Diagnosing Used Cars with Advanced Vehicle Scanners

The use of advanced vehicle scanners has revolutionized the way we diagnose issues with used cars. These machines are smart enough to figure out what they're hooked up to, and they can provide us with valuable information about the car's systems and performance. In this article, we'll take a closer look at how these scanners work and the benefits they offer.

One of the most significant advantages of using advanced vehicle scanners is their ability to quickly scan all sorts of systems in the car. This includes everything from the engine and transmission to the electrical system and safety features. With traditional diagnostic tools, it can take hours or even days to run through all the tests and checks needed to diagnose an issue with a used car. However, with these scanners, the process is much faster. It can take just 10-15 minutes to run through all the necessary tests.

We recently took a Toyota Corolla in for a diagnostic check using one of these advanced vehicle scanners. The car had been purchased about a year ago and had only 35,000 miles on it when it was bought. We were hoping to see if there were any issues with the car that we could identify before they became major problems.

The scanner immediately began running through all the tests and checks, checking everything from the engine to the tire pressure system. As it scanned the car, we saw a list of potential issues pop up on the screen. We also noticed that the warning light for the tire pressure monitoring system was illuminated, which is a big red flag.

We decided to take a closer look at the tire pressure monitor and see if there were any trouble codes stored in the car's computer. And indeed, we found one - a code indicating that the sensor was not reading correctly. We also noticed that the mass sensor was showing some unusual behavior, with a small change in its reading from time to time.

We decided to run more tests on the engine and transmission systems to see if there were any other issues present. And indeed, we found 51 different problems listed by the scanner, including a warning for the fuel trim system and a trouble code indicating that the engine was running rough.

But despite all these issues being listed, the car still ran smoothly when we put it in gear. It idled like a dream, with no signs of vibration or shaking. We also saw some unusual readings on the dashboard, including an excessive mileage reading of 37 miles per gallon on the highway. This was significantly higher than the expected value for this type of car.

The scanner continued to run through its tests and checks, eventually coming up with a list of 39 different items that needed attention. And indeed, we found some issues present in these areas as well. The long-term fuel trim reading was still showing a negative value, indicating that the engine was running lean.

But overall, our diagnostic check revealed that there were no major problems present in the car. It ran smoothly and was performing within expected parameters. However, the fact that the tire pressure sensor light was illuminated suggests that something may be amiss with the car's electronics system.

As we delved deeper into the scanner's results, we began to see some potential issues with the car's computer system. The machine showed 59 different codes, including a few related to the engine and transmission systems. We also noticed that the mode 6 test was showing a green light, indicating that everything had passed.

Despite all these issues being listed by the scanner, the car still seemed to be running fine. It idled smoothly and was performing well on the highway. However, we couldn't shake the feeling that something was off beneath the surface. Modern cars have dozens of computer modules in them, and once they get damaged or corroded, they can sometimes exhibit glitchy behavior.

As a mechanic, it's always better to err on the side of caution when it comes to used cars. While these scanners can provide us with valuable information about a car's systems and performance, there's no substitute for good old-fashioned hands-on inspection. We recommend that anyone considering purchasing a used car take the time to do their research and have a thorough diagnostic check done before making a purchase.

