How to Buy a Used Car: Interior & Exterior Inspection

hey guys chrisfix here and today I'm going to show you my tips and tricks on how to check out the interior of a used car in the first video I showed you how to inspect the car on the side of the road with the for sale sign in the window in the second video I showed you what questions to ask the owner on the phone how to figure out what the car is actually worth so you get a good deal and how to check the VIN for free and in the third video I showed you how to inspect the engine and in this video I'm going to show you how to use my checklist to show you how to check out the interior of a car and a little bit of the exterior - to make sure you don't get stuck with a bad car my checklist is available for you to download and print with the link in the description so you can bring this along with you the next time you go check out a used car and before we go and check out the interior I can't cover everything in this video because the video would be hours long so any tips and tricks that you guys have that I don't cover make sure you comment below because that really contributes to the video it helps everybody out all right so let's get started checking out this interior on a luxury car the interior is one of the nicest things it's very lush it's very comfortable but on any vehicle the interior is where you're going to spend most of your time so you want to really thoroughly inspect it and make sure that you're going to be comfortable driving this car everyday so the first thing I like to do is you're going to be sitting in these seats everyday it's what holds you into the car I inspect the seats so we're going to be looking for any rips any tears any worn-out parts of the leather and these seats look excellent I don't see any marks of wear and tear especially for 130,000 miles there is a mark right here and that's probably from the seat belt sliding back and forth but I might actually be able to clean that up maybe diet again might even come back with some leather conditioner otherwise these seats look great another thing you want to check make sure that the power seats work in all directions because if you can't adjust your seat when you're driving then you're going to have trouble driving the car and a lot of times these power seats are expensive to fix so that's just another thing you want to check now you're going to inspect the seats on the driver side but also go to the passenger side inspect those seats and finally you want to go to the back and inspect the back seats you just want to take a look around on the interior and check all the seats the next thing I like to do is check out down by the floor mats the floor mat area gives you a lot of information and I have a couple of really good tips so the first thing you want to do is you want to remove the floor and you want to inspect the condition underneath the floor mats feel around for any water and also hid around and feel for any soft spots if you can you could also go underneath the car and look up and make sure that there's no rust a lot of times if there's a leak water could accumulate here get in between the carpet in the metal and cause rust and then your floorboards are all rusty next we want to look at the brake pedal and the gas pedal because this will help us tell if the car's odometer has been rolled back now it's not a definitive way to tell but it'll help give us clues and what you do is you look at the rubber on the brake pedal and you want to see how worn out it is now in this case we have 130,000 miles Jaguar and the brake pedal doesn't look that worn-out but if the guys claiming to have a 40,000 mile car and the brake pedal looks like this where it's worn down to the metal well guess what you know that car has way more than 40,000 miles so this is just a quick thing to look at and it gives you some more information and it could tip you off that the odometer has been rolled back especially if the wear on the brake pedal or gas pedal isn't consistent with the amount of miles that the car has so this is the driver's side let me show you a tip for the passenger side under the dash on the passenger side you have the heater core and if there's a heater core leak you have to rip out this whole dash just to get to it so one thing you want to do is you want to go underneath both floor mats in this case and you just want to feel back here for any wet spots this should be completely dry and that's one thing I see a lot of people miss they'll go check the heat and make sure the heat works and heat will be working but they don't check under here for any leaks and then eventually they'll feel why is there water under here and they have a heater core leak and they need to get their heater core replaced so following our sheet the next thing we want to do is check out the trunk now surprisingly enough you can learn a lot from looking at the trunk next we want to go in the trunk and we want to look for any water spots indicating that there's any leaks and we also want to feel around and make sure that we don't feel any leaks anywhere and another place water likes to collect is down in the spare tire well and if we look here it looks pretty dry since we're down here at the spare tire you can make sure that the spare tire is filled with air and pumped up and it is we have our tow hook here and we also have our jack and everything under here I could see it through here I don't want take this all apart but make sure you have your jack so if you get stuck you could put the spare tire on another thing is the trunk down here tells you a lot about the person if you look here we have a kids toy and the guy said he has kids also if you look here I found this module and the guy actually told me that it's the parking sensor module which is this over here and this is what he thought was wrong with the parking sensors so he replaced it and it still doesn't work so he doesn't know what the problem is so that's all just by looking in the trunk and then finally the last thing look at this spare tire carrier is perfectly round and on the sides here it's perfectly straight in a rear-end collision when a car crumples this up body shops aren't going to be able to pop this out and make it look perfectly good again so if this looks indented at all and doesn't look straight and factory and if this glue here doesn't look factory then you might have had a serious rear-end collision so that's something you want to look for and as I put all this stuff back in the last thing you want to make sure is if you have locking lug nuts on your vehicle make sure you have that lug nut key because trying to get the tires off without that lug nut key is sometimes a pain all right now comes the tedious part we're having this sheet is going to help out a lot because we have a lot of things that we need to check out cars these days come with tons of options