An Indy Guide to Used Car Buying

An Indy Guide to Used Car Buying

Be a pro when you kick the tires of an auto you’re considering owning

Marlboro-Penske team member Rick Rinaman has been the pit crew chief for two-time Indianapolis 500 champion Emerson Fittipaldi since 1990. Here are Rinaman’s tips on what to look for mechanically when shopping for a used car.

Fluids: Check the front CV joints, the front wheels, and the wheel wells for grease. Bearing grease in the wheel wells may indicate bad seals that need replacing. If you get into replacing CVs, you start getting up in the dollars.

If there are any problems with seals, there will be oil spots on the ground. Be sure to look for leaks around the seals in the rear end.

If someone’s is selling the car, he’s probably changed the oil in it. If he hasn’t, you want to look at the filter and see if it’s been on there for a million miles. It’s very easy to change an oil filter and if you put a new filter on, it stays clean for a lot of miles. If it hasn’t been changed recently, you’ll be able to tell right away if the owner’s been taking care of the engine.

Exhaust: A car that has a lot of miles on it is going to show a lot of rust and whatnot in the exhaust system. You don’t want to get an exhaust system that has areas that have been spot-welded. The muffler might not leak while you’re test-driving it, but a couple miles down the road, it could just fall off.

The best way to check for a rusted-out muffler is to actually get down underneath the car and grab the muffler. When exhaust systems start to go, you can actually crush them with your hands.

Body Condition: First of all, open the door to get a better look at the body. Any part in there that looks like it’s new or is covered with fresh paint is an indication that the car has been in an accident – which means you’re looking at possible alignment problems.

Indy Guide to Used Car Buying. Photo by Elena.

If the rear panels have been repainted, the may also have been body-puttied to cover up damage or rust. You could get into trouble with that.

Suspension: Check for rust around all the suspension parts. A lot of old cars rust at the top mounting plates from the top of the shocks – especially in the front, where it’s pretty visible once you lift the hood and look past the engine at the plates. The struts may actually push through the metal.

Tires: Unless the seller has put on a new set of tires, which is probably very unlikely, you can tell a lot from tire wear. If the wear is sort of wavy with high and low spots in the tires, for example, you have bad shocks and they need to be looked at. If you have wear on the sides, on the other hand, you have front alignment problems.

Steering: A lot of play in the steering wheel shows a lot of hard wear and indicates that the steering system will probably need to be replaced. If there are two inches of play and the tires aren’t turning, watch out – the problems go beyond the steering system.

Brakes: Check the brake pads for wear. A hard-driven car is going to show on the brakes. Check the rotors for scars. A lot of times, people buy a used car and they have to have their rotors ground because they’re pretty rough.

Interior: There are a lot of people who say they don’t like smoking in their car, so keep that in mind. If the vinyl or any part of the interior console is cracked, then you know it’s been outside in the sun a lot.

A Checklist for Avoiding Grief

You don’t have to get yourself covered with grease to tell quickly whether a car has been well maintained. The following tips for reading a car’s history will save you lots of headaches later:

Steering wheel: Expect no more than two inches of play in the wheel when the engine is off.

Body condition: Rust, especially in the rocker panels under the doors, in the trunk, or around the wheels is bad news. Body works and painting as a result of an accident is also a warning sign. Be on the lookout for paint that doesn’t match, sheet metal with visible imperfections, doors that don’t quite fit, and welds that have been redone recently.

Interior: Resale value as well as comfort will be affected by seats and carpets that look shabby or smell musty. Beware of worn-down pedals when the odometer boasts low mileage.

Fluid leaks: Checking a car’s fluid levels and condition is like taking a person’s blood test. They can indicate both present and future problems. Oil spots around the engine or beneath the vehicle are obvious signs that something’s leaking. Other signs are less obvious: transmission fluids should be pink, not dirty.

Tires: Original tires should be good for 25,000 miles. A car with lower mileage but new tires may have had its odometer set back. Uneven tire tread can mean an alignment problem, which is easily remedied, or accident damage, a potentially more serious malady.

Brakes: Look for wear on the pads or scars on the rotor disk.

Suspension: Does the car look lopsided from the side or rear? Bad springs are probably the culprit. Does the car bounce more than a couple times when you push down hard on a corner? The shocks or struts could need replacing. If a front tire can be noticeably lifted by pulling on the top of the tire with both hands, you may have bad bearings or suspension joints.

How Your Car Does in a Crunch

Each year the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration conducts crash tests of new cars under conditions that are the equivalent of having a head-on collision with an identical vehicle at 35 mph. Vehicles should be compared only to other vehicles in the same weight class – if a light vehicle collides head-on with a heavier vehicle at 35 mph, for example, the occupants in the lighter vehicle would experience a greater chance of injury than indicated. Vehicles are classified by the estimated chance of injury for the driver of passenger, and receive a one- to five-star rating, with five stars indicating the best protection.

Collisions in the Real World

Most accidents involve moving cars, not fixed barriers. The crash impact isn’t the same.

A car need not to be expensive to protect you in a crash. Studies of crashworthiness of cars under “real-world” conditions found that moderately priced American sedans held up better inn crash tests at 40 mph than more expensive European sedans.

Government crash tests currently smash cars into fixed barriers at 35 mph to assess how well air bags and seat belts protect a vehicle’s occupants. But over half of all accidents involve cars colliding with each other at different angles, so the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety used a technique known as an “offset test” to simulate what would happen to the structural integrity of a car traveling 40 mph if it collided with another car at an angle such as near the driver’s door or behind the headlights.

How some of the midsize cars ranked in the Insurance Institute’s tests:

• Good (in order of finish): Chevrolet, Ford, Volvo.
• Acceptable: Toyota, Subaru, Honda, Mazda.
• Marginal: Saab.
• Poor: We’ll pass…