In this case, we were lucky - our diagnostic check revealed few major issues with the car. However, it did highlight some potential problems in the electronics system that needed attention. As for the customer who purchased this car, it's clear that they had gotten off scot-free by having the repair done before purchasing the vehicle.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enpeople always ask me scotty i want a good suv but i don't know should i get a hybrid suv or a normal suv i'm going to show you the differences on this 2010 toyota highlander hybrid of course the basic vehicles are the same they got all kinds of room inside and a front and a back and then the trunk pop everything down and fit a whole bunch of stuff in there and yes the hybrids get better gas mileage because like a toyota prius they have a gasoline engine but they also have the hybrid synergy drive only in this case it's a v6 engine that has more horsepower to begin with so it bumps the horsepower up a lot more than the little prius a regular modern v6 highlander engine gasoline puts out about 270 horsepower when you add the hybrid to 306 horsepower you get a little bit more power but the level of complexity and expense that goes into a hybrid i don't know if it really warrants that now this hybrid highlander gets 27 miles a gallon in town and 25 miles a gallon on a highway which is decent for a vehicle this size no great shakes but decent for the size while a non-hybrid v6 gets about 20 in town and about 26 on a highway it's on a highway really there isn't any difference so when you consider the extra price you're gonna pay for the hybrid vehicle if you buy brand new you're paying a lot more money you're getting a tiny bit better gas much this isn't like a toyota prius a little low slung highly efficient vehicle that's going to get 50 something miles a gallon or more in town no it's a big suv they can never be all that efficient just because of their weight and lack of aerodynamics so if you're thinking about buying one of these hybrid just to save money on gas you save a little bit on gas but hey you're paying a lot more for the vehicle you're never going to recoup your investment but as an overall investment you never want to buy one of these things with high mileage used because the repairs can be astronomical this one's 10 years old the rear end the differential started to go out it's starting to wind there's a differential and the problem with this thing is it's both hydraulic and electronic because it's got the hybrid drive system to replace this unit it's going to cost you at least 2500 bucks if you use an original toyota replacement unit and they're so complicated i have yet to find anybody who really knew how to rebuild them correctly and the same thing goes with the power unit in the front gasoline engine and also an electric motor the electric motor is a motor and generator giant assembly built into the transfer case i've seen them go bad and i've seen those things cost fifty five hundred dollars to replace because of the insane labor and the insane parts and again i even talked to experts that only work on hybrid vehicles and they say scotty you know we tried to rebuild those generator assemblies but ah never held up we just have to replace them they cost a lot of money when they go out don't be fooled by these remanufactured batteries when they do now i looked up a price on the internet for replacement battery for this oh only 1949 dollars for our replacement battery now you might think 1949 is a lot for battery well i got news for you that's not even a new battery that's a remanufactured battery if you want a brand new hybrid battery for that the toyota dealer sells them they're 68 hundred dollars i'm not making this up 6800 but those are real brand new batteries is the problem with the remanufactured ones the remanufactured ones are just that realize they're giant hybrid batteries that have a bunch of cells in them whole bunch of them and as they age let's say i had one the other day it was 20 years old and it was going bad some of the cells go bad they have a machine that checks the whole hybrid one at these rebuilding places and it tells them this sounds bad that sounds bad the cell's good that sounds bad and they replace the bad ones but take the case of the one i was working on the today when was 20 years old if they reply some of them that means that some of the old cells that are 20 years old are still in that hybrid battery pack and guess what they're going to go out over time the remanufactured ones never last as long as the new ones by a long stretch i've seen remanufactured once sometimes they'd last two or three years maybe some of these original ones lasted 20 years even though you save money 1600 something is still a lot of money you're not getting something that's going to last and last and last using the remanufactured battery if you're not willing to spend 74 70 500 bucks with labor and tax replacing the battery on one of these you're not getting a lot of long life when the battery does go out now of course they are toyotas so they last a long time now if you don't mind buying one of these things brand new and paying extra for a hybrid and you're planning on getting rid of your car before it has 150 000 miles or something on it maybe you're totally happy with a little bit extra power a little bit better gas mileage hey it's your money and your choice but really don't ever think about buying a used high mileage one because they're just money pits waiting for you to fall into them when all this hybrid technology starts breaking down why do you buy a toyota in the first place for ease of repair little maintenance rarely do they break down and long life if you're the type of person like me 20 30 years hundreds of thousands of miles you should