Buying a 'Damaged Repairable' - Pitfalls?

Nobbie1967

Just looking at replacing my 107 with an Ecoboost Fiesta and have seen a few on EBay from local scrapyards. I did similar with a Montego 30 years ago and it was fine then, just unbolted a few parts and put new bits on and it drove fine. Before I pursue the idea any further, I wondered if I had missed any minus points of buying a Cat C/D car for repair? It'll be worth less because of the Cat marker, manufacturers warrantee is likely to be invalid, may be hidden damage I'm not aware of.

Anything specific to check for when looking at a car or general advice about the advisability of this course of action. I'm intending to keep it long term, so resale isn't an issue.

wgl2014

Problems can be far from obvious, modern cars have a lot of electronic bits that can be temperamental if a wire or sensor is damaged.
Unless the bargain of the century you could end up spending as much if not more than it would be for an undamaged car.
Personal choice but I would stay well clear.

ilikewatch

30 years ago it's something I would have considered, however, 30 years ago cars were a lot simpler and I was a loss less risk averse...

I guess it would depend on the exact damage - a dented door and a cracked bumper might be fixable to a decent standard with parts from the breakers, but I wouldn't be able to tell if there was worse damage out of sight, could you?

System

With modern cars having lots of crumple zones designed to deform in an impact to dissipate the energy cars can end up with twisted bodies and subframes in accidents that are quite light in comparison to what it would need to achieve the same in older cars.

Unless you know what you're looking for you can find yourself with a car that needs to be put on a jig to be pulled back into alignment and be a potential money pit for what looks like quite light damage.

A friend of mine bought one that looked like it had a light tap up the rear. The boot wouldn't shut and he assumed that it was because it had got pushed in a bit. When you looked at it carefully though it was obvious that the rear quarters were actually leaning inwards like / \ compared to normal and it was that which was preventing the boot closing.

Nobbie1967

Yes, the whole crumplezone thing is a worry, as you need to know where to look to see if it's knackered. On this one you can see the two structural beams at the front that have been exposed, but you'd need to get underneath to see if they were deformed.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Ford-FIESTA-1-0-ECOBOOST-S-S-ZETEC-2015-15-DAMAGED-REPAIRABLE/172813510419?_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIM.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D20140122125356%26meid%3D24c63525e07a4bb787d93cfc4a520ba7%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D3%26rkt%3D6%26sd%3D322599706784&_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851

That car seems way overpriced to start with given the level of damage.

May look for something with multiple panel damage rather than frontal or rear hard impacts to minimise the risk.

facade

Unless things have changed drastically in the last few years, avoid.

I was after a "bargain" a few years ago, and what the breakers describe as "light damage" looks like "total writeoff" - but that is what they are!

The ones that simply T-cut better, or really do just need a £50 wing from a breaker, ( and there are hundreds available in the right colour) don't end up advertised so you or I could buy them.

They also seemed massively overpriced to me, to the point where unless you had a complete donor vehicle already with a blown engine say, you couldn't hope to fix them at a sensible budget.

There used to be a TV programme a few years ago where Dominic Littlewood would buy a write-off (often with a suspension leg completely ripped off) declaring "that'll T-Cut out!", and his army of factory trained technicians and body repair specialists could never put them right within his budget.

I think how it works is you need your own bodyshop where you are paying the staff anyway, and they fix it up in their idle time, when they are not earning, so the labour is free, someone else pays for the consumables, and they get any parts trade prices (yes breakers do trade prices too)

Nobbie1967

Interesting, sounds like it's more risk than it's worth for any saving you could make. Will probably look at cars that have already been repaired by someone who knows what they are doing.

Strider590

On top of the obvious damage there is a strong possibility of damage underneath the car, as these scrapyards often move cars around with forklift trucks. This can damage the exhaust, the brake lines, the fuel lines and any bits of wiring loom that go out under the car.

facade

I actually did buy a "stolen & recovered" cavalier once. Needed a windscreen and someone had cut out the fuel injection wiring when they stole the airflow meter.
I made a new harness (amazingly, there was a wiring diagram & pinouts in the Haynes manual) and got a new windscreen.

Bargain!
Not really. Obviously I work for nothing so the actual costs were the glass, airflow meter and a handful of small lucar connectors, so I "saved" the labour costs that wrote it off.

But...

When I went to see it, it was dry stored inside in a nice unit, but it must have stood outside with no windscreen for weeks, as water had got behind the dash and corroded the electrics, was no end of trouble to sort out.

However, made quite a good little car after that, and I ran it for a few years, but in retrospect, it would have been better to buy one that was working to start with

wgl2014

I would also be wary of buying a previously repaired car, some will have been repaired carefully to a high standard but some will have been bodged cheaply to make a quick buck.

If you are confident you can spot a bad one you could save a bit of money however you increase the chances of buying a lemon.

Nobbie1967

wgl2014 wrote: »

I would also be wary of buying a previously repaired car, some will have been repaired carefully to a high standard but some will have been bodged cheaply to make a quick buck.

If you are confident you can spot a bad one you could save a bit of money however you increase the chances of buying a lemon.

I'm pretty good with cars, so would be fairly confident about spotting a bodged repair. Just takes a bit of time when inspecting the car and knowing where the original damage was. I'll try and get a drive in the model I'm after so I know how they should drive.

Strider590, good point about moving them round on forklifts, I'd definitely take a trolley jack and axle stands to have a proper look underneath. If they're a genuine seller, they shouldn't mind me looking🙂, if they're nervous about it, I'd walk away or maybe run😀

Useful to get a range of opinions on this.