What a pre-purchase inspection is, how long it takes, and what you get

The hour, roughly

Cars with a lot wrong take longer, because there is more to document. Cars with nothing wrong do not get shorter, because proving that takes the same hour.

What it is, in one paragraph

You have found a used car. Before you pay for it, a mechanic who does not work for the seller examines it: mechanically, electronically, structurally, and on the road. They tell you what is wrong with it, what is about to be, and roughly what each of those things costs. You then buy it at a price that reflects reality, or you do not buy it.

That is the whole product. The trade calls it a PPI. Buyers just call it getting the car checked out.

Who is there and where it happens

The car stays where it is: a private seller's driveway, a dealer's lot, a parking garage, the street outside an apartment. We come to it. That removes the main obstacle to getting a used car inspected in New York, which is that sellers do not want their car driven across the borough to a stranger's garage, and buyers do not want to organise it.

You can be there or not. Most buyers come, and it is worth doing once, because watching someone go through a car teaches you what to look for. The seller is usually present and usually leaves us alone. We do not need them for anything except the keys and, ideally, not having started the car that morning.

What gets checked, and how

The engine from cold, because a warm engine hides chain rattle, smoke, and hard starting. Every fluid by condition: coolant for oil contamination, oil for coolant, transmission fluid for the burnt smell that means the clutches are going. The cooling system under pressure. Belts, hoses, mounts.

Underneath, with the car on a jack and stands, the frame rails and floor for rust, kinks, and fresh undercoating hiding either. Suspension components loaded and unloaded for play. Steering rack, tie rods, ball joints. Brake pad and rotor thickness measured with a gauge rather than guessed from the wheel.

The body with a paint thickness gauge on every panel. Factory paint is a consistent thickness; a respray is not, and it is the fastest way to find accident repair that never made it to a history report. Panel gaps, bolt heads, glass date stamps, overspray in door jambs. Tires for wear pattern, which tells you about alignment and suspension, and date codes, because tires age out regardless of tread.

Then the electronics. A full scan of every control module, not just the engine, for stored and pending codes. Modern cars have twenty or more modules and the dashboard warning light only reports a fraction of what they know. We also check whether codes were cleared recently, which is one of the more useful things a scan tool can tell you about a seller.

Then the road. Fifteen minutes, with highway speed and stop-and-go in it, listening for bearings, feeling for pulls, shudders, hard shifts, and a transmission that behaves differently once warm.

What you get at the end

A written report, in language written for a buyer. It ranks what we found by what matters: things that make the car a bad buy, things that need doing soon, things that will need doing eventually, and things that are cosmetic. Each item has a rough cost to put right.

You also get us, for a few minutes, to talk it through. Most of the value of a report is in the conversation about whether the list is normal for a car of that age and mileage, or whether it is the list of a car that has been neglected or hidden.

The report is yours. What you share with the seller is your call.

What an inspection cannot tell you

It is a snapshot. A car that is fine on Tuesday can develop a fault on Friday, and no inspection changes that. It can tell you the transmission behaves correctly today; it cannot promise it will for another 50,000 miles.

It cannot see inside an engine or transmission without taking them apart. It cannot always tell whether a repair was done well if the repair was done well. It cannot check a car the seller will not let us drive, beyond what a static inspection shows.

And it is not a guarantee. It is information, gathered by somebody with no stake in the sale, so you make the decision with the same knowledge the seller has.

Booking one in NYC

Text us the year, make, model, where the car is, and when the seller can do it. We confirm a time, turn up, and you have a report within the hour. Inspections start at $95 anywhere in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, and Long Island.

Common questions