think twice about buying a hybrid to give you the perfect analogy the owner of this car his previous one was a v6 highlander 2 but it was a non-hybrid it went pretty much trouble free for over 550 000 miles this one differential the rear end's starting to go out and 150 000 miles that tells you the entire story in a nutshell now technology can be perfectly fine but sometimes these things have gone too far for what you actually get back in return in an suv hybrid technology has all the drawbacks of the complexity of a toyota prius but it really doesn't have the positive aspects of insanely high gas mileage because they're different types of vehicles it's a big thing for lugging a bunch of people around prius is smaller more aerodynamic and they do get fantastic gas match like i said these things never will so trying to squeeze a little bit more out of them maybe not such a hot idea if you're looking in the long run of keeping them forever i'm telling people don't buy cars that break down you think i'd tell them to get cars to break down but i'm not that kind of mechanic i'm like my grandfather i care about my customers and if you want to take my advice think twice before you buy a hybrid suv now anybody who knows me has been watching me for a while knows i'm not a big fan of hybrid cars because they cost a lot more to buy and they cost a whole lot more to fix when they break down but if you're really into hybrids the toyota prius is the one to buy they've been making these things now more than 20 years and this particular one is nine years old has a hundred and ten thousand miles on it and really has had very little problems at all i just finished a brake job on this one it's the first time it's had to have the brake pads replaced realize since this is a hybrid car when you brake normally a lot of that energy instead of being wasted and turned into heat by the normal brake rotors and pads it uses the system inside to regenerate power to make electricity charge the big old battery in a trunk so then when you take off it can reuse that energy to make the car go consequently if you don't drive like a maniac these brake pads are going to last a long time these particular ones lasted 110 000 miles before they were out for the first time now if you do a lot of in town stop and go driving these things get phenomenal gas mileage they actually get much better gas mileage stop and go in town than they do on the highway because on a highway they don't regenerate anything you're going 60 miles an hour you're going 60 miles an hour now they do use what's called an atkinson cycle engine it's still a four-stroke gasoline internal combustion engine it's a different design it's more efficient than ones that have regular cams in them they do have less power but when you're cruising at 60 miles an hour you really don't care about power it just needs a certain amount of horsepower to run itself and no more so granted it still gets good gas mileage on the highway but it gets much better gas much in stop and go traffic so guys that are uber drivers taxi drivers they love these things now if you're the type of guy that buys some brand new you don't mind the price go right ahead they're very dependable buying a used one especially with higher mileage is a big gamble because eventually the battery packs in the back wear out it costs thousands of dollars to replace them with a brand new one and yes there are rebuilt or refurbished ones you can get since they're a bunch of little batteries all connected together when they do go bad some of the little cells go bad there's machines that can test them very expensive time consuming and if you find the ones that are bad you replace them but the jenna go bad when they're 7 to 12 years old if you're replacing some of the bad ones the old cells are all seven to twelve years old guess what they're not going to last forever put in these reconditioned batters maybe they'll last a year or two but that kind of stinks when you think about it because if the original battery went seven to twelve years one to two years isn't that good if you really want to keep one and it needs a battery my advice is buy a new battery don't buy one of these reconditioned ones they just don't seem to hold up over time but my main warning about buying a used one is this there's a generator inside here these cars don't have alternators on them let's say the alternator went bad my old celica takes me 15 minutes to change the alternator cost me maybe 150 bucks for a good alternator and away i go but on the prius in order to replace it you got to pull the engine and transmission out as a unit take it apart buy a really expensive generator assembly put it back together again last time i priced that out it was about a 6 000 job and i had a customer with one the generator went bad so i told her i said well your generator's bad you know it's not worth fixing i explained how the system worked and that it was about a six thousand dollar job but i said you didn't buy a new you bought it used didn't you and she said yeah i bought it used and they took her for a ride it had like 150 000 miles on it and she'd paid like 9 500 bucks and about a month previous to this i had a customer sell his 10 year old prius that only had a hundred thousand miles on it and he sold it for eighteen hundred dollars so she way overpaid for the stupid car used she didn't believe me so i said well like i said i didn't charge you anything i said to a toyota dealer they're gonna tell you the same thing so she did and they told her the same thing it does cost six thousand dollars to fix it but we'll take it off your hands and we'll recycle it which is better for the environment then he didn't offer any money for the car i couldn't believe that one i called up about 10 toyota dealers nationwide and said