Buying cars from auction is becoming a trend. It can be a fantastic way to find a cheap reliable car and stay green by “recycling” a car that would otherwise end up at the landfill. Unfortunately, this also means your chances of landing a lemon are greater than ever. In this article, learn how to minimize your risks and land a great deal like a pro with these car inspection tips.

Background

The first thing you should always do is run a VIN Inspection. On the auction website, they will show you the VIN number for every car for sale. Go to a free VIN inspection site and look through the report. Take a look at where the car came from and the reason the car was totaled (this information will not always be available). This will give you background into what you are potentially getting yourself into. In the case of any flood damage, RUN AWAY.

Physical

What you see is what you get. Check out the body of the car from front to back. Take a quick scan of any physical damage. If there is a large area where the body was damaged, good chances are whatever it was protecting was damaged as well. See if you can pry it open and take a look.

Tires

Inspect the tires for tread wear. Since this is a car that will be yours, if there are low tread on the tires, you will be the one that will need to purchase and install new tires. This goes into your cost. Inspect all four tires to see if the brands match up as well. If the brands don’t match, try and figure out if this is significant because most of the time it’s not.

Rev the engine

Start the car with a cold engine and give it a couple revs. Listen for any knocking, gurgling, grinding, or other noise that isn’t a soft purr. This will take a little bit of experience as each car sounds different and you may not know what to even listen for. If you’re a non-mechanic, if doesn’t sound right, something is probably wrong. Note that not all car manufacturers will allow you to rev past a certain RPM in park.

Put the car in drive and reverse

Auction companies like Copart allow you to put the car into drive and reverse without driving. I know that doesn’t really make sense. Basically, this means you can move a few feet forward and back. This is really nice because it let’s you do a light test for transmission issues (e.g. no reverse). I once test a Honda Pilot that looked great, but once I put the car in drive I heard a huge clunk on the bottom of the car. I put the car into drive and park a few times and heard the loud clunk each time. Now, this could be something simple as replacing the transmission mounts. However that car had a ton of other small issues that added up and that was the dealbreaker for me.

Turn the A/C and heater on

Does the air blow cold and hot or is it lukewarm at best? These repairs can be time consuming and expensive to repair!

Try honking the horn with the headlights on

Liquid damage is a real thing. At the auction, you really never know what you’re going to get. By turning the headlights on and honking the horn, you are testing some of the electrical components within the car. If the horn doesn’t work, this might be a sign of liquid damage. If this happens, you should walk away as it most likely has liquid damage.

Mechanical

Pull the dipstick

The color of engine oil should look a clean, smooth, light brown color. If it looks like mud it has not been changed in a long time (potentially not a huge deal). If the oil is runny, chances are there is water in the engine or other additives. Stay away. Another thing to look for is low oil as that could be an indicator there is an oil leak. Worse is if the car has been running on low oil, which could have damaged the engine. The only way to check is to pull the dipstick.

Get under the car and look for leaks

Many times oil leaks could mean different things. Get on all fours and look under the car. If you see oil, try and trace it back to the source. Sometimes it’s as simple as tightening the oil filter or replacing the engine cover gasket. Sometimes it could be much much worse. Remember at the auto auction, steer towards it being worse.

Call a Friend

Do you have a friend who knows his ways around cars? Working on cars and understanding if a car seems normal comes with practice. Just like trained musicians know what is on pitch and off pitch, the same goes (should) with a mechanic and the car. If you have a friend who knows his ways around cars, see if they would come with you to the auction!

Wrapping up

That wraps up our checklist for how to inspect a vehicle on an auto auction. Of course, this isn’t a comprehensive list, but a solid checklist for the next time you run to research cars you would like to bid on. To make this easy, download a PDF checklist created by Popular Mechanics.

Download Link – Auction Car Checklist (PDF)

We also wrote about the type of people who attend auto auctions if you want to feel out your competition.