Auction Crown Vic police mistake?

Welcome to Photomike's garage and yes, I have another

police

interceptor. Oh man, has it been a long time? I hope you can hear me because it's very windy right now. You can see how the wind moves. Oh, we have a rainbow right now anyway. because of greed the federal government has closed their

auction

of all

police

cars but now they are open and look right behind me that's right there I have a 2011 Crown Vic police interceptor police car yeah very Excited, it's been a long time. Anyway it's been a long time so I'm excited to show you this car but first I'm going to drive it home it's mine now I'm going to drive it home and then we'll go see what I have.

It's raining. It's not the best day to buy a cough suppressant, okay, let's speed up a little here one two three oh, okay, okay, okay, okay, I've got the car at home and now I can take my time and just look what I do. I have it here which looks good, but let's take a closer look and I'm also going to point out some problems that you can look for if you have a chance to see the car at

auction

before you make a bid. In my particular case, the Canadian government says you can't look at the car, you can't drive it, you can't even come to the auction site before you have to bid on the car and that of course is because of covid 19.

So it does. incredibly risky, you're basically going off a bunch of photos and what the report says in the description and then you get an offer for the car, so you're taking a terrible risk, that's why every time you pick up the car it's like the lottery, did I win or lose, let's find out, so I'm going to evaluate the car by tearing off the front, doing the exterior, then the interior, and of course, if you have a more enlightened auction house, if your government. If you're in a state or federal government, if they let you look at the car, maybe turn it on, then of course here are some tips to help you decide if the car is worth it, whether you should bid on it or not. a little bit of experience with these cars, I'm by no means a mechanic, I'm not an expert, I have some experience, so I'm going to share that with you today, so we start with the front, I noticed right away that the bumper fits.

It's good. , many times when your cars get hit in the front the bumpers never fit properly in this place, they are out or this one is fine which means it was repaired well or it didn't have any major accident that you can see on this moment. that I'm going to have to replace these side marker lights, turn signal lights, there's actually no side marker lights, they're broken and they put tape on the bottom here to try to keep the water out and sometimes, That tape is missing, in which case water is going to get inside, so if they're okay, put some duct tape on.

These are bad. I'm going to replace them now. If you watch a previous video of mine, you'll notice that the headlights for these Crown Vicks are cheap and easy to use. replace, I'll put a link below for that video. Also, the side markers are cheap and easy to replace and I will make a video on how to do it soon. Okay, this headlight is almost new, this is what they look like when they are new, bright, clear and smooth. The good thing about police departments is that they replace items as they wear out, so even though this car is cheap, it can be maintained very well because it is maintained by the police department and they allow a lot of things to happen as if you had rusty wheels.

They don't care too much here, but the brakes, I guarantee the brakes will be fine and there are ways to check them, but first of all let's finish with the front. So on this car you can see it had a front push bar and the mounting tabs go through the bumper here and they always leave a little bit of rust, this will actually come off with a little scrubbing. You can actually remove most of this. the car doesn't have the license plate bracket, no big deal, you can get them for 15 on ebay and this is where the bottom bracket for the push bar was mounted, so there are some marks here too, that's not big deal anyway.

The push bars used here are satin push bars and don't require any holes in the bumper here, they mount right over here so it's a better way to go. This headlight is not good, it must be replaced. I will do that. Replace this side marker is also cracked. The bumper brackets need to be replaced here, nice, so the front of this car looks good. The hood lines are all good and one of the most important things about any of these corona victims, especially the white ones, is. that the paint peels off like there's no tomorrow, it's very rare to find a corona victim, especially a white one that doesn't have peeling paint, because your paint stinks, so so far this one doesn't have peeling paint, I think it looks good.

It even has a little shine, not bad at all, so let's check the tires you want to check to make sure the tread wear is even. You also want to make sure it has good tread. Every police car I've ever bought has them. They had good tread on the tires, they changed them regularly. I have never had one that was almost worn out so they are always good and tread wear is even rusty rims don't mean anything, paint them yourself it's easy to do. let's check the brakes if we can okay I've got my flashlight and I can see the disc is brand new and that's pretty common you can put your hand in there let's see if I can get your finger in there you can feel there's almost okay there's no lip from the wear surfaces to the top of the disc, there is no lip to indicate where, so these are practically new discs, which is quite common and I can tell by I don't know if you can see it of course.