i got this 10 year old prius do you buy used priuses and they said sure but then i said well you know it needs a generator every single one of them said no we don't want it and they hung up they knew that the repair was much more than the vehicle was worth so if you're feeling in a gambling mood and you want to buy a used prius go right ahead if it runs good take it to a mechanic like me to check it out just don't pay much money for it because in the real world when they're 10 years or older they're worth practically nothing but like i said if you can afford to buy one new if you want to get a hybrid car the prius is definitely the one to buy if you're into electronics i got every gizmo on earth that you'd ever want they got all kinds of electronic gizmos you can play with look at regenerating electricity the norms like this have electric mode economy mode power mode and they got lots of room even the back seats pretty big on these things if you're really into science look at this stuff your kids will get a kick out of it it's got the speak mode you can talk to it all kinds of stuff on it and yeah it's a toyota so this thing may be nine years old have a hundred and ten thousand miles on it but really everything still works on it this isn't like a gm where the electronics go hair wire when it gets old this 2016 toyota corolla how they can be great used cars but on the other hand don't trust anybody when they're selling it to you this particular one was purchased a year ago it's a nice looking car it was purchased at a toyota dealer it's the fancy s model with the swanky wheels and it supposedly went through a toyota dealer inspection a while back later you started driving around the engine was shaking too much it isn't shaking now because it was fixed but the whole engine was vibrating too much and you could see that one of the motor mounts was broken watches all my videos and he knew he was going to take advantage of at the dealer so i said look there's something wrong they said there was nothing wrong but of course it's not supposed to shake it's a toyota they don't shake mild 94 celica pretty much a toyota corolla body underneath engine transmission it's only the style that's different everything it's got the same four-cylinder engine the same transmission as the corolla it's got 240 000 miles on it and it's 27 years old and it doesn't shake so certainly one that's got 30 000 miles shouldn't be shaking so after hours of haranguing with the toyota dealer mentioning my name they finally got them to replace the mount there but all the other mounts and then it stopped shaking but of course that gets me thinking there's no way on earth that a toyota corolla with 30 000 miles is gonna have broken motor mounts on their own my whole assumption is that this vehicle at some point in time was in a wreck the wreck stretches stuff and then the mounts are going to eventually break because they've been stretched too far they're rubber in the middle metal on the top and the bottom they get stretched too much then they rip and when they do rip then the engine starts to vibrate back and forth so what am i looking for signs of being a wreck well you always look around for overspray first but the first thing i notice here is check out this bolt you look closely you can see it's corroded on the side and the paint has faded off right there see it's different than the rest and we go to the other side we can see this bolt is the same way that means that since this thing was built those fenders have been unbolted maybe they've been replaced too but that's a sign that the car had been wrecked now it is a toyota corolla they're very dependable cars they haven't had any other problems with it but that's something that myself as a mechanic is going to notice if i check out a car before the customer buys it that's why i always tell you to have a mechanic check it out and knows what he's doing before you buy since these are bulletproof it shouldn't have any other problems but of course the customer brought it over here because he's thinking jesus something else could be wrong so out comes my fancy computer all comes to fancy scan tools nothing can hide from the fancy scan tool and we plug it in there it is it's lit up it's working and we'll turn on the brains of the operation there we go gee i thought i was the brains of the operation i guess not the machines are taking over these things are amazing what they can do now we'll go to diagnostics and we're going to diagnose everything we'll do auto id these things are smart enough they figure out what they're hooked up to we got to tell you how to crawl ass cycle ignition on off it's a toyota trick to enhance vehicle scan as you're gonna see this thing scans all kinds of stuff look what it is scanning this takes a little bit of time because you can see it's checking all these different things here's everything it's going to check all this list so it takes a little time as they say time is money if you're going to buy one of these used you pay a guy like me to hook one of these up and you won't spend your time on something that isn't any good now of course this is too late because this was about a year ago but it's going to give us a real good idea of what's happening with this vehicle now granted other than the motor mounts being changed this thing now has 47 000 miles and it had 35 when she bought it and as you can see so far so good there's no trouble codes yet still got to do this little bit of list here so we take our time just understand if i was going to test all these systems by hand using my tools it would take hours if not days to run them all this machine can do it in just 10-15 minutes it's worth the wait but now i've known something odd there is the warning for tire pressure monitoring i look at tire pressure monitor it