are expensive now one thing I have is this little battery tester it'll tell me how much life is left in the battery so just place the black lead on the negative terminal and the red lead on the positive terminal and now we let the tester do its thing beautiful so you can see the battery state of health is 82 which means it has a lot of life left and it says right here that we have a good battery and the last thing I try to avoid is Major rust or body damage now in this case we do have a little rust spot on the fender right here this is kind of inevitable with a Northeastern car then don't call it the salt belt for nothing so a little speck like that isn't a big deal now if you see a car that has major rust like this it all depends on your skill set but this is stuff I try to avoid it's always a lot worse than it looks but hey if you're a body guy or a paint guy that's your bread and butter so depending on your skill set and depending on where you work some rust or body damage might be good now with that said if the car you're looking at has any of these problems that doesn't mean you don't buy it it's just something to pay attention to because if you don't notice it could cut into your profit a lot and these are pretty common problems I also notice people are less willing to negotiate on things that aren't a major problem to them for example if your tires are at 4 30 seconds or below they're going to need to be replaced soon but to the owner the car still drives fine it still works fine the tires are still legal so why should he discount the price so again these are just things I want you guys to keep an eye out for so you don't get burned and these cut into your profit significantly especially if there's multiple problems and you didn't notice so now you know what to look for when buying a used car to flip and hopefully make up profit in the next video I'm going to show you guys how to replace the Hybrid battery and we're upgrading it to these cylindrical cells and then after that I'm going to show you how to install an E85 Ethanol kit on the Prius so this thing could run on E85 fuel prices aren't getting any cheaper this car is all about saving money so it's the perfect car to do it on after that we'll sell the car and we'll see if we make a profit now hopefully you enjoyed the video if you did remember to give it a thumbs up and if you're not a subscriber consider hitting that subscribe button that way you could see if I could sell the car for a profit or if I'm in the red and as always all the tools and products I used in this video including the checklist is linked down in the description so you could easily find it

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 819,204

Keywords: ChrisFix, How to flip a car, how to flip a car for profit, how to inspect a used car, how to superclean your car interior, superclean engine bay, restore headlights, restore headlights permanently, restore headlight lens, restore headlights with clear coat spray, flipping a car for profit, flipping cars for beginners, car flipping side hustle, side hustle, side hustles, car flipping, side hustles from home, side hustles for extra money, how to inspect a used car checklist

Id: uYRckB_g10I

Length: 47min 40sec (2860 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 06 2023