Toyota-Lexus-Subaru-Honda Pre-Inspection

I strongly encourage people to have a general inspection done prior to buying a used vehicle.

Doing so doesn’t tell us infallibly whether the vehicle is going to be trouble-free or not, but it gives us a good broad picture of the vehicle on which to base a reasonable decision regarding it.

People have us do this same sort of inspection prior to going on major trips.They also have us do this inspection to determine the state of their existing vehicles in order to establish a game plan for maintenance and repairs.

Sometimes this inspection reveals that it might be good to disconnect entirely from a vehicle you already own.

When buying a used vehicle, here’s a little trick that you can perform yourself before paying us to do a full-on inspection. A lot of engines that burn oil will show smoke only during certain conditions. One of the conditions is when being accelerated after prolonged idling. Warm the vehicle up, and run it for maybe ten minutes at idle after it’s warm. At that point, give the engine a good aggressive acceleration and look to see it there is any significant amounts of blue smoke coming out the exhaust. If there is, the engine burns oil, and you probably don’t want to buy it.

And, you’ve just saved yourself the expense and trouble of a full inspection. Note: If someone has put extra heavy oil in the engine, then this test may not reveal what you want. I once did a prepurchase inspection on a car that checked out good, including the test for smoke after prolonged idling. The customer bought the car and had us do an oil change directly. Apparently the seller had installed thicker than standard oil, because the engine began smoking as soon as we put in the standard 10w30 oil. Rats. So here’s my admonishments to you: First of all, don’t you be evil in your dealings with others. And, while my impression is that lots of people are wonderfully honest in how they sell their cars, some aren’t, and even those that are honest may be ignorant of the true condition of the car they’re selling. So, secondly, do due diligence to protect your interests before you buy the vehicle.

Toyota-Lexus-Scion General Inspection Form

We don’t routinely perform a compression check during the above inspection. We will perform a compression check if the customer simply wants us to in order to cover all the bases. Or, if something about the vehicle causes us to think that a compression check would be useful, then we’ll suggest we do it. In either of these instances the compression check is an additional cost over the basic general inspection.