says that there's no trouble codes that is a giant red flag for me it should have trouble codes easily from the wreck it could have messed with the computer system or the wire and we'll see what else this machine can find got 51 items found here and 39 items found here now the engine itself is running good the short-term fuel trim is zero and then it changes sometimes once a while a tiny bit and a long term is minus 0.78 that's almost zero and the mass sensor is correct for the size of the engine it's about the leader of the engine that's 59 codes i'm looking through the mode 6 and you see a green thing had passed so we're going through all these tests and so far it shows everything passes yet the machine showed that were over 51 different problems something is a miss in the electronics there's no way fans or butts it may run okay but the fact that the tire pressure sensor light is on it should have stored a code when i looked at that system and it said they're warning it should have like left front sensor right front sensor something's wrong but it's not reading it when this thing was wrecked obviously it's done something to the electronics of the car but you put in gear it idles like a dream it doesn't shake it's getting about 37 miles a gallon on the highway which is what it's supposed to get so it runs okay but who knows what the future will bring when it comes to any kind of electrical failure because it's showing no normal trouble codes it'll pass the emissions test and everything but the enhanced data shows a whole bunch of coats it runs fine everything seems to work if somebody would have brought me this car in the first place before they purchased it i would have done these tests and i would have said don't buy the car because you never know what the future will be now they've had this car for a year and other than them replacing the motor mounts which like i said there's no reason a toyota crawler with 35 000 miles is going to have broken motor mounts with a shaken engine unless it had been in a wreck but you consider how good it looks how good it runs a lot of times there's things that you're going to live with if you don't check them out right in the first place now i don't want to be the devil's advocate but i did have a customer with a volkswagen i wasn't a toyota it was a volkswagen three years later the electronics went absolutely haywire and i said to him man your car's driving me nuts what's going on and he explained oh well see i bought this car as a flood car i knew it was flooded and i changed all the fluids it's run okay for three years but then three years later the electronics went bananas no i doubt that's going to happen to this toyota corolla because it does run perfectly fine it's just that realize modern cars have dozens of computer modules in them they all talk to each other and once they get in some kind of wreck they can often have glitchy problems here and there that they run okay and you don't care but you want to check them out before you buy a car not after so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bellpeople always ask me scotty i want a good suv but i don't know should i get a hybrid suv or a normal suv i'm going to show you the differences on this 2010 toyota highlander hybrid of course the basic vehicles are the same they got all kinds of room inside and a front and a back and then the trunk pop everything down and fit a whole bunch of stuff in there and yes the hybrids get better gas mileage because like a toyota prius they have a gasoline engine but they also have the hybrid synergy drive only in this case it's a v6 engine that has more horsepower to begin with so it bumps the horsepower up a lot more than the little prius a regular modern v6 highlander engine gasoline puts out about 270 horsepower when you add the hybrid to 306 horsepower you get a little bit more power but the level of complexity and expense that goes into a hybrid i don't know if it really warrants that now this hybrid highlander gets 27 miles a gallon in town and 25 miles a gallon on a highway which is decent for a vehicle this size no great shakes but decent for the size while a non-hybrid v6 gets about 20 in town and about 26 on a highway it's on a highway really there isn't any difference so when you consider the extra price you're gonna pay for the hybrid vehicle if you buy brand new you're paying a lot more money you're getting a tiny bit better gas much this isn't like a toyota prius a little low slung highly efficient vehicle that's going to get 50 something miles a gallon or more in town no it's a big suv they can never be all that efficient just because of their weight and lack of aerodynamics so if you're thinking about buying one of these hybrid just to save money on gas you save a little bit on gas but hey you're paying a lot more for the vehicle you're never going to recoup your investment but as an overall investment you never want to buy one of these things with high mileage used because the repairs can be astronomical this one's 10 years old the rear end the differential started to go out it's starting to wind there's a differential and the problem with this thing is it's both hydraulic and electronic because it's got the hybrid drive system to replace this unit it's going to cost you at least 2500 bucks if you use an original toyota replacement unit and they're so complicated i have yet to find anybody who really knew how to rebuild them correctly and the same thing goes with the power unit in the front gasoline engine and also an electric motor the electric motor is a motor and generator giant assembly built into the transfer case i've seen them go bad and i've seen those things cost fifty five hundred dollars to replace because of the insane labor and the insane parts and again i even talked to experts that