How to Buy a Used Car for $300 (Runs and Drives)
Hey guys ChrisFix here and today, I'm going to show you how to buy a $300 car, yes, that is right, you heard correctly under this car cover is a car I purchased for $300. Sure it needs a little bit of work, but nothing we can't fix, and it runs and drives sorta… I'm doing this video because I just hit 3 million subscribers, and this is the 300th video so it's a good fit but instead of following other youtubers and buying a Porsche or Lamborghini or Ferrari or something fancy like that you guys know what this channel is all about; it's all about affordability, it's about working in your driveway at home and using common hand tools and soapy water to work on your car.
Also… I get comments all the time when you guys watch the videos saying "the videos are great and after watching them you feel like you could replace the wheel bearing or replace the brakes, but you're still kind of nervous to try it out on your own car because it's your daily driver, and if you break it you won't be able to get to school or to work" so a $300 car is the perfect opportunity to learn, to experiment, to try stuff out because worst case scenario, if this breaks completely… You do something and totally mess it up, you can call a junkyard right now and get this towed off your property, and they'll pay you around $250! Or you can follow the Jaguar video and do a complete part out and make some money. For all the younger viewers who are always commenting "who watches his videos, but doesn't have a car" well, here's your opportunity save up $300 you could get yourself a car to work on and to get ready for when you finally can drive so with that being said Any last minute guesses on what this car is I asked you guys what you thought on Instagram? And I got thousands of guesses in the comments, but only two people got it Well the time has come to finally show you what I get and it is such a fun car alright, the first step to buying a super cheap car is to find it and it's as easy as going online and searching all the major used car websites But instead of searching each individual website and inputting all your information over and over which could take forever I have a little trick you guys taught me and that's using Auto Tempest all you have to do is input your information down here Once and then it searches all the major used car websites make it really simple and easy now to find the cheap car you could? Put in your make and model I don't really know what I'm looking for so I'm not going to do that and then this is the key right here Right where it says keywords you want to put in new to work and for price I put 1500 or below, so let's search that is gonna be searching all these websites So it might take a few seconds and check out all of these results Now this one right here is something that stands out, so here's the perfect example This is a Mustang it needs a new transmission He says it grinds in third gear I bet you you could get this for around a thousand bucks Transmission is like three hundred dollars at a junkyard you replace it yourself you spent thirteen hundred dollars And you have like a three or four thousand dollar Mustang especially if you rap or paint it now another good example Maybe needs work is too vague for you.
Let's just say you're good at changing brakes actually Let's search head gasket, so we can find a real cheap car now a car that I came across is this honda Del sol i've always liked these since I was a little kid that rear window the way it goes down the top comes off its Unique it's different. It's a nice little daily parts are cheap, and it's easy to work on it has 200,000 miles It has some new parts of battery tie rods headlights But it needs a control arm and head gasket both things that we could do now He is asking a thousand dollars, but i'm pretty sure we could get this car for less So thank you otto tempest for supporting the video and making it easy to find inexpensive used cars like this So let's go check this car out since the car can't be driven home.
I have to pick up a trailer Just in case we get the car. I can use my truck to tow it home I've never told a car before so this is gonna be an experience The trailer is really cheap, and I have it for 24 hours and normally I would see the car first But i'm fairly confident i'm gonna get this car and I think it's gonna be good to be like hey. I have a trailer I'll tow it away right now. Here's my offer that way. We could get a low price and after a short drive We are finally here and there she is Alright, I'm actually pretty excited about this car because I've loved this car since I was a kid mostly because of that unique rear window Design and the targa top.
This is probably like one of three Honda's I would actually own and keep in mind if this car checks out I'm hoping to get it for less than $500 so it's gonna be far from perfect But with that said I want to find something where if there's broken parts those parts are cheap and easy to fix Hey, I can't believe it's really you How's it going? My name is Jensen by the way, and this is my 93 donnatella so Just give you a quick run-through run around about you know any problems that it has so currently the major issue is the blown head gasket big problem a lot of smoke out the tailpipe the control arm it doesn t Replacing here and there you're gonna hear a squeak or two cool features about the car the top does come off the back window rolls down so it'll be a great for a summer car the Back you got a dinner to you know a little bodywork here.