You can't see it, but the clearance from where the pad is in relation to its mounting point is good, so these pads at least on the outside have a lot of meat. Another common area of ​​rust is here due to stone throwing. up you can send paint and then sometimes you get rust here so this is extremely minor no big deal you can touch this up with a little bit of white paint if you want but some of them are in really bad shape but this one en Well, and of course, while we're out front, there's another important thing you should do if you're at an auction and that's get on your hands and knees. and you take a look down here and what you're seeing are all the radiators that this car has, it has quite a few radiators, heavy things, all that, you have your air conditioning condenser here, radiator, you have your normal radiator, you have your cooler radiator of oil I think there are about three or four, but the oil cooler radiator may be leaking and several of the other raiders may be leaking and if they do, there will be a buildup of dirt and dark marks.

Dark marks. You are looking for anything. dark uh and also a buildup of dust and dirt that would mean you have a leak, this one is clean, good, going around the outside, two, okay, sorry too, going around the outside, also looking for cracks in the windshield, this one has nothing good. shape then we go to the side door oh first of all the side mirrors very often have their covers missing again. You can get them on eBay and they just fit with no problem, they are missing the covers because they had the lights here and they just take it off when the auction goes up.

This one has the covers. That's good. I also want to make one more comment about the exterior of this car. They remove all the stickers from all the rcmp stickers here in Canada mean. the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, but they still remove the decals or whatever from the car, but they always leave the reflective tape on the reflective tape that goes up the side of the car and over the doors, up to the side of the car and on Sometimes little bits are missing like here, so you might be tempted, you might be tempted, well, I'll take this reflective tape off, it's all stuck together, I'll take it off, don't do it, I've done it.

I've tried to do it before, I mean I've done it before and what happens is you use a heat gun and you peel it off and yes it will come off but it will take little bits of white paint and it's hell. from a job, so I recommend that you leave it on, leave it back on the side of the car, you have molding on the rear passenger door but not on the driver's door or the other side, as well as the reason for that is because here in canada we have a big rcmp decal that goes right here i think it has a beaver with crossed swords or something but we have a big decal anyway so they don't have the trim so i thought well, that doesn't It doesn't look good, you don't have molding, let's clean it up.

I'm going to take this molding off, so I turned on my heat gun, take it off, sure enough, it just has glue on it, you can scrape the glue off, but when I get here there's a hole in the door right here, a hole about this big here, so I had You have to put some tape over that hole after you remove it, so what I recommend, just like the tape, leave the molding, just leave it, okay, we're in the back. wheel now again check the brakes the same way you did the front and again this one has a little bit of lift but it's not too bad, that's pretty good oh can you hear a police car passing by?

Okay, we're still on the side that we're not done yet, you have to kneel down again and take a look under here, one more area to check is right there, that's the oil pan of the car, you don't want to see any big leaks in that moment. we have the automatic transmission pan underneath so what you're looking for is no major leaks, a little minor leak is no big deal but you don't want major leaks or major oil coming out of anything back here and that's something there what to look at and of course I forgot, when you look at the front to see the oil leaks under the radiators, you also look for damage because these cars, as you know from watching all the Hollywood movies, go over sidewalks and everything else, and the damage can often be to the radiators which are right under the chin here so you have to look for damage there and when they go over the curb and I speak from personal experience it's not like I've driven a police car over a sidewalk, of course, but I've had cars that have gone over sidewalks and usually what happens is it gets damaged in the front and it gets damaged here and it gets damaged here that's the catalytic converter, it has one on each side this is where the curb will hit when it bounces So if you go around a curve you will have a dented catalytic converter right there so you have to look for it so I found out that sometimes you get an exhaust noise coming from under the car and is often a loose catalyst. converter material inside because it's dented from going over the curb, okay, we're in the back of the car, we're looking for trunk misalignment, which on this car is fine, we're also looking for cracks or broken taillights , this one too Looks pretty good and a lot of the rcmp cars have an antenna here with a hole, this one doesn't which is good it just has holes on the top of the car where you can find white plugs and if I have the link, We'll put it under white plugs which will make everything look a lot better here with those holes, then we look under the car again and look for even tread wear on the rear as well and it usually looks good for any leaks or anything else, it's okay, this rear bumper has all of its fixing points still in good condition, which means that it hasn't been hit or at least it has been properly repaired and yes, this one looks pretty good on the surface. the way police cars have done it. a true dual exhaust from the engine to the rear, so far I am very happy with the paint and body quality on this car, some scratches, a lot of this will come out with a little polishing, a lot of the scratches just came out, I have a little rust spot here, a couple of holes where the Ford emblem was, you can buy a new one and just put it back on and oh look what we have here, I noticed this in the photos and I'm completely fine with this, this is something quite common that you have.