only work on hybrid vehicles and they say scotty you know we tried to rebuild those generator assemblies but ah never held up we just have to replace them they cost a lot of money when they go out don't be fooled by these remanufactured batteries when they do now i looked up a price on the internet for replacement battery for this oh only 1949 dollars for our replacement battery now you might think 1949 is a lot for battery well i got news for you that's not even a new battery that's a remanufactured battery if you want a brand new hybrid battery for that the toyota dealer sells them they're 68 hundred dollars i'm not making this up 6800 but those are real brand new batteries is the problem with the remanufactured ones the remanufactured ones are just that realize they're giant hybrid batteries that have a bunch of cells in them whole bunch of them and as they age let's say i had one the other day it was 20 years old and it was going bad some of the cells go bad they have a machine that checks the whole hybrid one at these rebuilding places and it tells them this sounds bad that sounds bad the cell's good that sounds bad and they replace the bad ones but take the case of the one i was working on the today when was 20 years old if they reply some of them that means that some of the old cells that are 20 years old are still in that hybrid battery pack and guess what they're going to go out over time the remanufactured ones never last as long as the new ones by a long stretch i've seen remanufactured once sometimes they'd last two or three years maybe some of these original ones lasted 20 years even though you save money 1600 something is still a lot of money you're not getting something that's going to last and last and last using the remanufactured battery if you're not willing to spend 74 70 500 bucks with labor and tax replacing the battery on one of these you're not getting a lot of long life when the battery does go out now of course they are toyotas so they last a long time now if you don't mind buying one of these things brand new and paying extra for a hybrid and you're planning on getting rid of your car before it has 150 000 miles or something on it maybe you're totally happy with a little bit extra power a little bit better gas mileage hey it's your money and your choice but really don't ever think about buying a used high mileage one because they're just money pits waiting for you to fall into them when all this hybrid technology starts breaking down why do you buy a toyota in the first place for ease of repair little maintenance rarely do they break down and long life if you're the type of person like me 20 30 years hundreds of thousands of miles you should think twice about buying a hybrid to give you the perfect analogy the owner of this car his previous one was a v6 highlander 2 but it was a non-hybrid it went pretty much trouble free for over 550 000 miles this one differential the rear end's starting to go out and 150 000 miles that tells you the entire story in a nutshell now technology can be perfectly fine but sometimes these things have gone too far for what you actually get back in return in an suv hybrid technology has all the drawbacks of the complexity of a toyota prius but it really doesn't have the positive aspects of insanely high gas mileage because they're different types of vehicles it's a big thing for lugging a bunch of people around prius is smaller more aerodynamic and they do get fantastic gas match like i said these things never will so trying to squeeze a little bit more out of them maybe not such a hot idea if you're looking in the long run of keeping them forever i'm telling people don't buy cars that break down you think i'd tell them to get cars to break down but i'm not that kind of mechanic i'm like my grandfather i care about my customers and if you want to take my advice think twice before you buy a hybrid suv now anybody who knows me has been watching me for a while knows i'm not a big fan of hybrid cars because they cost a lot more to buy and they cost a whole lot more to fix when they break down but if you're really into hybrids the toyota prius is the one to buy they've been making these things now more than 20 years and this particular one is nine years old has a hundred and ten thousand miles on it and really has had very little problems at all i just finished a brake job on this one it's the first time it's had to have the brake pads replaced realize since this is a hybrid car when you brake normally a lot of that energy instead of being wasted and turned into heat by the normal brake rotors and pads it uses the system inside to regenerate power to make electricity charge the big old battery in a trunk so then when you take off it can reuse that energy to make the car go consequently if you don't drive like a maniac these brake pads are going to last a long time these particular ones lasted 110 000 miles before they were out for the first time now if you do a lot of in town stop and go driving these things get phenomenal gas mileage they actually get much better gas mileage stop and go in town than they do on the highway because on a highway they don't regenerate anything you're going 60 miles an hour you're going 60 miles an hour now they do use what's called an atkinson cycle engine it's still a four-stroke gasoline internal combustion engine it's a different design it's more efficient than ones that have regular cams in them they do have less power but when you're cruising at 60 miles an hour you really don't care about power it just needs a certain amount of horsepower to run itself and no more so granted it still gets good gas mileage on the highway but it gets much better gas much in stop and go traffic so guys that are uber drivers taxi drivers they love these things now if you're the type of