Nothing pro like you can't handle really okay? Can you pop the hood yeah man no problem? Let me show you thanks and let's see what we got now at first glance. This doesn't look that great, but in reality It's just some chipping off paint. Maybe a little bit of surface rust. It's really not that bad. Especially after we clean it What we don't want to see is any major rust anything that goes into the frame. I don't see any of that He said he has a new battery in there That's good. Looking around looks like we have a new alternator down there at least a newer one right here It says we had a timing belt changed at one hundred eighty-five thousand miles so twenty thousand miles ago new belt And hopefully new water pump the motor mount here looks pretty new right where my hand is should be a power steering pump But there isn't so that means that this is a non power steering car which is kind of cool It's small enough, but overall this looks pretty good Just needs a little bit of cleaning we need to replace that head gasket And he did say he used that head gasket sealer in the radiator so we need a new radiator But the best part about this car parts are so cheap brand new radiator forty bucks head gasket with head bolts and all the other Gaskets he need 50 bucks.
I did a bunch of research, and it makes sense Why kids like to buy Honda's for the first car parts are cheap easy to find and he could customize easily? Can you start her up? One thing that's a crystal clear indicator that you have a head gasket Leak is check out the radiator open the radiator cap when the engines cold and look at this you can see that smoke puffing out That's a classic head gasket sign Also if we take the oil cap off you can see underneath It's frothy like it has a head gasket leak And it doesn't look like we have any blow-by Which is good that means the Rings are still good after two hundred thousand miles am I able to take her for a quick spin I know we can't drive it long, but just something like right around the block okay? Now this is my first time driving a Honda and while that shifter feels horrible I can't even tell if it's in gear I think that's first and Look at the cloud of smoke coming out of the exhaust so this has to be done real quick So it doesn't overheat, and I just need to get a feel for the car and holy smokes no power steering takes a lot of muscle to turn the wheel but it does have a good turning radius since it's Small and because it's small you should also get about 40 miles a gallon which is awesome I'm able to ship through all the gears and the suspension feels firm and doesn't flow it around so it's a quick test drive But we now know the suspension brakes and transmission are good which is important? So now how hard is it to take the top down? So what you want to do is reach your hand on there right here See the little button right there push it towards the back of the car grab the lever as you're holding that button push it outwards oh Man, that is so easy look at that the top is off How cool is that now? Can you show me how to roll down that rear window it comes down right yeah bottom right there? And look at that this targa top is actually how the car got its name Del Sol which in Spanish means of the Sun that is such a cool feature They did a good job with that that is neat It's also a good idea to check in the trunk, so we'll pop that open and see what we got in here now We just want to make sure spares in here and sometimes There's some good information left in the trunk So this is all messed up so we got our spare and also have a bunch of junk looks like there's an extra belt a bunch of garbage down here and Check this out.
This is actually useful These are bushings says right in there made in Japan so I think these are Honda, om bushings, which are not only expensive bushings But good bushing also looks like we have some ball joints. Oh, this is good. This is for the interior this piece was missing That's actually helpful, and oh another piece from the interior that was missing beautiful And then finally I just want to look back here behind here where the quarter panel is so that's definitely a good sign you could See the welded body panel in here So they must have cut out the rust welded in a new piece of metal and then finished it with bondo And it just didn't do a great job with the bondo work, but there's no rust back behind this panel Which is good, and this car is looking pretty good So interior wise the car is in decent shape I'd say the weak spot is right here This looks really bad with that cover missing But that's actually not too bad because we found this inside the trunk so clean that up fit it in Properly and that looks a lot better so the interior checks out the essentials all work Just needs a little bit of cleaning and TLC in here And I think we can get this interior to look real nice now with that being said we need a head gasket The front suspension needs work the shifter is vague, and we need to do bodywork all inexpensive fixes So what I'm thinking this car is worth is three to four hundred dollars I'm gonna offer him three go up to 400 max the car itself in good condition We could probably get $3,000 for especially since it's a stick shift, so that's my game plan Let's go talk to Jensen and see what we could do okay, so I do like the car It is pretty cool has that top on it.
That's really neat it is kind of banged up You can see that it definitely needs some suspension work in the front obviously the head gasket now I think $1,000 is too much. I have to fix it up I have to do some work to it what I'd like to offer you what I think the car is worth is $300 and you know I got the trailer trailers ready to go in the back of my truck I'll take it today ready to go 300 cash right now. Yeah, man. I completely understand I know how hard of a work this is gonna be and for the three hundred dollars I'll take him in yeah, you got yourself a deal all right sounds good, man.
