Should I Buy a Flooded Car? Are Water Damaged Cars Good? Buying a Salvage Car at IAA and Copart

Oh guys this is Andriy welcome to salvage secrets episode number three and today we're going to be talking about flood cars behind me you see this awesome 2018 Nissan Maxima which wasn't a flood or was sold with a flood flood damage announcement so I thought it was a perfect opportunity to show you guys what I'm looking for when buying flood casas whether you you should buy a flat car on that so if you enjoyed this video don't forget to subscribe to our channel we discuss a lot of stuff about buying salvage cars and how you can save money or make money with salvage cars okay so today we're looking at flat cars and there is it seems to be a lot of interest online on YouTube about flat cars a lot of people ask me questions and I can easily understand why because you know flat cars usually they have little or no body damage so basically they're perfectly good cars they have not been in an accident so a lot of people see them and the auctions and they're like they wondering like wow this car looks looks good should i buy one should I stay away you know a lot of people hear a lot of a lot of stuff about flat cars like oh you should stay away you should have electrical Pratt you will have electrical problems you'd never buy a flat car and usually this advice comes from people who never bought a flat car in their life but me personally I bought over 100 flat cars in my life for hundreds of flat guys I should say and honestly I've been doing pretty good with them so today I'll show you the main things that I look for when buying these guys and hopefully you'll have more understanding by the end of this video like about flat cars and what you should be looking looking for when buying them so basically there's only two main things that you should should be concerned with when buying a flat car and it's how deep was the water so the level of water and whether it was a freshwater or saltwater which is which makes a big difference because you know saltwater is much more corrosive than freshwater and I'll show you what it means in a second but basically you you always should prefer water to salt water all right so it's two things like I said this how deep was the water and what type of water and if it's fresh or saltwater so let me show you this car inside and it's a perfect perfect car for you guys to see because as you can tell we took you know this is what we do with basically all the flat cars that we buy would we take the interior out we take the car out to clean and disinfect everything and here you can you can actually see see how the car looks like without the carpet and what's going on underneath when the car gets flooded right so as you can tell from this car you know let me see if I can if I can show you guys a little bit closer but in this particular car if you look if you look on the on the floor you know you'll see that there is not much going on on the floor you know so not many connectors not many plugs you know see like the rest on wires here like this wire that goes along the car but it's all insulated you know and there are no really no plugs other than this plug here in the shifter area right you can see there's a lot of plugs here that's the airbag module connects here the only the only plugs that there are like kind of kind of like on the bottom other the seat plugs and you see this plaque has a little bit of corrosion you see this green stuff here so one of the pins is a little bit corroded but that's not a big deal you know this you can spray there's like special spray you can use to clean those and you know you see here everything looks clean you know the boat even the bulb here is not corroded and there is really not much going nothing on the floor that could get damaged and this particular car had had some water damage but the level was very very low like maybe like the bottom you know like the the floor got got flooded but as you can see nothing that got damaged maybe other than that this airbag plug over here the seatbelt plugin and that this and the seat plug that I showed you earlier and that's about it and as you can see guys I'm gonna start this car actually even in this condition believe it on that but this car starts see this is this start button started right up everything works there are no warning lights except the airbag light right there because the city is disconnected you know and the airbag modulus is missing right now but the car runs everything works see they see works the radio you know so the point I'm trying to make here is even you know it might look a little scary especially is like the first time you see something like this but in the end of the day basically any car is just you know it's it's a bunch of computers connected together with wires that that's it you know and the engine transmission so that's the way you should look at it right with Nissan's I know from experience that they don't really have many connectors on the bottom you know like all the floor they don't have any computers so if you buy one and it had some water inside let's say the carpet got wet is not a big deal because nothing really gets damaged you know you might need to repair a couple plugs and that's about it and you'll be fine like in this particular case you know and let me actually pop the hood and so you can hear the engine and I don't know if you can hear it well it runs good but there is there is a slight noise like in this area over here and this most likely most usually it's AC compressor or one of the pulleys due to water damage it gets a little noisy so you you know obviously you might need to replace one or two things but this guy is actually a great flat car to buy and we we actually got a great deal on it I think we paid like less than less than $10,000 