guy that buys some brand new you don't mind the price go right ahead they're very dependable buying a used one especially with higher mileage is a big gamble because eventually the battery packs in the back wear out it costs thousands of dollars to replace them with a brand new one and yes there are rebuilt or refurbished ones you can get since they're a bunch of little batteries all connected together when they do go bad some of the little cells go bad there's machines that can test them very expensive time consuming and if you find the ones that are bad you replace them but the jenna go bad when they're 7 to 12 years old if you're replacing some of the bad ones the old cells are all seven to twelve years old guess what they're not going to last forever put in these reconditioned batters maybe they'll last a year or two but that kind of stinks when you think about it because if the original battery went seven to twelve years one to two years isn't that good if you really want to keep one and it needs a battery my advice is buy a new battery don't buy one of these reconditioned ones they just don't seem to hold up over time but my main warning about buying a used one is this there's a generator inside here these cars don't have alternators on them let's say the alternator went bad my old celica takes me 15 minutes to change the alternator cost me maybe 150 bucks for a good alternator and away i go but on the prius in order to replace it you got to pull the engine and transmission out as a unit take it apart buy a really expensive generator assembly put it back together again last time i priced that out it was about a 6 000 job and i had a customer with one the generator went bad so i told her i said well your generator's bad you know it's not worth fixing i explained how the system worked and that it was about a six thousand dollar job but i said you didn't buy a new you bought it used didn't you and she said yeah i bought it used and they took her for a ride it had like 150 000 miles on it and she'd paid like 9 500 bucks and about a month previous to this i had a customer sell his 10 year old prius that only had a hundred thousand miles on it and he sold it for eighteen hundred dollars so she way overpaid for the stupid car used she didn't believe me so i said well like i said i didn't charge you anything i said to a toyota dealer they're gonna tell you the same thing so she did and they told her the same thing it does cost six thousand dollars to fix it but we'll take it off your hands and we'll recycle it which is better for the environment then he didn't offer any money for the car i couldn't believe that one i called up about 10 toyota dealers nationwide and said i got this 10 year old prius do you buy used priuses and they said sure but then i said well you know it needs a generator every single one of them said no we don't want it and they hung up they knew that the repair was much more than the vehicle was worth so if you're feeling in a gambling mood and you want to buy a used prius go right ahead if it runs good take it to a mechanic like me to check it out just don't pay much money for it because in the real world when they're 10 years or older they're worth practically nothing but like i said if you can afford to buy one new if you want to get a hybrid car the prius is definitely the one to buy if you're into electronics i got every gizmo on earth that you'd ever want they got all kinds of electronic gizmos you can play with look at regenerating electricity the norms like this have electric mode economy mode power mode and they got lots of room even the back seats pretty big on these things if you're really into science look at this stuff your kids will get a kick out of it it's got the speak mode you can talk to it all kinds of stuff on it and yeah it's a toyota so this thing may be nine years old have a hundred and ten thousand miles on it but really everything still works on it this isn't like a gm where the electronics go hair wire when it gets old this 2016 toyota corolla how they can be great used cars but on the other hand don't trust anybody when they're selling it to you this particular one was purchased a year ago it's a nice looking car it was purchased at a toyota dealer it's the fancy s model with the swanky wheels and it supposedly went through a toyota dealer inspection a while back later you started driving around the engine was shaking too much it isn't shaking now because it was fixed but the whole engine was vibrating too much and you could see that one of the motor mounts was broken watches all my videos and he knew he was going to take advantage of at the dealer so i said look there's something wrong they said there was nothing wrong but of course it's not supposed to shake it's a toyota they don't shake mild 94 celica pretty much a toyota corolla body underneath engine transmission it's only the style that's different everything it's got the same four-cylinder engine the same transmission as the corolla it's got 240 000 miles on it and it's 27 years old and it doesn't shake so certainly one that's got 30 000 miles shouldn't be shaking so after hours of haranguing with the toyota dealer mentioning my name they finally got them to replace the mount there but all the other mounts and then it stopped shaking but of course that gets me thinking there's no way on earth that a toyota corolla with 30 000 miles is gonna have broken motor mounts on their own my whole assumption is that this vehicle at some point in time was in a wreck the wreck stretches stuff and then the mounts are going to eventually break because they've been stretched too far they're rubber in the middle metal on the top and the bottom they get stretched too much then they rip and when they do rip then the engine starts to vibrate back and forth so what am