We inspect a lot of cars that look fine. Clean interior, fresh wash, service book in the glovebox, seller who answers every question straight. Most of them still have something. Below are the five findings that come up most often across a year of inspections in Brisbane, Logan and Ipswich, roughly what each one costs to put right, and how you can spot the early signs yourself.
1. Brake pads closer to the end than the seller thinks
This is the single most common one, and it is almost never dishonesty. Pads wear invisibly and most owners have no idea where theirs are until something squeals. We measure them, and “plenty left” turns out to be twenty per cent more often than not.
Typical cost: $300 to $450 for pads front and rear on a common hatchback or sedan. More if the discs have gone with them, which on a car that has been left too long they usually have.
What you can check: look through the wheel spokes at the pad against the disc. If the friction material looks thinner than the metal backing plate behind it, it is close. A lip you can catch a fingernail on at the outer edge of the disc means the disc is worn too.
2. Tyres worn unevenly across the tread
Tread depth is easy. Uneven wear is the useful bit, because it is a symptom rather than a cost. Wear on the inner shoulder of both front tyres usually means alignment. Wear on one side only can mean a bent component. Cupping or scalloping across the tread points at worn shocks.
Typical cost: $400 to $600 for two tyres and an alignment. If the shocks are the cause, add $700 to $1,200 for a pair.
What you can check: run your hand across each tyre, inner edge to outer. It should feel the same the whole way. Then look at all four and compare. Four tyres that wore differently have a reason.
3. An oil weep somebody has been topping up around
A rocker cover gasket weep is minor and cheap. The same weep ignored for two years, with oil sitting on the exhaust and baking, is a different conversation. What matters is not the leak but how long it has been there, and that is visible in how far the residue has spread.
Typical cost: $250 to $400 for a rocker cover gasket. Rear main seals and sump gaskets run considerably higher because of the labour to reach them.
What you can check: look at the ground where the car normally parks, not where it is parked for you. Then look down the back of the engine with a torch. A film of oily grit collecting dust is an old leak.
4. Paint depth that does not match panel to panel
A repaired panel is not automatically a problem. Plenty of cars have had a door resprayed after a car park knock and are perfectly sound. What matters is whether the repair was disclosed, and whether the pattern of it suggests something structural rather than cosmetic.
Three adjacent panels down one side, all reading high, is a different story from one door. That is a gauge finding, not an eye finding — good body work is invisible under a wash and wax.
What you can check: sight down the side of the car in daylight with the panel reflecting something straight, like a fence line. Ripples in the reflection show filler. Then check panel gaps left against right, and look for overspray on the rubber seals.
5. A battery on the way out
The least dramatic finding on the list and the one that catches people out most, because a tired battery starts a warm car perfectly well and fails on the first cold morning after you buy it. A voltage reading on a car that has just been driven tells you almost nothing. It has to be tested under load.
Typical cost: $220 to $400 fitted, more on cars that need the battery registered to the charging system.
What you can check: ask when it was last replaced and look for a date sticker on the top. Over four years in a Brisbane summer is living on borrowed time.
None of these mean walk away
That is worth saying plainly. Every item here is normal wear on a used car, and finding them is not a reason to pull out. It is a reason to know the number before you agree one. A car with $1,200 of work due is still a good buy at the right price — it is only a bad buy at the price of a car with nothing due.
If you want the whole list rather than the top five, our pre purchase car inspection covers over 200 points and prices every finding, so you can take the report to the seller and have a conversation about a figure instead of a feeling.