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Simple maintenance checks and repairs to help sell a car on craigslist or ebay. It's very important to ensure that your car is in as good of shape as possible prior to selling it.
This is because easy repairs such as valve, maf cleaning and oil changes are very simple to do, however they can drive up the price of your vehicle and increase the chance that anyone who see's the car will purchase it.
Every time I check a car to purchase on Craigslist, I check if there is a check engine light, and then I check the oil, coolant, and idle. If the oil is dark and/or has a burning smell, I immediately take it as that the car hasn't been treated well.
Avoid these mistakes by checking the fluids in your vehicle, and getting rid of a bad idle/acceleration.
Ensuring that the coolant is at the normal level and normal color is important as well.
To many sellers worry more about the look of the car such as the paint, tires, and/or interior, but pay little attention to how the car is actually running.
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Hey viewers, this is E36 Fanatic, Stephen here
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And today I'm showing you a video on how to prep your car to sell on either Craigslist or eBay
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Now, I'm not going to go into anything like cleaning your car or cleaning the inside and the outside of it
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because that's some basic obvious stuff that any seller already knows. What I'm going to go into is actually just basically a really cheap way to kind of optimize
0:35
the car's performance and make sure that the motor looks good when your buyer is taking
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a look at the car. Because I'm going to show you a few things that any experienced, knowledgeable buyer of
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a car will want to look at when he's buying your car off of Craigslist or Ebay
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The first and most basic thing to take a look at and potentially change is your air filter
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which on this BMW E36 is right here. It's extremely easily accessible on any car really
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It might not be the exact same on yours. But you know, just take a look at it and inspect it and see if it's got a lot of gunk in it
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and it's discolored. I say that this is the first thing to take a look at because typically when these air filters get real trashed and gooked up over time, it'll mess with your airflow and it can cause a rough idle
1:35
So that is a very, very simple, easy fix if that's an issue
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All right, and here is your second thing to take a look at if you're trying to sell a car
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And this is your mass airflow sensor. Mass airflow sensors are always going to be right around the air box, the throttle body
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area and they are an extremely important component of your car and they are extremely easy to service
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So, on this mass airflow sensor it just has two screws actually holding it in
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You pop that out and then you've got the mass airflow sensor is typically two little wires
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and all you do is you take mass airflow sensor cleaner and clean those those wires never touch a mass airflow sensor the actual wires just spritz it with this stuff that potentially clean up your idle and your
2:30
airflow if you're having any issues now the third thing you're going to want to take a look at is
2:35
your spark plug spark plugs are very basic important component of your vehicle and you're
2:41
You're going to want to take a look at to see how gunked up they are
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If they're in need of service, go ahead and replace them. Typically spark plugs are very cheap
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Once you replace those, if they were gunked up before, your motor will sound a lot better
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when you first start it off. The next thing that you're going to want to take a look at and clean is your idle control valve
3:05
It's a very important part of your car. It controls the airflow going into your intake manifold during idle, and over time they get
3:15
very gooked up with carbon, and they often don't work properly or work a lot less than
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optimal later in their lifespan. A quick cleaning of the valve can really do make a difference on that auto control valve
3:29
Now in this Ford Ranger, the idle control valve as you can see is extremely easily accessible
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and takes no more than about five minutes max to take off these bolts right here remove the
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idle control valve and spritz it down with carb cleaner the uh the valve area it's very easy to do
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and you'll you can notice an immediate difference afterwards now on this bmw e36 unfortunately the
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idle control valve is much more difficult to reach it's actually underneath the intake manifold right
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here you have to pull all this so in that case i would say leave it don't even mess around with
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you trying to sell it but if it's if the auto control valve is easily accessible like on the
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truck go ahead and clean it just for example here's the valve inside of here and uh here's
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this carbon choke cleaner that i like using to clean auto control valves now if you got your uh
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your ICV right here. Just spritz it real good or just let it soak in there overnight
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And then after that just let it dry out and then pop it right back on Another extremely important but often overlooked part of your car to take a look at when you trying to sell it is to take
4:49
a look and check your oil. You would be amazed how many times I've taken a look at cars on
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Craigslist and the first thing most buyers do when they're looking at a car on Craigslist
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is they check the oil because you can really get a good gauge of how that car has been
5:08
treated by checking the oil. If it's real dirty and black and hasn't been changed in a long time, then the buyer is
5:15
going to assume that you haven't been taking care of the car. But if it's real clean and looks like it's sticking to its maintenance schedule, that's
5:24
going to make your car more attractive to that buyer. So obviously, you know, check your oil
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Very simple. This car right here is actually about due for an oil change really
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But see this is how oil will look on a regular maintenance schedule
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I've seen oil that's straight black that just hasn't been changed. And you know when somebody's looking at your car, they're not going to want to buy the
5:54
thing or going to want to pay a lot lower price. your oils hasn't been changed at all. So here's another thing to take a look at. If you see
6:04
this right here and see that brown color, now you would first assume that that might
6:10
be some oil or maybe some power steering fluid. However, this is actually coolant. Now it's
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tinted brown not because it's got a blown head gasket and it's got oil in it, but because
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this is a cast iron block motor on this truck and it's an older truck. So over time these
6:32
cast iron block motors, if you don't replace the coolant, they start actually creating rust
6:39
and you get these rust bits and this rust color in your coolant. Now if you're selling
6:45
a vehicle that's got a cast iron block, take a look at your coolant and take a look to
6:50
see if it got this brown rusty color in it If it does it would be strongly advisable to go ahead and flush it and bring back that green color to it because most buyers on Craigslist know a little bit about cars and if a buyer sees
7:08
the coolant that's just covered in rust, they're going to wonder what's wrong with your car
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what's wrong with your vehicle. So what I do to flush it out is just, you know, there's always a radiator flush cap
7:23
at the bottom of the radiator, just use that to flush out all that nasty coolant and just
7:29
continuously flush it with water for a day or two if it's very bad. Just fill it up and
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flush it back out. And then once that's done, you got all the rust out, fill it back up
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with 50-50 and then you'll just have a good looking coolant system when you're selling
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the vehicle. On the BMW Ione, it doesn't have a cast iron block, so I don't have to worry
7:52
about this rust color because it's an aluminum block. But even then, you still want to make
7:58
sure that your coolant's at the regular normal level when you're selling a vehicle
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When I was a student in college, my professors used to tell me that a lawyer never asks questions
8:10
that he doesn't already know the answer to. And you should apply the same kind of thinking
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when you're selling a vehicle. You don't want any surprises to happen when a buyer comes
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down to take a look at the vehicle and suddenly he's commenting on, well, your oil's really
8:30
low and black or you don't have any coolant in the car or why is the car idling very rough
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You don't want any surprises like that. So these little things that I've mentioned here
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only add up to a maximum of about $80-$100 for spark plugs and air filter and any sort
8:51
of sprays for your mass air flow sensor or your ICV. But that combination of small little fixes and cleanings can really make or break a sale
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or help you drive your price up for a vehicle when you're trying to sell it
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you want it running as smoothly and look as good as possible. So I hope this video helped y'all
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If it did, please like, comment, and subscribe and y'all have a good one
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