hi guys welcome back to another video in today's video i'm going to give you my best tips for
buying a second-hand car or van so as i like vans as you know this is a van channel vw caddy maxis
i'm going to be talking about vans so if you're going to buy a van you've got to think what are
you going to use that van for you know are you going to use it for surfing mountain biking
hiking camping trips away or just general storage so you've got to think what's the best van for you
so when i was looking at buying caddy maxi i did some research in different vans i went
and tested a few new vans and got a feel of how big they are and what i'd need i quickly learned
the small wheelbase caddy was too small and i would then need a cali maxi but before i did
this i did look into other vans and a good website to look into this to find what van is good for you
is parker's code uk so on parker's you can have a look at what the most reliable vans are what their
specs are or the mpg is because to me that's quite important you know you can drive around doing a
lot of miles and have good fuel economy so at this point you might have narrowed it down to a couple
of vans for me i narrowed it down to a citron dispatch ford transit connect and a vw caddy maxi
i then went and drove the vw caddy maxi a 2014 model and it's quite a nice van while i was at the
garage i then asked what they thought about the vans and they recommended going for a vw or a ford
i then went to my local garage where i'd had work done in the past on my cars like my polo and my
ibiza and they again recommended going for vw or ford so for me personally this canceled out the
citroen so i now knew that i was going to go for a ford or vw caddy maxie the next step i needed to
test drive a ford so i went down to secondhand van center and test drove a ford i also test
drove vw caddy maxi again at this point i then realized i really didn't like the ford i just
didn't really like the dashboard and just the way it felt it just wasn't for me so for me i now knew
that i wanted a vw caddy maxi so the next step was finding one to buy so as i was looking to buy them
you look on the typical websites such as facebook ebay governmentry watertrader so they're the top
ones i'd recommend if you're looking and the best way i like to do is it depends on what kind
of budget you've got but sometimes putting the highest mileage you can see how high these vans
go for example you put it to the highest mileage and all the vans are only getting to 100 000 miles
you might think they're not very reliable because at 100 000 miles there's none above that selling
whereas with certain vans you might be 300 400 000 miles so you know if you're going to buy 100 000
miles or less or 200 000 miles it's still got some life in it and it's going to be a reliable van for
you so my next tip is once you narrow down what van you want go on to facebook any forum groups
and join in a forum so for example vw cali maxis join a vw caddy forum and you can quickly discover
what the main issues are with that van so for example the vw caddy maxis if you join a forum
and type in problems issues breakdown it'll come out of all the searches that people put in all
the posts of all the issues i had vw caddy maxi the 1.6 engines they've got an issue of their
injectors so i'd quickly know going into this group being in the group within a couple of
days doing a little bit of research that i know if i'm going to buy one of these vans the injectors
might cause me issues in the future so once you've found a couple of vans that you want to buy the
next tip is mot history it's quite a simple thing to do but some people might not know how to do it
all you have to do is go on the government website gov dot co uk mot history check you put in the
number plate and it'll give you the full mo2 history for that vehicle so you can find out if
it's had any problems in the past or it's quite a clean vehicle if it's had like no issues then
you know it's a clean vehicle but if you on every mot if you can see that it's had loads of issues
then you know that actually it's maybe not being looked after that well or it's just problematic
and it might be a good one to stay away from i looked at one van about last year and it had an
oil leak and on every mot it still have the oily so either people have not bothered fixing it or
it couldn't be fixed so i was alarmed that was me thinking if i buy this van i'm going to have
an oil leaky shoe that's just going to get worse so it's a no-go to buy it so the next tip if you
are going to go buy a van is get hbi check that ensures there's no finance on that van if that
ban has got finance on it the seller technically can't sell that van to you because they don't own
it because the finance company owns it so these checks about eight pounds online don't pay about
30 or 40 quid some out there really expensive it should be about eight pounds to do and it'll
give you mot history but more importantly the main thing it will give you is a finance check to make
sure that that person owns that vehicle outright and can sell it to you so if you're gonna buy from
a secondhand garage you get a lot more peace of mind because if anything goes wrong they normally
provide three months or six months warranty typically before the sale they'll give the van
a full mot a full service if the water pump needs doing or the cam belt they normally do all this
for you depends on the garage and their reputation but normally they do all of that before the sale
