I Bought a $120,000 Tesla at Auction and got 50% Off because it was Marked "DEAD"

this one's $120,000 Tesla p90d was sitting in the junk section of a used car auction with a bit of writing on the window one of these words was responsible for devaluing this dirty Eevee another 50% off its already heavily depreciated price because when auction day came this car was dead to the point where nobody could open the doors to inspect it and I won it with a final bid of just $10,100 that might sound like a lot but that's about what this car should be worth in Parts whatever remaining working battery module could be sold off for several thousand by themselves and the computers screens and aluminum body components are all worth enough that it should make this a pretty light gamble if we get it to work we could double our money just take a look at the average price on a used p90d personally I think it's an easy gamble because there's more to this car than it's dead disclosure on the windshield like with any electric device nowadays if you don't charge it it's not going to work so what's the chance that this thing just needs to be Juiced up in order to turn back on if you take a look back at the auction photos you can see these stickers that are placed on the windshield when the car enters the auction they're nice they're vibrant white but now they've been completely Su damaged and on the other side we've got the sticker that says element element is a remarketing company responsible for taking Banks off lease and repossessed inventories sending them to the auction and trying to get as much money for these cars as they can because the banks aren't in the business of flipping cars if you think about it the story's kind of coming together here this car it's too old to be a lease vehicle so it was probably repossessed where then it sat in a lot somewhere then it finally got carded off to auction where it sat even longer these Teslas as they sit especially out in the sun their air conditioning kicks on they use a little bit of power day by day and well the battery power ran to zero where I then won the bid for a whole $10,100 which I think it's worth just in parts alone now I know you won't believe me that that's all I paid for a p90d with the ludicrous mode pack so here's the invoice right here showing was $10,100 the final bid with a little bit over $500 in auction fees so for $1,675 I own this Tesla and all the problems that came along with it and in a moment we'll go through all of its issues and how we fixed them but first I've got to deal with just how disgustingly dirty everything is all the writing and stickers on the windshield definitely add to its dead look so I started with getting rid of all that stuff and followed with a quick clean walk and already this car is looking a whole lot better and since it's so tough to keep a black car clean I threw on a coat of this armor Shield Max this new ceramic shield from Avalon King should keep our paint super clean and last up to 3 years with just a single coating wow what a difference you know I probably ceramic coated over a dozen cars at this point but the black ones always have incredible Transformations we really brought out the depth in this Tesla's paint and it is so simple and efficient to do you know it only took me about 45 minutes to do all the painted surfaces on this Tesla one little bottle covers that with a little bit to spare if you want to do your wheels and glass you could just order another bottle and once you let it cure for a few hours you're good to go and right now Avalon King is having the first discount ever on Max when you use my link down in the description Plus for the first 100 people to buy max they're throwing in some free prep spray and microfiber towels that's stuff that would usually cost you another 25 or 30 bucks but they're going to give it to my viewers for free again the first 100 that hit my link down in the description there is no reason to pay a detailer over $11,000 to put a ceramic coating on your car when you can DIY it with Avalon King now the auction that this Tesla was at was several hundred miles away so I actually had it brought here on a transport truck I actually had to order two transport trucks in order to get this here because the first one stated that the car was indeed dead they couldn't get it moved it wouldn't open with the key and even though they had the auction slim jim the door open the car was completely locked down and it wouldn't move this is not the first time I've ever had a problem with a transporter bringing me a car and more times than not it's usually a problem with the transporter more than it is the car so when the second transporter showed up to pick it up brought it to me with no questions or no issues well we can figure again that there was nothing majorly wrong with the car but having the car in person here with the key in my hand I can show you exactly why the first transporter thought there was a problem you see I'm right by the door handle with the key in my hand and usually these Teslas pop the door handle out and if they don't you can go up to them and press them and they pop open well this one doesn't pop open now sometimes the door handles break but what's the chance that both of them are broken