I mean we have navigation here heated seats there's a sunroof up there so we need to make sure that we check everything to see if it works or doesn't work so let's get started checking out the interior by checking out the gauges first I should also mention it's a good idea to make sure that the car will lock and unlock when you hit the buttons and the hood pops and I don't to hit the button for the alarm but the alarm works so now let's go check out the dashboard put the key in the ignition turn it to the run position but don't start the car the check engine light airbag light and abs light should all come up you could do this a few times to make sure you also want to make sure that any lights such as the brake light seatbelt light the oil light and then well that's interesting right there you can see right down there where the battery light should be is a piece of tape over the battery light and that's because on Jaguars there's a problem with the battery cable not allowing enough current to run through it and give enough voltage when it warms up so a lot of people on this car put these little pieces of tape on the battery light so it doesn't show up so it looks like all the dash lights and everything worked on this car so now I'm going to go and start her up now there are tons of buttons and stuff that you should be checking got to make sure all your lights work make sure all the windows roll up and down and then go to the navigation screen in this case this car is really nice it has navigation so make sure you check everything we're going to start by turning on the heated seats make sure that they work we're going to go on to the audio turn up the volume make sure none of the speakers are crackling and that sounds good so you want to make sure not only does the FM work but you want to check the a.m. if you look at my sheet here one of the things that I found on my research is that the AM radio for some reason goes bad on these cars the signal doesn't work and I can't get a channel to work now I don't listen to a.m. that much but this car is going to be for my father and he does so that's something you want to think about and that's why you do your research because I looked up online to see common problems with these cars and AM radio was one of the common problems and look at that the radio doesn't work so next thing you want to do is just go through and just hit all the buttons literally hit everything make sure everything is working test the climate control make sure you put it on completely cold so that we know if the air conditioning is working check the compressor make sure the compressor kicks on I heard it kick on and then feel for the air conditioner already this is getting real cold so that works which is good air conditioning stuff could get expensive so if you want to have air conditioning make sure it works and to check the compressor just look for the compressor over by the belt and it should be clicking on and off if you look down here you can see with the AC on the compressor clicks on and the outside of the poem moves if the compressor is clicking on and you're not getting cold air there's probably not enough refrigerant because of a leak and it is ok for the compressor to kick on and off as long as it stays on for a couple seconds and stays off for a couple seconds you don't want to be kicking on and off real quickly know that if the guy tells you oh you know it just needs a recharge no the air conditioner never just needs a recharge I promise you if it's leaking there's a problem so don't fall for that oh it just needs to recharge for the summertime now we want to go down here and we're going to turn the heat up all the way and we just want to make sure we could feel the heat the engines at operating temperature and right away I could feel this heat blast now that's nice and warm so that's good and you just want to play with all the buttons make sure everything works make sure all the screen works for the touch we could go hit navigation agree you want to make sure that the navigation could find your car and in this case we have no problem finding our car here so the navigation is working right another thing to remember our options like the sunroof the sunroof we're going to press the button let's see if it works good it goes all the way back the next thing we want to do is we want to inspect around the edge of the sunroof and make sure that we don't see anything indicating that there's leaks I don't see anything indicating there's leaks so that's good and then we're going to press the button and make sure that the sunroof goes all the way back and seals good it's a good idea to also put the car in neutral and then check the handbrake to make sure the handbrake is working and in this case it is so really check everything on the interior even little things that you don't think about like the windshield washer fluid hit the button make sure that it works because even little things like that add up and then driving around with that windshield wiper fluid you'll realize how quickly that becomes a nuisance now the last thing we're going to want to check out before we go for a test drive is this exterior now I did go over the exterior a lot where we first inspected the vehicle but I want to show you a few extra little tips and tricks one little trick that you want to do is you want to check the panel gaps you want to run your finger down the panel gaps just like this and feel for any uneven panel gap so when you start up here it should feel the same as when you end up down here the gap should not change size the same goes for this side of the car when you start your finger up here the panel gap should feel the same all the way down and this side should match that side now you want to check the panel gaps on everything all the doors even check up above the door because if you have a sagging door the panel gap will get wider over here than it is down over there now this front panel gap is going to be the perfect example of a bad panel gap if we follow the panel gap with our finger that feels good that feels good and I can start feeling it getting wider not only can I feel it getting wider but if you look here you can see it getting wider and that's because our hood isn't closing all the way because the hood latch isn't working and then another tip I have is one of these fridge magnets and anywhere there's metal body panels and you think there's been body work body filler like bondo is not magnetic so we could test to see if there's any body filler so if you think this area right here has been damaged just get your magnet and test around the area don't rub the magnet against the car you don't wanna scratch the paint but test to make sure that the magnet is sticking and in this case it's sticking in all these areas and this is a good way to test for bondo now I don't really care about bondo on a car like