Look before you buy it.
A used car you haven't bought yet can't be driven to a shop — it isn't yours. That is exactly why this job exists, and why it has to come to the car. We meet you at the seller's house or the lot anywhere from Clarks Summit to Wilkes-Barre, go over the vehicle properly, and tell you what we find before any money changes hands.
When it's worth doing
- Buying private-party off Marketplace or Craigslist, where there is no comeback at all once you hand over the cash.
- A price that seems noticeably under the going rate. Sometimes it's a genuine reason, sometimes it's the reason.
- A car that spent its life somewhere salted — the underside tells a story the paint doesn't.
- Higher mileage, or a maintenance history the seller can't actually produce.
- Any car where the seller is pushing you to decide today.
What we go over
- Underneath: frame and subframe rust, fluid leaks, exhaust condition, and whether anything has been welded, patched or hit.
- Brakes, tires and suspension — pad and tire life, uneven wear that points at alignment or worn components, play in joints and bushings.
- Under the hood: belts, hoses, fluid condition and level, battery and charging, and signs of a leak someone has cleaned up recently.
- Body and panel alignment. Uneven gaps, mismatched paint texture and fresh underseal are how a repaired collision usually shows itself.
- A drive, when the seller allows one — how it starts cold, shifts, tracks, stops and sounds under load.
- A plain summary at the end: what's fine, what needs doing soon and roughly what it will cost you, so you can walk away or negotiate with something concrete.
Why nobody else can do this one
Every other job on this site is something a shop could also do — we're just more convenient. This one is different. The car belongs to the seller, so it cannot be driven to a garage for a second opinion, and asking a stranger to hand you their keys for the afternoon rarely goes well. Coming to the car is the only version of this service that actually works. Set against what a bad used car costs to find out about afterwards, it is the cheapest part of the whole purchase.
An inspection is not a warranty and nobody can see inside a sealed engine in a driveway. What it does is catch the expensive, obvious things people miss when they've already decided they want the car — rust, leaks, collision repair, worn-out brakes and tires — and give you a number to negotiate with. Sometimes the answer is that it's a good car and you should buy it.
Labor at local independent-shop rates, plus a trip fee for coming to you — quoted up front before any work starts.