probably very slim right they couldn't get in this car and they actually had someone at the auction slim jim the door open and here's the next thing they had the key maybe they pressed the main button on the key and you could see when you press that main button on the key car blinks but again the door handles don't pop out of the door all they had to do was not hit this once but twice and there you go the door handles pop open when the first Transport company got into the car they took a picture of the gauge cluster and sent it to me you could see there was a warning message on there basically saying there's limited access again I think that's because they slim jimm the door open and they didn't double tap the key you could see now that we actually have 218 M of range and it says valet up there so this valet mode part is pretty self-explanatory and we'll get back to it in a minute but how did this thing go from zero miles to over 200 miles of range when I personally haven't even plugged in yet the answer is really simple these auctions are huge places with Acres full of cars and well they're very resourceful they have things like Fork clifts they have battery jump packs everywhere they have gas pumps they have mechanics they have the ability to pop open locks and cars like they did in this Tesla and well they obviously have EV Chargers and when you buy one of these cars it's very common to ask for it to be charged before you come pick it up I figured if there's a more serious problem with this Tesla that I just hear back from the auction and then deal with that problem then never heard back now I'm not sure if they had to forklift this car over to the EV charging stations all I know is that it made it there they plugged it in and well it seemingly works really well we just need to get it out of this valet mode but this all brings up one other question why in the heck wouldn't they plug this car in and charge it before running it through the block because well it would have commanded a much higher bit I imagine it would sold for seven eight or $9,000 more and the only thing I can kind of figure and this is really dumb logic is that this car was marked as is with a mechanical issue from the seller from this remarketing agency so this was one of those cars they didn't want to take any risk on and when those cars come in and are marked as is they generally don't pay them much attention they don't put any money into reconditioning them even if it comes down to just plugging the darn thing in it doesn't make a lot of sense but that's what happened with this one and we got super lucky now it also says valet up here on the main screen and when you tap it and try and do anything it asks for a pin code so again this car is completely locked down you can't open up the glove box without it asking you for the PIN code and hey if you try and open this right here see that's the front trunk it's locked down because again it's in valet mode now the other major limitation here in valet mode is that when you put your foot to the floor like mine is right now well it accelerates but it's not as nearly as fast as this car should be now I bet all the Tesla owners already know this but since this is my first Tesla I had to figure it out I called up a few friends and I asked them do you know how to get this thing out of valet mode if I don't have the password there's no hard re set buttons nothing like that what I learned is that this entire car is controlled basically through your phone through the Tesla app and once you pair your car to the app you have full control you can turn on those restrictions like the valet mode and so even though I own this car on paper currently the previous person owns it through the app they can probably see where I'm sitting right at this moment and so this problem's actually pretty common a lot of people will trade these cars in or they'll get totaled and they'll go to the auction and nobody ever clears their information out of them when that happens you basically just have to submit your ownership documents to Tesla saying hey now I own the car I sent them a notice of repossession I sent them a copy of the title I sent them some of my personal business information and uh well at this point just a waiting game it says it takes up to 5 days or so for them to transfer the car to our account well I waited to hear back from Tesla I use this car to kick around town and I kept it regularly on the move and even with its Limited functionality this car was still very impressive I also took this time to clean up the interior which was disgusting this little V10 fold vacuum is pretty slick and made quick work of [Music] it look how much junk we just pull out of that carpeting in here look at that this thing is really gross all right I think we're at the point where we can finally feel comfortable inside the Tesla here and this fantic vacuum clearer did a good job cleaning it up this V10 and also their V8 is on sale right now over at Amazon for the weekend I've got the links down in the description these are great little vacuums that come with a bunch of different extensions perfect for your cars and the uh V8 also doubles as a blower so you can kind of get those leaves out of your windshield cowl there if you