A mechanic with years of experience has warned of a major red flag when it comes to buying a used car.
Dave, from Centerville, Utah, often takes to social media to share his tips and tricks of the trade.
In a recent clip, he recalled a horror story of a customer who came to him when his vehicle wasn’t working – discovering it was because the engine was held together with duct tape.
Dave, who has over 536,000 followers on his TikTok account, Dave’s Auto Center, shared the story after he was asked about the biggest problem he’s seen in used cars.
‘Guy brings me a car [and] the check engine light had been removed from the dash so the light wasn’t on, but the car had a problem,’ he recalled in the TikTok, which has had over 161,000 views.
Dave, from Centerville, Utah, often takes to social media to share his tips and tricks of the trade – he recently recalled a horror story of a customer who came to him when his car wasn’t working
The mechanic said the check engine light had been removed from the car, so he couldn’t tell anything was wrong
After saying the car was not running very well, the video cut to a clip of someone hitting the glowing check engine light on the dashboard of a car so it turned off – meaning the driver was not alerted to any issues.
‘I start looking at it, and it’s a four cylinder, and it’s missing. It’s not firing,’ the mechanic explained.
‘I pull the spark plug off from one of the holes and it’s just not hitting, it’s not firing at all,’ he said.
Dave said he then ran a compression test on the engine and got zero compression.
‘Then I noticed I got a little bit of an oil leak on the floor. Just a little drip,’ he recalled.
‘I’m not kidding you. Duct tape on the side of the motor, it had blown a connecting rod right through the motor, had a hole through the side of the block,’ Dave said incredulously.
‘So the piston, but it was still running, it blew the rod completely out of way.
‘So the engine would keep on running – it didn’t make any noise – but the piston wasn’t going up and down cause it had blown the rod out the side of the motor.
Users shared their thoughts on the terrible secondhand purchase, many mocking the owner for buying it seemingly without a check
‘Somebody, I kid you not, sold the motor like that,’ the experienced mechanic said.
Users shared their thoughts on the terrible secondhand purchase.
‘Yeah that’s marketplace,’ one person commented.
‘My friend bought a car where the person [just] welded the hole,’ shared another.
‘People don’t have enough sense to know nowadays that you drive and test and check out the vehicle before you buy it,’ berated someone else.
Mechanics often share tips and tricks of the trade on social media.
Recently, a Georgia-based Royalty Auto Service account issued an urgent warning to anyone wanting to spruce up the interior of their car – saying it could impact the safety measures in place.
In a clip, a mechanic sat in a Hyundai, showing off a steering wheel that had tiny gems all around the wheel and on the logo.
‘We see this way too much!! Get these out of your cars now! Very dangerous,’ the overlaid text reads.
In the video, he continues adamantly, ‘That’s unsafe y’all,’ pointing at the sparking bling.
He urged drivers not to bedazzle or change their steering wheel – as it could come back to hit you in the face, literally.
‘Do not put it on anything with an airbag,’ he urged, pointing at the bejeweled logo in the center of the steering wheel.
‘If this airbag goes off, that’s coming off at you.’
