How to spot accident repairs, flood damage and mileage tampering

Accident repairs

What you can see

• Paint. Look along the car in daylight. Repainted panels can have a slightly different colour, orange-peel texture or dust specks in the clear coat.
• Overspray. Paint on rubber seals, plastic trim, badges or inside door shuts.
• Panel gaps. Gaps that are wider on one side than the other, especially around the bonnet, headlights and doors.
• Bolts. Scratched paint on the bolts that hold the wings, bonnet and doors means they have been off.
• Glass dates. Every window has a small date stamp. One that is newer than the rest has been replaced, sometimes for a reason.

What needs tools

• Paint thickness. A gauge measures paint in microns. Factory paint is fairly even across a car. A panel reading much higher than the others has usually been repainted, and very high readings can mean filler underneath. In our example report, original panels read around 100 to 120 microns and the repainted ones over 200.
• Underneath. On ramps you can see straightened chassis rails, fresh welds, replaced crash bars and new parts next to old ones.
• Airbag faults. A scan of the airbag module can show stored crash data or faults, even if the warning light is off.

Flood damage

Flood cars are a real risk in the UAE, both from local storms and from flooded cars imported after hurricanes abroad. Water damage can take months to show as electrical faults.

• Smell. A musty, damp smell, or heavy air freshener covering one.
• Carpets and seats. Damp or new carpets in an older car, water stains, and silt or sand under the seats and in the spare wheel well.
• Rust where it should not be. Seat rails, pedal boxes, seat belt mechanisms and screws under the dashboard.
• Lights. Condensation or a water line inside headlights and tail lights.
• Electrics. Random warning lights, windows or locks that misbehave, and many modules with stored communication faults on a scan.

Mileage tampering

Rolling back the odometer is cheap to do and adds thousands to a car's price. Look for a story that does not add up.

• Wear against kilometres. A shiny steering wheel, worn pedal rubbers, a sagging driver's seat bolster or worn gear knob on a car showing low mileage.
• Service records. The kilometres on each invoice should rise steadily. A later record with lower mileage is a red flag.
• Other modules. On many cars, other computer modules also store mileage. A scan can sometimes show a figure that does not match the dashboard.
• Overseas history. For imports, a history report by VIN can show mileage recorded abroad.

When to walk away

Some findings are not a negotiation, they are a reason to leave. In our reports, structural repair, flood damage, an odometer mismatch or a VIN that does not match the paperwork means WALK AWAY, whatever the price. See how the verdict works.