It got a little close to some barrier or something and scraped the side of the car and that's caused a little rust. We'll have to be able to sand this down and then repaint it, and it's just not worth going to a body shop to fix. This is pretty minor so it's a small issue with this car, so other than that this car's side is pretty good, no dents or major issues. This car is very good, but it usually has a lot of dents and scratches here, not on this door, but right on this door, so that often causes a big problem.

If you want to look good, this car is in good condition, I guess this is when they arrest people, this is where they hit them against the car, something like that. Okay, so far I'm pretty satisfied with the exterior ofthis car. It's actually not bad at all, so far I'm winning, but now let's look at the engine, one more thing: It's actually a hole they had for the outside mounted search light and sometimes they look Bad, there's not much you can do. do it, but in my experience they don't leak, although it looks like water is going to go right in, there is another rubber seal on the inside of the door and they are generally well made and don't leak.

You really don't have to worry about that and of course if you ever want to get an exterior spotlight you're all set if you're an auction. Don't start the engine yet, that's not the first thing you do, the first thing you should do is look the engine before starting it. You should also worry about the hood struts, they are often weak as you can see, so if you don't want to get decapitated, bring a stick with you or someone to hold it while you look at the engine. Well what I have noticed at least with the rcmp is that they keep the engines pretty clean.

I've seen a lot of civilian cars that are a lot worse than this one, it's actually pretty clean which is pretty good so wow I have a new battery which is great so what you need to do is look for leaks and check all the The fluid levels you can see are right through the clear here you can see that's good, you also want to open the lid while the vehicle is not hot of course and what you're looking for is any sludge you want the fluid to be clear . and on Fords it's some kind of reddish liquid, so yeah, this is clear, so there's probably no head gasket leak and you want to check the oil.

Let's check the oil here. They change the oil regularly now, so it's pretty rare to get it. Dirty oil, but I don't know if you can see it, but that oil is low, it's low, okay, there you go, this one is a little low, I'm not sure why, but that's something we need to worry about, I don't know, okay, another one. What I have, I have other videos on how to look for the different things, but you also look for rusty steering column parts. This is all exposed to the elements, so sometimes it rusts right here, I don't know if you can see that. where I'm shining my light so if it's rusty you could have a problem, this one doesn't look too bad and the other thing to watch out for is leaks from the plastic, yes it's a plastic manifold, sometimes a leak occurs here crack just on the front right. here or here you can sometimes see a little bit of fluid leaking which is a potential problem with these cars, however Ford, sorry, however the rcmp often replaces these manifolds as they age so this one doesn't leak so that's good too.

It appears to have a relatively new alternator that I often see replaced. You can also check the belt and look for cracks or abnormal wear. This one looks good, so so far everything looks good. Very good, the engine looks good. Let's boot it up and listen. When it starts cold let's get started it starts fine there is just a slight knock that goes away very quickly looking for any crank wobble be sure to keep your hands off the belt to look for any crank wobble you are looking for. well and in this kind of weather the revs go down very fast as you can see and you can hear well so this is what you want to hear no knocking from deep again but what you hear is just the limited clicking noise of the valvetrain on either head, that's perfectly normal, this engine is fine, that's fine, another thing you want to do while the engine is running is run it through the gears, old style, column shift, gear shift on these things I love neutral reverse so it goes in pretty quick no unusual noises so that's all you can do to test the transmission on these cars because you can't drive them so that's what best you can do.