Thank you very much Oh, we got ourselves a Dell so how cool is that? Okay? Let's go get this thing loaded up actually Let's first go do some paperwork Let's get the if you could get the title Alright so with the title although titles will be different for each state this will give you a good idea what to look for right? Here in New Jersey. This is where the lien holder would sign that means somebody else owns the car It could be a bank could be the dealer could be another person there would be a stamp here and signatures and there's nothing which means this car is owned outright by Jensen now you want to make sure that the owners information the person who's Selling you the car is the owner so ask him for his driver's License or an ID or something you can see that's his real name Has all his information here, that's his driver's license number I checked it with his driver's license and we're good to go You also want to make sure that he's selling you the exact car so check the VIN number make sure it's the Honda 1993 all good, so that's the basics on checking a title varies from state to state But this looks all good now.
He could sign it over to me, and we could buy the car all right 300 bucks all yours man, thank you very much I Still can't believe it never in a million years Did I think my next car would be a Honda so let's get this car on a trailer? Good get the strap over the front tire and tighten it down, so it won't go anywhere do the same thing to the other side Well, that's it dude. You'll see here on the videos Hopefully so you'll be able to keep tabs on her, and yeah, I appreciate it man. Very nice meeting you Well I'm almost home with no problems at all I was concerned my truck wouldn't tow this but it didn't even feel like I was pulling a car and Since it's dark. We'll unload the car tomorrow It's morning and now to get the car off the trailer and Into my driveway so we can look under the car now I'm testing out this new jack, which will quickly and safely lift the whole car off the ground and this is pretty cool and no matter how you lift up your vehicle you always want to give it a hard shake to make sure it feels solid and It does so we're safe to go under the car and the whole car is lifted up nice and high so we could go inspect Underneath so hopefully we go under here And there's not a lot of rust at all looking over here at the transmission in the oil pan I don't see any leaks which is good, but the first thing I want to check out is the suspension on this side now at the test drive I did see there's a lot of wear on the outside here Which means that there's positive camber which is a suspension issue going under here? Let's check out the suspension positive camber could be caused by worn out ball joints or bushings so to see what the problem is you want to grab a pry bar and Just move the suspension around looking for play and just look at how much this moves now That's enough play to cause that camera issue and lucky for us this is basically a free fix we had the ball joints and the bushings in the trunk already and these are all brand new and Look like high-quality parts So I think this could be a really good video how to install Bushings into control arms and also how to press in ball joints Maybe we could even rebuild the entire front suspension So now let's head to the middle of the car where the shifter is cost I want to check the bushings and just as I thought besides being very rusty There is a ton of play in here, and that's why this feels all loosey goosey when you go to shift Just check out the bushings in here.
They're shot, so hopefully fixing those will fix the vague shifter I'll probably try to remove this and sand it and paint it as well to get all this rust out of here and one thing That just caught my eye check this out. This isn't good check out all this rust here that right There is the carpet so our floor board is rusted this actually doesn't look bad over here This is all solid metal So it looks like we'll just have to cut out this corner right here and weld in a piece of steel and that'll fix that super simple and that's actually a really good video how to fix rusty floor pins and finally checking out the rest of the car the Exhaust is a little rusty, but nothing bad. Just surface rust I mean everything looks good the gas tank looks good the suspension looks good. I really can't complain It's got drum brakes, but we could do a drum to disc conversion.
I'm actually really excited We got ourselves a good car for 300 bucks So I really can't wait to get started Fixing up this car and that is how a project car is born in this case an affordable one? $300 now I couldn't wait. I got super excited so I went out to the parts store And I already got everything we need so the car could be driven safely and reliably so to fix this car It's gonna cost a total of a hundred and fifty dollars leaving us with a grand total of 450 bucks under $500 for a good running car now. This is where I need my subscribers help Yes, you guys I need you comment below and let me know what you want to see done with this car do we want to do a wheeler-dealer Style episode where I buy it Fix it and flip it and we see the profit do we want an individual episode for how to replace the head gasket how to? fix a shifter that's loose how to install ball joints and bushings in your suspension all those videos could get done and we can learn a lot and I could use this cars a daily I mean it does have the top which comes off and it'll be fun to drive around or it could do something crazy We could do a motor swap we could do an amphibious vehicle since this car was less than 500 bucks We could do it 24 hours of lemons endurance racing car There are so many options make sure you comment your ideas below.
I will look at all of them I want to see what you guys have to say just like we did with the drifting project I'm leaving the fit of this car in your hands as always hopefully the video was helpful if it was remember to give it a Thumbs up if you're not a subscriber definitely consider subscribing we've got a lot of cool videos coming up and finally all the tools and products I used in this video are linked in the description so you could easily find them can't wait to see what we're gonna do with this vehicle 3 million subscribers my 300th video and the fate of the car is up to you my subscribers so stay tuned.