because they don't want any problems coming back to you when you are going to buy from garage
my main tip would be look at reviews of the garage if it's a good reputable garage you'll have
loads of good five star reviews and then you know you've got a bit of peace of mind buying it
bear in mind buying from a garage though you are gonna pay a premium you're gonna pay a little bit
more because you are getting that service one advantage is that you could part exchange your
old vehicle if you've got one but again you're not gonna get as much money part exchanging
than you are from private sale so there's a little bit more hassle if you're gonna buy
from a private seller obviously you don't get as much peace of mind you can be a little bit risky
most people aren't out to scam you but obviously some people are my main tip would be to use
a website called click mechanic on click mechanic you can pay about 200 pounds and you get the rac
to inspect the vehicle for you they do about 200 point check and this is brilliant because it will
go through the whole vehicle you can pay for different levels of what what check you want to
do but i'll go for the most expensive one which is about 200 pounds which is like the gold or premium
i can't remember what they call it and you can go through there and get a full check on the vehicles
this way it tells us any issues with that vehicle and if there is any issues you can decide whether
it's worth going for or not worth going for if you're spending a thousand pound on a vehicle and
this checks 200 quid it's not really worth doing if you're spending a couple thousand pounds then
it's really worth doing and you've got to remember it adds value to when you resell the vehicle
if you decide in a year three years time you don't want that van anymore or that car then obviously
when you sell it to that person you can give them peace of mind because you can give them a report
and say look when i bought this i did all this check and you can see there's no issues on this
vehicle and it's spotless in your time you might have given it services and regular mots so you've
got that along with the clip mechanic report to say to them look it's a really clean ban and
there's no issues and then it gives them peace of mind as well so adds value to reselling that car
the great thing about click mechanic reports as well if there is issues like when i bought
one of my vans it had bold tires so that's a negotiating point with the seller you can say look
i really like the van it's great i want to buy it however it's got bold tires would you consider
knocking off half the price of new tyres in my case the guy was really tough didn't want a new
gay shape because it was already a cracking deal and i didn't get it but some it's worth trying
you never know the worst they can say is no so my next point when you're buying a secondhand
vehicle is ask as many questions as you like you know you've driven all that way it might be local
or it might be five hours away to get this van just ask as many questions you like if you're
unsure about something or it doesn't feel right don't go for it you know it's always going to be
another van you always think it's a good deal but there'll always be another deal around the corner
so always remember that and always ask as many questions as you can so my final point is aa
breakdown garage and parts labor cover it's the same breakdown cover as you get most vehicles
they come on the roadside to fix you off you go if they can't fix you on the roadside or you need an
expensive part normally you have to pay out your pocket flat or they'll tell you to a garage the
garage does the work sends you the bill and it'd be more expensive because it could be a garage
that's near the motorway or whether you're broken down it might be a local garage to you they know
it's a breakdown so they can add a bit more money onto the bill what the garage and labor cover does
is you get five claims a year up to 535 pounds it's 35 pounds excess however you get total garage
and the bill is 400 quid aa will cover that 400 quid depending what work needs to be done
they will go off the vehicle handbook of how much time it takes to repair that issue
so for example within that vehicle handbook it says it takes one hour to fix that issue and your
mechanics taken three hours they will cover one hour of that price and you have to pay the other
two hours so it does help you out and saves you a lot of money especially the vw caddy max uses
their ejector issues if one of them goes it can be anywhere between four to six hundred pounds
per injector and you've got four in the engine if one goes typically they all go so if you're on the
roadside you can think oh god an ejector's gone that's gonna be 400 600 pounds whereas the guy
would come along with aavan got injected in the van you swap it over fix it you pay him 35 quid
off you drive absolutely brilliant for me it was about 130 pounds for the year for my caddy which
is really worth doing you can pay it monthly and break it down i'll drop a link in the video
description below for it but it's really worth doing to give that peace of mind especially if
you're buying an old van to convert into a camper you know you've got high mileage it's an old van
you know it you can do on any vehicle and it's really really good cover can really help you
out if you get into a bad situation there you go guys they're my top tips for buying secondhand
cars or vans mainly about vans i hope you enjoyed today's video and i'll see you in the next one