A guide to inspecting a used car can easily be a 10 page blog. I am going to take you step by step from a professional stand point on how to inspect a used car. I'll sum it up to the best while keeping this guide as brief as possible.
Always run a CarFax before heading out to look at a used vehicle. Maybe only 30% of every accident gets reported but it is still a useful tool.
Let's start off with paint. Every repaired car will need a paint job one way or another. There are several ways to identify a repaint.
1. Over spray
Let me give you an example. Let's say you had a small boo boo on the lower rear corner of your bumper and you take it to your local body shop to get it repainted. Well this body shop decided to paint your bumper without removing it since it's only that spot that needs to be repainted, not the whole bumper. This leads to a good chance of over spray around the vicinity of the spot that they painted. This happens very often and is easy to catch by looking underneath the car to see if the paint got onto the metal areas. For the rear, it can be seen easily since it is all metal and the two tone would stand out. Usually over spray would be left on the exhaust tips and canisters should it have been painted on the exhaust side. For the front, you can check by popping the hood and look for over spray around the engine bay.
2. Dullness
When people pay for cheap paint jobs, the results are cheap quality. When a car leaves the factory, the vehicle is painted up to 5 coats with a protective gloss coating. When a vehicle is repainted poorly, you lose the gloss coating resulting in a dull looking area when compared to the paint around it.
3. Bondo
Bondo is used to fill dents to level the surface of the car. You can tell a car has been bondo'd when the texture of the surface feels different. It can also be seen by the naked eye but a little more difficult on darker colors. Look for dullness on the paint as well since after bondo is used, it needs to be repainted afterwards.
4. Bubbles
The work area of the body shop is extremely dusty. A lot of body shops just leave their parts on top of wooden stands to dry after the paint job. When they do that, dust and other particles will get onto the paint leaving small little bubble texture on the painted area.
