Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryandrake | Hacker News Reader

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As an amateur shade tree mechanic myself I have so many questions! Feel free to ignore if you feel you'd be giving away your secret sauce.

1. Where do you find buyers? I'd be concerned about inventory either piling up or taking too long to sell at a price that even breaks even when you are spending time/money on fixing.

2. Do you feel your value-add is more on the sales side as a broker or is it in the repairs? I know people who just flip cars and do extremely minimal "freshing up" and are also profitable/successful.

3. How do you keep up with the increasingly locked down and opaque ECUs and other systems? More and more diagnostics require factory wizardry these days.

4. You implied that you do paint and body work. Where/how did you learn and become proficient? Most auto repairs are pretty much "follow the steps" work anyone can learn from YouTube, but body work is artistry.

5. Do you worry about liability? I'm OK fixing my own car since if I screw up it's my ass on the line. I'd be less confident in sending the car off to grandma, even if I knew what I was doing.

1. Mostly Craigslist, with a bit of AutoTrader. The reality is AutoTrader is swamped with dealer listings and sponsor listings that I don't feel I'm receiving any additional value for their listing fees.

2. Repairs and preventative maintenance. We average ~4 feet of snow a year, so tie rod ends, wheel bearings, control arms, bushes, flex pipes, exhaust hangers, etc. suffer since no one really maintains a steel car properly. The reality is when even a Honda or Toyota dealer is $125/hour and a Lexus or Acura dealer is $175/hour, people don't replace $18/ea bushings -- but when things rattle or feel loose, they sell the vehicle like it's going to explode.

These aren't difficult repairs, they just require lifting the vehicle (I have a Bendpak Quick Jack) and doing it. People also don't properly clean their undercarriage, and rustproof. I do. Very easy, very inexpensive. Though when many people treat cars as disposable, it lets a lot of nice stuff come onto the market for the well-inclined.

3. Not an issue unless you're in Porsches on up with encrypted ECUs, and even then, that prevents MODIFYING them, not reading diagnostics. Regardless, this has been a problem 0 times since I've started many years ago. OBD-II is a wonderful thing, and there's no weird shenanigans coming from Honda/Toyota at all.

4. I only do paint correction, as in "level a clearcoat" to a mirror finish, and only for vehicles that merit it (let's ignore that any car sub-$150K new comes with some level of orange peel). I do not buy any vehicle that needs a respray, ever. It can be DIY'd very well, but the amount of labor is prohibitive. Not enough money made for the time spent.

5. I've an umbrella policy, mostly because I have one for my primary business, in the odd event I ever were sued. In general, vehicles are sold as-is. Zero concern here.

Thank you, very inspiring.

Regarding point 4, do you even consider small patch work? Perhaps where you would need to apply a body patch, filler, sand & paint?

I imagine with the cars you're working with rust isn't an issue, but could be needed for minor damage. Are you passing on those cars completely or leaving those as is?

I can repaint entire panels, and blend it well enough to be indistinguishable — though ultimately I’ll end up leveling the clearcoat on the entire vehicle, which is a ton of work to do right. The problem is to hit my standard of quality it’s far too much time for the effort required. The time is better spent finding something that doesn’t need major paint repair.

I hear ya. Thank you for the followup.

I sorely miss being able to regularly work on and drive cars, but job and salary necessitates being in New York City for a long while. I have a long term project sitting and waiting for me 1000 miles from here. Will involve taking everything off the car, fixing rust, repainting and rebuilding everything. Someday...

Those Bendpak Quick Jacks look pretty nice -- seems like you'd have good access to everything. Any drawbacks?

For most people the only drawback will be cost, and storage space when it’s disassembled.

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