like to keep a clean car check out fantic sale at the links down in the description box now we've got an update from Tesla it has been well just several hours it hasn't even been a whole day and I've got an email that says your Model S has been added to your account I think that's it I think I think this car is finally ours oh this is exciting let's see if it says valet it does not it says easy entry not quite sure what that means but look up there look it says p90d before it just said valet that KSD right there that is the name that they made me change this Tesla 2 in order to basically verify you know it was in my possession and then if we go over here what happens if we touch where it says easy and there we go there I am Sam that's me let's see here oh man I can't wait for this here we go wa my goodness this Tesla spruced up and unlocked I almost feel like I got away with something it's really an unbelievable ride for the price we paid but that price is about to get a little steeper as an alert popped up on the dash warning that the high voltage battery fuse needs replacing now I usually DIY everything and I read a little bit about replacing this fuse it sounds like a pretty straightforward job but now that we're connected with the app it's even easier to just book a service appointment based on your car's warning messages it'll even generate a quote for the job before you go in the quote for this was $320 including all taxes the fuse itself cost $175 of that so I booked it this was all very intriguing to me because I rarely go to any other dealer but I love how common sensical the idea that the car can report its basic troubles to you just via the dashboard and how you don't need a check engine light that basically serves as a payall for an ordinary dealership to rip you off our recent trip to the Porsche dealer was just for a recall but they like every other dealer mentioned that in order to diagnose anything you need to approve up to a couple hours of labor at $300 per hour we all know that most of these Diagnostics come via a code reader and generating these codes takes just a few minutes and it's stuff like this that has earned them the nickname Steelers ships anyway back to Tesla you won't find any fancy cappuccino machine here no bottle water just a water cooler basic coffee machine and a candy Bowl which I personally enjoy because it means I'm not paying for Unnecessary gimmicks that make me feel better about getting taken advantage of after checking in the car they actually gave me a model 3 laner which I would have never thought would come with such an inexpensive service it was great to ride around in this car and test out the full self-driving which worked flawlessly during my short drive the detail is incredible I mean look at this what if I move this over does it show yeah look this is a pretty complicated area and just look again how detailed the map is we've got traffic traveling the same way there with the side road and then on this side we've got opposite side traffic and it look it's it's still seeing those cars all the way over there I just wonder how in the heck they figure this out plus it was great to be able to compare it to the model S since the price of a used model 3 and an older used Model S are very similar overall even though it has older Tech the model S just has a lot more substance it rides better the seats are nicer and I'd personally rather have it but then again I'm extremely biased since I got it so cheap now a few hours later I was notified via text that my service had been completed did and I was to pay for it through the app you don't have to walk back in the dealer at all just find your car in the parking lot and drive away now I know I'm a decade late to the Tesla game here but this is an unbelievable change of pace from what I've seen at other dealers well it's clear to me the Tesla's service center model has the potential to put major dealerships out of business I can't let them put me out of business there is just one last thing that this Tesla needs and we're going to DIY it after using this car a few weeks I noticed specifically at low speeds like when leaving a parking lot there's a noise coming from the front suspension the lower control arms on these cars are a very common wear item so much so multiple third party parts are available and you can even buy a kit to do all four which I did and it cost a total of $160 I thought we just had a little bit of noise going on it's way worse than that check this out our wheel is rubbing up against the fender liner so I'm assuming when you really launch this thing or just get on it the actual Wheel and Tire is moving backward rubbing up against here and I've actually heard of it to where people let their control arms get in such bad shape on these cars that pieces of the metal will not only break off the wheel will slam itself into this area destroying the major electrical connector that is just right there and then you'll cost thousands of dollars worth of damage so it's a good thing that we're getting these done right now and you could tell that these are the originals for some reason the way these came from the factory they installed the bolt to where the head of the bolt is facing right here against the high voltage