Imagine you want to buy a car but you don’t have enough money for that. So, now you have to buy a used car. But what if the price of the used car is out of your budget as well?
That’s where today’s article will help you. I have set a budget of $500 and within that budget, you will find a fairly decent car. But how will you do that? And isn’t $500 too low for getting a car?
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room, You won’t get a perfect car within $500. The car will need some fixing. And we’ll try to find some deals that are inexpensive, and easy to fix. Fixes that can be done by you.
Also, if you’re new to DIY car repair and you want to brush up your skills, then this is the perfect opportunity for you.
Oftentimes times we get scared to touch new cars or our daily driven cars. But when you’re working on a car that’s only $500 bucks that makes you feel relieved. That no matter what, the end result won’t cost you that bad. In the worst-case scenario, you will only waste $500 bucks.
To me, it’s a no-brainer to work on a cheap car to brush up your skills.
You might be wondering, where can you find cheap cars? Well, this is 2023 and there are tons of automotive websites that sell second-hand cars.
But the problem with that is, you have to each individual website and provide information. This requires quite some time. To save that time you can use a website called AutoTempst.
In AutoTempst, you can provide some key information like which model you want, what’s your location, etc. You can also add keywords like “Needs work” “Needs brake” or something like that. You got my point.
Keep in mind that, you only want to add keywords that are inexpensive to fix. The idea is to get a car for a cheap price, and then fix it yourself.
So, you need to do some proper valuation. Otherwise, you’ll get yourself a faulty car that’s super expensive to fix. Then all the efforts will go in vain.
You can add price also. For example, you can filter cars for less than $1000 which needs work. Now the important thing is, when these car owners list these cars on websites like this, they want their cars to be sold fast.
Because they don’t want to have a car that’s not running. So even if they list their car at $1000, it’s going to be super easy to negotiate and get the price under $500.
These car owners care about getting any money as quickly as possible. For them, these cars are lost cases. But for you, it’s not.
That’s why they say, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure.
So, first, you need to list down a couple of things, what sort of fixing work you can do yourself? Also what fixes are cheap? Suppose there’s a head gasket leak in the car. That’s something you can do and cheap also. So this is something you can check in the filtering option.
If there are tires that need to be replaced then it will be a costly fix. In that case, it’s better to avoid that car.
Another thing to keep in mind is that these broken cars may not be in a condition where you can drive them to your home. So do proper research before buying a cheap used car. It’s better to use a toe car. You can easily rent the toe trucks for 24 hours.
Chat with the owner and ask him politely to mention all the problems associated with the car honestly.
Check the engine area carefully. If there’s any head gasket leak then you’ll see smoke coming out from the radiator. Don’t worry if it looks bad, as long as there are no major broken parts in the engine bay area, you’re good to go.
Now that you have your car, drive it to your house safely and work on it.
Happy driving.
Also if you haven’t already, check my other car-related content to know more about car maintenance.
