What a Pre-Purchase Inspection Actually Checks

Most people booking their first inspection have never had one before, and the honest answer to "what do you actually do" is longer than a price list allows. So here it is properly.

We come to the car

The inspection happens where the car is: a dealer's yard, a private seller's driveway, an auction house. You do not drive it anywhere, and neither does the seller. That matters more than it sounds, because a car that has been driven to a workshop has been warmed up, and a warm engine hides things a cold one does not.

The engine, cold

The first thing we want is a cold start. It is the single most useful moment in the whole inspection. Cold is when a tired starter motor struggles, when worn injectors rattle, when a head gasket shows itself in the exhaust, and when an engine that has been quietly burning oil finally admits it.

If the seller has warmed the car up before we arrive, we will say so in the report. It is not always deliberate, but it does mean we saw less than we should have.

Underneath

The parts that decide whether a car is worth buying are almost all underneath it. Rust on a subframe, a split CV boot throwing grease across the suspension, a corroded brake line, a leaking shock. None of this is visible from the driver's seat and none of it is visible on a listing.

We photograph everything we find, so the report shows you the actual car rather than our description of it.

The electronics

Every modern car keeps a record of its own faults, and most of them are not showing a light on the dashboard. We scan every module, not just the engine, because a stored fault in the airbag controller or the ABS is exactly the kind of thing that turns into an expensive surprise.

On the Advanced Diagnostic we go further and put an oscilloscope on it, which shows what a code reader cannot: whether the ignition is firing cleanly, whether compression is even across the cylinders, whether the alternator is charging properly.

The road test

We drive it. From cold, on real roads, at real speeds. Gearboxes that shift perfectly in a car park do not always shift perfectly at 80. Brakes that feel fine at walking pace can pull under load. Steering that seems tight can wander.

What you get

A phone call the moment we finish, because you are usually standing next to a seller waiting for an answer, and a written report with photographs afterwards.

What we will not do is tell you whether to buy it. That is your decision and it depends on the price. What we will tell you is exactly what you are buying, what it needs, and roughly what that will cost, so the decision is an informed one.