battery and the nut is on the opposite side so technically if you wanted to remove that bolt in one piece you'd actually have to drop the entire battery to do that now Tesla just tells you to save time you loosen this nut push the bolt out as far as it will go and you just cut it off replace the bolt that's what we're going to do today and taking a look at things I mean the arms themselves don't look bad but if you get in here you could see where this is completely separated so this is our bad bushing the rest of them look pretty good actually so a lot of our issues are coming from here but they sell you a set of four of them so we're going to do both the lower control arms on either side if we come over to this side here we don't have any of that wheel rubbing issue at all so we probably just have that one bad bushing but for a set of4 $150 in Parts we'll take care of it now so we don't have to worry about it later and right here that's the cover for that high voltage fuse that uh the dealership replaced for us so they just took off these six bolts here they would have pulled the old fuse out thrown the new one in that's why it's only 30 minutes in labor and looking at the rest of the underc carriage of this car it's pretty straightforward the tires and suspension are all good in the back the only other damage that we really have is someone rode up over something and kind of messed up the bottom of this rocker here however if you look at it from the side it's not bad I personally wouldn't replace this but if you wanted this to be cosmetic Ally perfect on the underside well you'd want to get a new one for right now let's focus in on what matters most it's that bad control arm let's pull them out and get them replaced one thing I'm noticing so far is that all these bolts they're all the same size so the bolts the nuts actually I think I did find a couple that are 22 but on the European cars usually they end up being all sorts of different sizes to do control arms so fact that Tesla makes everything consistent just makes the job that much easier now that that is out all of the hardware should be out and if this thing pops out of place like that the rest is taking out and put them back in [Music] so for around $1,000 all in we've got a fully sorted very well speec p90d it's got the upgraded wheel package it has the glass roof the Alcantara Trim in the interior and the High Fidelity sound system as far as I'm aware of that's like all the boxes check this car was well over $120,000 when it was new and while I like to show you deals that you could try to replicate at home home this one was really a gamble that just happened to pay off however the deal on a relatively similar Model S actually could be very close to this one right here I just learned that there was a used EV tax credit here in the United States it was introduced last year and if you buy a used EV under $25,000 you can actually get 30% of that price in tax credits back up to $4,000 there are a lot of 85 KW hour battery Model S's on the market those were the first ones to be introduced and they're hovering in the low teens and down around 10,000 bucks if you figure you're going to get 30% back in tax credits if you qualify uh well you can have one of the most technologically advanced cars on the road for under 10 grand and again it's going to have virtually the same Hardware as this car you're just not going to get as much range or as much power and you are taking on a bit of risk being that we're buying 10-year-old EVS with 100,00 miles on I personally don't think the risk is much greater than buying like a nice European car that has high mileage on it if you had a drivetrain failure say on a Mercedes or a BMW it's going to equal a very similar amount as a high voltage battery replacement but there's no telling how much your repair bill is going to be until your car breaks I'm going to keep driving this for a while because I really do enjoy it a lot and well could it break tomorrow sure hopefully not tomorrow though because I got somewhere to be and I'm also starting to realize that this car qualifies for that tax X credit so even though I'm in at around $11,000 it's going to cost me around $8,000 at the end of the day just wild now I know that some of you just can't get behind the idea of owning an electric car on the surface they can be expensive and unpredictable but if you figure you can pick up a well-used Tesla Model S under $10,000 or a model 3 under 20,000 with this used EV credit does it make it more enticing let me know your thoughts down in the comments and if you're not already following the channel make sure you hit that button below because I'm always gambling at the auction well I want them to all be winners like this Tesla well they usually end up like most gambles do I hope you learned something from this video and I can't thank each and every one of you enough for watching I'll catch you very soon [Music]

Channel: Samcrac

Views: 900,118

Keywords: tesla, elon musk, model s, model y, cybertruck, restoration, battery, electric vehicle, used cars, supercar, supercars, auction, copart, rebuild, salvage, repair, mechanic, dealership, exotic cars, 0-60, plaid

Id: RGypaw_Hi8I

Length: 20min 32sec (1232 seconds)

Published: Sun May 26 2024