rev up your engines today I'm gonna show you how to totally check out a used car
before you buy it I'll show you everything I do when I
check it out now in this case the 2017 Jeep Compass 4-wheel Drive and anybody
knows maybe I tell somebody not to buy this thing in the first place but I'm an
honest mechanic the guy has bought it from one of these places where they give
you a seven-day guarantee and if the mechanics says that it's got problems
they give him their money back so he's already bought it but it's still within
the window or the seven days so I am going to honestly check everything to
see what kind of shape it's enough even though I myself would never personally
buy such a car the first thing I look for is wreck damage and that's where
this little paint gauge comes in handy I can check various areas of the paint
to see if it's been repainted look for colors and look for thickness changes
now just by looking I can tell that this is slightly a different color than this
so I know it's been wrecked here for sure because when I measure the paint on
this side it's 6.15 mils but measuring on this backside here it's a point two
five mils this is been repainted and if you look closer you see then a crappy
job right here paints already starting to chip off and starting to rust and
just overall you can see the sloppy work that's done on these cars
this is 6.45 here 7.5 there 6.0 on the other side here and down here it's 4.6
here we're probably talking mainly of the sloppy job that Jeep does when they
paint him in the first place I've getting these new ones myself brand
spanking new the customer buys them bring them over here they got 20 miles
on it and I can often find great variations in the paint thickness in one
area it just means that they painted them like crap
showing the low quality of fiat-chrysler to begin with but after all it's just
paint if you don't mind a little chip here and there and that it's thick in
one part and thin in another and you like the vehicle well that's no reason
to actually not buy something but it does show that it wasn't built that well
and that it has been Canton painted on that one corner at least when you get
things in the sevens things in the sixes it really was either
painted poorly in the back to begin with or more often it was wrecked in the side
in the back and they did a crappy job painting both the side and the back but
then again that's cosmetic stuff I tell the customer they can make a decision
what they want to do on it maybe try to get in to lower the price because they
better act or something if they wouldn't tell it was wrecked but the main thing
is checking it electronically and mechanically with my giant scan tool
we're just open the door and plug it in then turn the key on
so it has power and click diagnosis click the automatic selection read the
VIN there's the VIN ok got all the
information right and we'll do a full diagnosis of Auto scan it takes a while
but it checks an awful lot of stuff now so far I found two problems one in the
central gateway there's a fault and another one in the tire pressure
monitoring system and in this case it's a mild problem c1,000 brake pedal
switch circuit performance I often see these things when they said awhile so
I'm gonna race this one got turn the engine off there yes not gonna erase the
code so i one point I'm at at low tire pressure will reset that to when we road
test that we'll see if any other codes come back and now I'm gonna do a big
test that I do when I check out these cars I'm gonna look at all the live data
there's a lot of debt a lot of information this is where you need a
mechanic like me why say I always pay him to check out cuz there's a lot of
data and I'm going through an analyzing as I look for it but luckily if it's
really bad this system is color coded so if it's got yellow or red that means
that there's a serious problem and it will often make them bold in bold
so you don't miss them so here's what I have to analyze I look at all the stuff
so far everything I see is pretty normal but there is a lot of information on
these things it can tell you if there's a problem or not you just have to look
at all this data and a good mechanic knows how to analyze it you can see
minor cars are getting more and more and more complex that's why you
need a machine like this and the mechanic knows what he's doing what he's
checking out a used car for you you can't trust anyone and you can't trust
anything except the live data and how its analyzed by somebody who knows what
they're doing it has a machine like this of course that will give you problems
and they'll be color coded so far everything look fine and that as the
engine control module now I'm going to look at the transmission control module
because these things are notorious is the age to get transmission problems but
coming really this thing only has 30,000 miles on it so we're hoping there's
nothing else so we'll go to the transmission control module click OK and
then we're gonna analyze the live data for that and here comes all the live
data and as usual I have to look at it and see if there's any bad data this is
where a mechanic who knows what he's doing it's very important now it didn't
show any bad data that's a good thing and when you are fixing the cars you also
need a machine like that because you got to do bidirectional testing of solenoids
and switches and stuff so really modern cars you need a good mechanic to check
it out either when you're getting a checked out
for purchase used or fixing that they're no longer my grandfather's day where you
got a hammer and a screwdriver and bash things to fix them low stakes are pretty
much gone of course you can't trust anybody so you gotta check all the
windows make sure they all go up and down front and back and then back on the
other side and then go outside have the headlights check all the turn signals
make sure everything's working because stuff can be hidden that you'll miss
maybe it's just a bulb that's not working but it could be even worse so
always check everything and a wiper blades and of course you want to make
sure an air conditioning works get a little thermometer turn the a/c on full
blast recirculate it cause the door maybe five minutes see how cold it gets
make sure the fans are coming on these are blond nice and fast who look
for the air-conditioning hey here we go inside now let's see how cold it got
about 40 degrees that's pretty cold 99 degrees outside here in Houston so this
got down to 40 the a/c is working perfectly fine now I already know that
this is been repainted hey maybe it was just a little minor stuff so we're gonna
check is the distance between the tire and the front that's four fingers now
we'll check the other side four fingers again so it hasn't twisted the frame or
anything now changing off the owner just called
me on the phone and said he was worried about our shift it's so we're gonna take
it for a ride and see how chips realize that they weren't on transmission close
and the data looked okay but this is a Jeep and they have notoriously crappy
transmissions they don't shift that well I've rented them in the past and I've
running them with four or five thousand miles on when I started sure crappy even
then so we'll take it out on highway and see how it's shifted
he said that when he let go of it at certain speeds he kind of feel a little
jiggle in it I can feel it right now when it goes down and jiggles a little
bit pretty much normal for these Jeeps especially when you slow down and come
to a stop you'll often feel the transmission go a little bit squirrelly
on these jeeps we'll see what it does when we take off
yeah a little bump there but nothing outrageous these six-speed ZF automatic
transmissions slip and slide when you're driving them around this one actually is
less than most I mean you can feel a little they're kind of sloppy slippy
shifts that they have but this one's working pretty much as it was designed
and I say it's nothing special and as they age they can be really expensive
pains but this particular one isn't falling apart yet yeah it's got a little
bit of a slip in a little clunk once in a while but that's pretty much normal
for these things so that's pretty much up to the costumer I didn't find
anything serious wrong with it other than a bent hip and repainted in a few
spots but everything in it works pretty good I tried the four-wheel drive that
worked fine so if he wants to keep and even go ahead and keep it like I said I
wouldn't a buy it myself but I checked it out professionally and honestly and
this one is this good shape as I've ever seen one that had 30,000 miles on
so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos, remember to
ring that Bell