i looking for signs of being a wreck well you always look around for overspray first but the first thing i notice here is check out this bolt you look closely you can see it's corroded on the side and the paint has faded off right there see it's different than the rest and we go to the other side we can see this bolt is the same way that means that since this thing was built those fenders have been unbolted maybe they've been replaced too but that's a sign that the car had been wrecked now it is a toyota corolla they're very dependable cars they haven't had any other problems with it but that's something that myself as a mechanic is going to notice if i check out a car before the customer buys it that's why i always tell you to have a mechanic check it out and knows what he's doing before you buy since these are bulletproof it shouldn't have any other problems but of course the customer brought it over here because he's thinking jesus something else could be wrong so out comes my fancy computer all comes to fancy scan tools nothing can hide from the fancy scan tool and we plug it in there it is it's lit up it's working and we'll turn on the brains of the operation there we go gee i thought i was the brains of the operation i guess not the machines are taking over these things are amazing what they can do now we'll go to diagnostics and we're going to diagnose everything we'll do auto id these things are smart enough they figure out what they're hooked up to we got to tell you how to crawl ass cycle ignition on off it's a toyota trick to enhance vehicle scan as you're gonna see this thing scans all kinds of stuff look what it is scanning this takes a little bit of time because you can see it's checking all these different things here's everything it's going to check all this list so it takes a little time as they say time is money if you're going to buy one of these used you pay a guy like me to hook one of these up and you won't spend your time on something that isn't any good now of course this is too late because this was about a year ago but it's going to give us a real good idea of what's happening with this vehicle now granted other than the motor mounts being changed this thing now has 47 000 miles and it had 35 when she bought it and as you can see so far so good there's no trouble codes yet still got to do this little bit of list here so we take our time just understand if i was going to test all these systems by hand using my tools it would take hours if not days to run them all this machine can do it in just 10-15 minutes it's worth the wait but now i've known something odd there is the warning for tire pressure monitoring i look at tire pressure monitor it says that there's no trouble codes that is a giant red flag for me it should have trouble codes easily from the wreck it could have messed with the computer system or the wire and we'll see what else this machine can find got 51 items found here and 39 items found here now the engine itself is running good the short-term fuel trim is zero and then it changes sometimes once a while a tiny bit and a long term is minus 0.78 that's almost zero and the mass sensor is correct for the size of the engine it's about the leader of the engine that's 59 codes i'm looking through the mode 6 and you see a green thing had passed so we're going through all these tests and so far it shows everything passes yet the machine showed that were over 51 different problems something is a miss in the electronics there's no way fans or butts it may run okay but the fact that the tire pressure sensor light is on it should have stored a code when i looked at that system and it said they're warning it should have like left front sensor right front sensor something's wrong but it's not reading it when this thing was wrecked obviously it's done something to the electronics of the car but you put in gear it idles like a dream it doesn't shake it's getting about 37 miles a gallon on the highway which is what it's supposed to get so it runs okay but who knows what the future will bring when it comes to any kind of electrical failure because it's showing no normal trouble codes it'll pass the emissions test and everything but the enhanced data shows a whole bunch of coats it runs fine everything seems to work if somebody would have brought me this car in the first place before they purchased it i would have done these tests and i would have said don't buy the car because you never know what the future will be now they've had this car for a year and other than them replacing the motor mounts which like i said there's no reason a toyota crawler with 35 000 miles is going to have broken motor mounts with a shaken engine unless it had been in a wreck but you consider how good it looks how good it runs a lot of times there's things that you're going to live with if you don't check them out right in the first place now i don't want to be the devil's advocate but i did have a customer with a volkswagen i wasn't a toyota it was a volkswagen three years later the electronics went absolutely haywire and i said to him man your car's driving me nuts what's going on and he explained oh well see i bought this car as a flood car i knew it was flooded and i changed all the fluids it's run okay for three years but then three years later the electronics went bananas no i doubt that's going to happen to this toyota corolla because it does run perfectly fine it's just that realize modern cars have dozens of computer modules in them they all talk to each other and once they get in some kind of wreck they can often have glitchy problems here and there that they run okay and you don't care but you want to check them out before you buy a car not after so if you never want to miss another one of my new car repair videos remember to ring that bell\n"