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Topic: vehicle Inspection (Read 718 times) previous topic - next topic

vehicle Inspection

Hi,

I am looking to get a Mk2 Golf Gti inspected based in England as I cannot view it myself in person currently due to the situation with covid 19.

Is there there anybody / service  you guys would recommend? I know the AA do it for example.

Any help would be appreciated as I am new to the area. Thanks

Re: vehicle Inspection

Reply #1 –
The problem with paying a company like AA or RAC to inspect a 30+ year old vehicle is yes there will be issues. You need someone with knowledge of the particular brand/model familiar with the common issues.

You’ll get a report condemning it because they aren’t specialists in restoration or repair.

Give some information about where the car is and maybe a club member on here will be local and will volunteer.

Re: vehicle Inspection

Reply #2 –
I considered having an RAC inspection done on the Pug before buying.

It wasn't cheap at around the £250+ mark, plus side is the advantage of knowing of any problems before buying, and if you did commit then something unidentified emerged the RAC offered a certain level of come back / compensation against themselves.

As Tim says that's all well and good on a relatively modern car... when I spoke to them in more detail it turned out inspections on vehicles over a certain age (can't recall exactly now, but it wasn't that much) cost about twice again. More to check / greater risk of serious faults etc

In effect I would have been gambling an up front £500 in the hope of them finding the car was OK.

If you had to walk away, it'd cost you £500, if it was OK you could try to recoup that from the seller in the price, but it's not a given.

If you had several car's checked before finding a good one, could prove expensive.

Never, never, ever trust someone selling a car.... always assume at best they're not disclosing everything and quite often actively trying to hide things.

Cynical and probably not what you want to hear but it'll help to save you being done over.



 

Re: vehicle Inspection

Reply #3 –
Any 30 year old car will be a project to some degree, whoever's owned it before I'm sure you'll find thing not done the way you want so they'll always be tinkering, maintenance and ongoing service costs.

I also suppose it depends on the price of the car in mind. For a mk2 Golf, this might not be the right way to look at it, but it's worth knowing if you break the car and sell every part at a reasonable price (without being greedy) you'll probably get about £3k back.

I had to break one that was too far gone a few years back. I gave a lot of stuff cheap to club members, used a lot of stuff myself to improve my other one and ended up giving away a shed full of the remains.... and still got over £2k back. And that was a few years ago and price and demand for parts seems to have gone up a bit in line with prices for whole cars.

So £3k is totally reasonable exception from a breaker if you're clever, maybe more if the car has some nice features.

So it the car you're looking it is around the £3k mark, it's worth a gamble.

Imagine you bought over the internet without seeing it, and you got it on a ramp and it turns out to be a total lemon, I mean you've literally been had, the thing is full of expanding foam and cardboard - you still won't be out of pocket if you're willing to break it. Although in that situation If the car was tidy on the face of it, you'd know that from the internet photos to a degree, I'd look for a project shell or less tidy cheaper car and do a shell swap.

There's lots of ways to look at it. You're considering buying a classic car - it will require money spending on it. Just get the best you can find for what you can afford.