this this isn't an expensive car but if you're buying an expensive car and you think you see like a little indentation you think they might have used some bondo there you could check to see if there's magnetism if there's magnetism and you have a steel body panel then they didn't use bondo but if you lose magnetism then that means that they have a layer of bondo on here but again be careful because not every panel is going to be steel could be aluminum could be plastic in this case we have a plastic bumper and you're not going to get any magnetism anywhere over here and one thing I also want to check out is the duct tape over here I want to see what damage was done here I'm gonna peel this back I'm sure he won't mind yeah that's what I figured there's a hole here so that's gonna have to get fiberglass and spray-painted and everything to fix that that's a little bit of a pain that's going to be an expensive fix and the last thing I like to check for bodywork and stuff like that is open the door and right where the door closes what you want to do is you want to check this seam right there and what you're looking for is a hard tape line because when your car gets damaged and they have to respray it they're going to put a piece of tape on the inside so you don't spray the inside of the car or the weather stripping so a hard tape line would look just like that and what you do is you run your finger over and you'll feel an edge you can even grab it with your nail in this case this edge was just waxed I was able to rub right off but that's exactly what it will look like so instead of wax it'll be dried clear coat or dried paint that'll have a little lip to it so just roll your finger over the edge just like that and that's what you want to feel for and look for especially it could be in here as well so just feel around and in this case this looks good now you want to go to each corner of the car and bounce the car up and down this is going to check the suspension it should be firm and it should be hard to bounce now if your car bounces around a lot and it's easy to move just like this Mazda three I was checking out your shocks are bad it shouldn't be like driving on a trampoline it should be nice and firm awesome there should be no squeaks or clunking either because squeaks and clunking community their bushings or ball joints are bad and you'll feel all of this and listen for all this on the test-drive this is just a quick thing to test now let's check the front suspension with the engine running turn the steering wheel and this will give you good access so you can inspect the front end now that we can see under the car go take a look at the strut at the top while you're inspecting the strut if you see rust on these coil springs that means it's bad also if you see any oil leaking out of the strut itself that also means it's bad it just looks like it's wet it's nice and shiny in reality it should be dried but this is the bad strut and the strut right there seems to be pretty dry so it looks good next we want to move downwards and we want to take a look at the axle boot right here and the axle in general so the axle looks nice and straight and the boot isn't leaking anything and I don't see any grease anywhere around here so that's good and since we're looking at the axle right to the side here is the brake caliper and you just want to check over here and you want to make sure that you don't see any leaks any brake fluid and then since we're on the brakes if we look at these rotors here these rotors are shot you can see all the different grooves in them but we already knew that it needs brakes and then finally if we look at the ball joint at the bottom here that's the ball joint right there you want to make sure that's not rusted you want to make sure it's not leaking any grease and that's pretty clean and a lot of these suspension components you'll be checking when you go for a ride so you'll feel it or you hear it so that's just a quick way to do an inspection down at the suspension and just look for any oil any leaks any grease any cracks so check all four wheels so the last quick thing I want to cover before we go for the test drive is the tire alignment you want to take a look down the car and see if the tires are tilted inwards or outwards sometimes it's easier if we go to the back here and you really get a good example of negative camber here so the tire is supposed to be straight down this body line almost like the front tire but the rear tire is tilted inwards so there could be a suspension problem such as a worn out spring and another way to check for tire alignment is to look at the treads I showed you before checking the tread to see how deep they are but now we want to see if they're all the same depth across and right away you can see here look at that this side has a nice tread depth but the inside here is getting worn down to the belt so this is going to need new tires this is getting worn out faster because the contact patch is more on this side of the tire because the tire is tilted inwards as you could clearly see so you need to make sure you check the rear alignment and the front alignment on all four tires all right and that is what you want to do to inspect the interior as well as the exterior of the car you're looking to buy in this next and final video of this car-buying series I'm gonna go for a test drive and I'm going to show you how I negotiate and hopefully we get a good price and then drive this car home I'm also going to show you what to look for on the title to make sure that the car is owned by the person and not a bank and to get to that video you could click the screen or find the link in the description below hopefully this video is helpful and if you're not subscribed to consider subscribing for a new video every week stay tuned the engines warmed up it shits nice for a 2.5 liter this thing has pretty good pet

Channel: ChrisFix

Views: 2,145,443

Rating: 4.943336 out of 5

Keywords: How to Inspect a Used Car for Purchase, how to buy a used car, how to check a used car, how to check a car for sale, how to incpect a car for sale., how to buy a car, what to look for when buying a used car, what to look for when buying a car, buying a new car, buying a used car, how to check the inside of a used car, how

Id: sSi8xuRm5eE

Length: 16min 20sec (980 seconds)

Published: Mon May 02 2016

Reddit Comments

[u/Maisie_W]

Great video, a very thorough check list to go through, used cars are quite a bummer and require lots of factors that need to be checked. Get a car check to know more about your used car and how you can find a worthy car that suits your needs.

Knowing what your used car has in store can help you save money and just like how you can find bondo using a magnet. You can use a car check report to find if the car has any outstanding finance, written off status and if the car was stolen or not