hello everyone, I've been looking at flipping cars that have certain issues about them that allow for a lot of profit. The two I've seen be the best is blown head gaskets and bad alternators. Are there any certain things that I should watch out for when trying to buy those types of cars? Also, if I do get one with a bad head gasket, I'm wondering how much more difficult it is to get one with a V style engine.
Noone is going to sell a car for cheap just because it has a bad alternator, so you wont have any luck there.
Yeah an inline engine is easier to get to atleast compared to a V configuration engine.
To be honest, I don't think this is a good idea. If the head gasket is blown odds are other components are on their way out too, and you dont know what else got damaged due to the blown head gasket. Warped heads, bearing damage, etc. And given the nature of the question, I'm assuming you don't have much experience working on cars (no disrespect intended). Replacing a head gasket is a dreaded task for a reason, many steps involved and you can destroy an engine within 5 seconds if done incorrectly.
I'm with @nta98 on this one. Head gaskets are usually inexpensive parts, but the labor is significant. That's why head gaskets are commonly a terminal problem; they are so expensive to fix that the labor cost often exceeds the value of the car. And it would be easy to replace the gasket on an older car only to find there are other fatal problems.
That said, you are correct that there are a lot of cars out there with blown head gaskets that otherwise do have some value, and if you were able to fix them cheaply enough there could be some money to be made. But the only way it works is if you do the work yourself or with some kind of business partner (maybe a mechanic you know who has all the tools and wants to make some money on the side). If you pay someone else to do the repairs that will eat all your profits.
There are a lot of threads in the archives (see the search bar above) about flipping cars. Mostly, to make it work you have to know more about the car than both the buyer and seller.
If that's something you want to do, I would start by binge watching some of Scotty's old videos. Lots of good DIY repair advice. Then I would look at ChrisFix youtube channel.
PS: Be aware that in flipping cars, a certain % of them will not work out, and even can be a total loss. Make sure you have the cash reserves in case you have to eat one.
Welcome new member!
Realize that when flipping cars, you're always risking ending up with a that's not feasible to repair.
Particularly I would not touch anything Hyundai/Kia GDi, VW/Audi TSI/TFSI, and definitely not Chevy 1.4Ts, any small EcoBoost engines, and any dual clutches - those are the things you want to AVOID.
Also avoid cars with AC issues.
Also in a lot of cases, the cars that get sold because of mechanical issues tend to be absolute rat's nests.
And it's very rare for a car to have a head gasket failure at the kind of milage where you can flip the car for a good price, so usually there's much more to investigate.
And even then, if it's really just a head gasket - you have to buy the car for real cheap and hope that nothing else is broken - IF you're not going to perform the repair DIY, and unless you're a professional, most things you should NOT do DIY.
Usually it's bodyshops that do this when they're not busy (well at least outside of the US), I know a great guy who owns a bodyshop and he makes huge profits buying cars in poor shape (either crashed, damaged, or just in very poor esthetic condition), repairs them very cheaply (bondo, gluing together plastics, Chinese stamp metal components, Chinese or used everything, etc.), putting on Chinese tries, on fancier older cars even stuff like cheap Chinese reverse sensors and hub caps, buffs out paint (with very cheap materials) and sells it as a "perfect condition" car and they're able to restore them in a few hours - and quite honestly, having looked at a car he restored for a friend, it was great and many thousands of miles later, it works great.
Also in his case, since he owns land, and has labor he pays for anyway, in his case this business benefits greatly from scale - he really likes flipping the (again, outside of the US) Hyundai i20 (1st generation, they're easy to work, have very cheap parts, are common, on and have good enough resale value) and he has quite a few cars deemed too far gone to repair and he guts them for parts (engines, transmissions, even entire AC loops, window regulators, radio head-units,...) and has a pile of common cheap Chinese replacement cars (in the case of that car, window buttons, door speakers, and the antenna assembly, the stuff that always fails on these) - really works well on that scale.
I do NOT think this would be very profitable on a small scale without the skills of a bodyshop and a mechanic.
So... unless you're mechanically inclined, I would not recommend doing that.
If you can perform the repairs on your own, then sure why not.
Friends don't let friends buy from flippers.