for it and it's a 2018 Maxima with really low miles on it so we saved probably like $15,000 on this car and all it needs basically like I said we took the carpet out we we're gonna clean everything put it back together maybe replace the compressor so maybe maybe we're gonna spend like four five hundred dollars total to repair this car and this guy is gonna be great and you're not gonna have electrical problems like most people most people say you will with podcast so basically it's two to two scenarios right I would I should say three scenarios when it comes to flat cars when you buy them you might might get a car that has water inside but the engine is good you might have a car that the engine is bad but there is no water inside and that happens a lot when some you know a lot of people what what happens is they when it rains heavily they try to drive through deep water and the engine sucks in water and hydraulics you know so water gets inside the engine while it's running and the water doesn't compress as well as air and what happens is the the valves get bent the piston rods get bent and the engine is basically shot so that's the second scenario with flat cars and the third scenario which is like the worst is when the balls the engine is shot and there is water inside the car that's like that's you know the worst case scenario so let me show you this Honda Fit oh it's right there actually which is nice yeah let me shut off this car and let me show you this Honda Fit so this this guy also was a flat car and there was no water inside everything is dry there was no smell we checked it like no all the flags are good everything is fine but the engine was shut when we got it but we got it we bought it anyway because I knew that the engine for this car used the engine it's like 200 dollars I know it sounds crazy but sometimes you know prices are like that because these engines don't go bad normally so junkies selling for cheap so we paid 200 bucks for the new engine it had like 30 or 40 thousand miles on it we'll put it in and we have you know the car is perfect now and also what we paid like less than five thousand for it and even with the engine it's gonna cost us less lessen probably six thousand bucks total and it's a great deal so again this is a great flat car because there's no electrical problems no water got inside the car the only thing was bad is the engine so we already changed that and it's great and let me show you guys another car right now that's so you can see what I'm talking about when I'm talking about electrical price right like that Nissan that we looked at just now it didn't have any any plugs or any wires on the bottom but let me show you 2018 - you're a Highlander - see what I'm talking about when I'm talking about the plugs on the bottom what you should look for let's go okay guys take a look here it's in 2018 Highlander like I said and if you look if you look inside here you see under the dash is this huge box right and it has a lot of connectors here you know and if you look closely this one looks really clean like all the all the pins are good to see like nothing is corroded this is what I'm talking about and even here this is this is the ground over here it's all clean and nice so basically you have to make sure when you look at this podcast make sure that this connectors that these connectors are actually good okay guys so to recap there is basically two may very important things you have to look for when buying the flat cut is how deep it was flooded and what kind of water is it salt water or fresh water generally if I see the car was flooded like over the top of the seats or higher like the water gets in the dash I avoid those cards because then you know the water starts getting into a lot of electrical things like computers wires get corroded and those are the cars are gonna have electrical problems with down the road so I generally avoid those cars the ones that were like flat like I only look for the ones that were like the water was like one or two inches that's it not higher than that and with those cars will generally do pretty well and so you have to look how deep was the water you should avoid salt water damage cars and how you tell if it's fresh or salt you basically you you see you know with experience especially you see salt water is way more corrosive use you see way more rust way more corrosion on the wires and sometimes they even tell you in the auction when you buy it they tell you it's salt water flat let's say on fresh water and you should you should also try to check if the engine is good which is which is a major thing as the engines for some cars may be really really expensive like the Honda engines 200 bucks but a BMW engine may cost you like five or seven thousand dollars basically so that that can add a lot of money to your project cost and you didn't expect and also in general with German cars they tend to have a lot of electrical stuff on the bottom a lot of computers so doors are way more dangerous when buying flood because you know it's way more things you will need to replace to basically repair the car so that's it I hope you found this helpful and if you guys have any questions about flat cars please come and ask me below this video I'll try to respond to everybody and let me know what else you would like to learn about salvage cars I'm here to help you guys avoid bad cars to save money on your cars to make money when flipping these cars so subscribe to our channel ask questions and I'll see you in the next video thank you you

Channel: SalvageSecrets

Views: 244,491

Keywords: salvage secrets, flood cars, water damaged car, rebuilt car, flood title, salvage title, salvage king, b is for build, samcrac, tavarish, vtuned, rich rebuilds

Id: r9VIPj_9R_8

Length: 12min 59sec (779 seconds)

Published: Fri May 15 2020