Most used car dealerships get a majority of their inventory from auctions.
I have yet to mention it in any of my posts but I’m an automotive technician at a used car dealership/buy here-pay here dealership. If you are familiar with the business then you know that means I work on a lot of cars that come from auctions.
I also work in a small town that sits on the border to Canada in Northern New York. Right smack in the middle of the salt belt. It can make for a rough life. But that’s a story for another time. Today I wanna tell you about the latest car auction gem that my boss acquired.
I’ll now introduce you to the 2009 Mazda 6 with the big 3.7 6 cylinder engine.
Looks are deceiving, especially with auction cars.
On the outside it’s a beautiful car. Once I started to peel back the layers though, I found this Mazda had some serious issues.
My first clue that there was a problem was the fact that the car overheated very quickly after start up. My first thought is obviously head gasket because again, this is an auction vehicle.
The boss is a used car dealer, so cheap fixes are his favorite.
The boss is a used car dealer though, so naturally he wants to check all of the cheap stuff first. Understandable. You would be surprised how many times it does end up being a small issue causing major symptoms.
First thing I do is open the coolant reservoir cap on this Mazda 6 and immediately I’m met with another symptom that the car has a failed head gasket.
It looked like a blue raspberry slushee was poured directly into the coolant. It took me a fraction of a second to come to the conclusion someone had ran the mythical Blue Devil through this system.
Again I’m back to my original theory that the head gasket failed in this 3.7 liter Mazda 6.