A few months back I hired Walt's Hot Rod Shop to do a prepurchase inspection on a vintage car I was buying in the area. He was amicable on the phone, easy to talk to, his price for the inspection seemed about average for the market, and I thought based on the five star review here I could trust his expertise.
Honestly, I have no idea what he or his staff did during this prepurchase inspection.
The ""well restored, well painted"" car I purchased showed up at my door quite the opposite. The paint was amateur at best, the chrome was pitting, The engine is going to need a complete rebuild due to excessive blowby likely caused by fried piston rings, the radiator had visible damage, every bushing in the pedals and the tranmission is broken resulting in wobbly pedals and sloppy shifting, the transmission will need a full rebuild, the headlights flicker, the alternator is bad, the battery was leaking and almost dead, the carb will need a full rebuild, the lst goes on and on.
They even missed simple stuff that was wrong, such as the brake lights not working, no reverse lights at all, etc.
I put a lot of money into purchasing this car, thinking it was one that wouldn't need anything done -- something the prepurchase inspection confirmed.
The truth was obviously quite different.
To Walt's credit, he cut me a check to refund my money for the prepurchase inspection once I contacted him. But I'm still saddled with a car that is going to cost me thousands of dollars to complete as it was advertised, and hundreds of my hours of free time to redo everything that was poorly done. He was apologetic on the phone and the check was relatively promptly recieved, but the end result is that I have a money pit that I agreed to purchase based on the results of his ""work"" on the prepurchase inspection. Unfortunately, their work was not satisfactory nor can I recommend them to anyone.
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