Pre-Purchase Car Inspection
At Your Location in ~30 Min

You found a used car on Marketplace, Kijiji, or a dealer lot. The photos look clean, the seller sounds honest, and the price is good enough to make you nervous. Before any money changes hands, get someone on your side under the hood. iFAST Roadside Assistance brings the inspection to the car — a private seller's driveway in Scarborough, a dealership lot in Ajax, a condo parking garage in North York. You don't have to talk the seller into driving anywhere, which is the step where most buyers give up and just hope for the best.

A certified mobile mechanic meets you at the vehicle, works through it end to end, plugs in a diagnostic scanner, and then walks you through exactly what he found in plain English — what's fine, what needs attention soon, and what should make you walk away. You hear it standing at the car, while you still have every option open.

This is the same checklist we bring to every pre-purchase call, whether the car is a $4,000 commuter or a $40,000 SUV:

• Engine Start-Up & Idle Behaviour: How it starts cold, how it idles, what it sounds like, and whether anything is smoking, ticking, or leaking.
• OBD Diagnostic Scan: We plug in and read the stored and pending trouble codes — including codes a seller may have cleared recently, which is its own red flag.
• Fluids: Oil, coolant, transmission, and brake fluid levels and condition. Burnt transmission fluid or oil mixed with coolant changes the whole conversation.
• Battery & Charging System: Battery health and alternator output, so a no-start two weeks after purchase isn't your first surprise.
• Brakes: Pad and rotor condition, and how the car behaves stopping — often the single biggest "it needs work immediately" item on a used car.
• Tires & Suspension: Tread depth, age, uneven wear patterns that point to alignment or suspension problems, plus shocks, struts, and bushings.
• Lights & Electrical: Headlights, signals, brake lights, dash warning lamps, and whether any of them have been disabled to hide a fault.
• Signs of Past Accident Repair: Mismatched paint, overspray, uneven panel gaps, replaced or wrinkled body panels, and frame-rail evidence that doesn't match what the seller told you.

A twenty-minute test drive around the seller's neighbourhood tells you the car moves and the radio works. It does not tell you any of this:

1. Trouble Codes Cleared Right Before You Arrived

Disconnect the battery or plug in a $20 scanner and the check-engine light goes out for a while. It comes back. Our scan reads pending codes and readiness monitors, which is how a recently-cleared fault gives itself away.

2. Repair Bills That Are Weeks Away

Brakes at 15% and tires at the wear bars aren't "problems" on a test drive — the car drives fine. They're a bill that lands the month after you buy. Knowing about them before you pay is either a negotiation or a reason to keep looking.

3. Accident Repair Nobody Mentioned

Not every repaired car is a bad car, but you deserve to know. Paint that doesn't match under daylight, panel gaps that drift, fresh undercoating in one spot — a mechanic sees these in minutes and a buyer almost never does.

4. Leaks That Only Show On a Hoist — or On the Seller's Driveway

We look where the car has been parked, not just at the car. A clean engine bay over a stained driveway is a story worth asking about.

We are not the seller, we are not the dealership's shop, and we don't get paid more if you buy the car. That's the entire value of the service. Our mechanic's only job is to tell you what's actually in front of you — including, more than once, "don't buy this one."

We work across the whole Greater Toronto Area, with our fastest availability in the East GTA — Scarborough, Pickering, Ajax, Whitby, and Oshawa. Tell us where the car is and when the seller is free, and we'll meet you there.

And because we're a roadside company first, the number you call for the inspection is the same one that answers at 2 a.m. if that new-to-you car ever leaves you stranded — boosts, flat tires, lockouts, and towing.

Want to see how this plays out in practice? Read how an Ajax buyer had us inspect a used car before she paid for it — a real customer, in her own words.

Spend a little before you buy, or a lot after. Call +1 437-215-3468 and we'll quote you on the spot.