This one looks good and of course it doesn't have engine lights or airbag lights or anything else which makes this a really good find because sometimes you have that and then you don't know what's wrong and sometimes you have the backup light. airbag anyway no lights and this car has 178,000 miles on it, remember? I'm in Canada so we do things in kilometers and if you want to change that to mileage, just press and hold and it will change to mileage like this, so now I know it has 110,000 miles. so I would consider the mileage to be pretty low, don't you think?

However, there is a journey. Oh, look at this, that's how many hours of engine idling there are in this car. 3786 in my experience, that's not bad at all. A lot of them have 5,000. I even had a car that had over 10,000 on it, which is not good, so you want to keep it as low as possible, anything under 5000 um hours of idle time, I think is fine, so while I am inside the car, also when the car is running I operate it. everything, especially the air conditioning, you want to make sure the air conditioning is working, the radio heater wiper switches, the headlight switches, all that type of stuff, it all works on this vehicle.

I always make sure to check the air conditioning because that could be important, but just make sure everything is working, everything is working, this car is not too worn out inside compared to some, all the windows work from the control panel of the driver's side and it's actually pretty dirty in here. I'm disappointed, I'm disappointed, this is really dirty because they normally do a better job cleaning the inside this looks bad this is going to take some work to clean this is just coffee stains and trash everywhere here the seats are all stained that It's not good, the driver's side seat always has this tear which is no big deal, but what is more worrying is the cushion.

You can see that the cushion there, on the passenger side, is well formed. Even it's pretty, even this one, no, it's all lumpy, lumpy here, a big depression here, lumpy here, that means the springs under here could be broken and these seats aren't the most comfortable to begin with and then when you have broken springs it's really quite uncomfortable and unfortunately that's what this one has so I've been driving it and it would be uncomfortable. Great if I could swap them out for Grand Marquis seats or something a little better from maybe another Crown Victoria, but the nice thing about these seats of course is that they are completely and totally adjustable, okay let's take a look at the back, oh no , no, no, no, there is no back seat, there is no back seat, there is no back seat, okay, I already knew that just from the photos.

Usually there's a nice back seat here that isn't even used or a plastic seat they use for prisoners, but this one has nothing. Nilch I'm going to have to find a seat from the wrecking yard to put it here, yeah that's a little problem. I also have a broken handle here, another thing I have to get from the wrecking yard and usually the doors don't work anyway because the prisoners don't want them to escape so the window switches don't work and The door opening mechanism does not work. The window switches, as I have shown in a previous video, the video can be done easily. operational, I'll put a link below to a video where I show how to do that, but anyway, for the door locks and everything else it's a little more complicated, there are rods here that the rcmp remove and you have to get new ones o I have to get old buttons on the register for it to work so that's not good now this particular corona victim has two buttons for the trunk it has one there which is the standard location and it has one here just for the driver, this only works when the car's ignition is on, let's see, here we go and open the truck, okay, this is good, first of all, we have a giant trunk and, most importantly, it comes with the spare, the jack and the hook that holds the spare.

This placement up here is actually a penalty because most of them don't come with spare jacks or anything else. Usually I guess they don't run with it, the police don't do it on the street, and they usually have other gear packed. here it takes up all the space, so they don't have room for the spare, so usually auction

crown

victims don't have a spare, this one does, that's good sometimes the police dismantling department put the police interceptor badges up here, uh, for someone. hold on but in this case there's nothing anyway so the trunk looks good there you go it's an overview of the Crown Vic I just bought at auction and overall I think I did pretty well , is in pretty good condition.

The body is in good condition, there are not many scratches or anything like that. The engine sounds very good. The transmission is good. The interior is in poor condition. I'm going to have to clean a lot. It has a bad seat and the back seat is missing, so there's always something going on. issue you have to work on, I'm not going to discuss the price I pay for this car because it will vary wherever you are, the prices will be different from what I could have paid here and you have to remember that when you buy You are actually buying an unknown amount of the car at auction and although the price may be cheaper than the retail price of these cars, you are taking a huge risk, a huge risk, so you have to appreciate that when you bid on one. of these vehicles um I think I scored on this one I'm going to clean it up I'm going to drive around I'm really happy to be back in a corona vic it's been a while uh yeah, just happy to be in I'm a police interceptor again anyway , so I'm sure there are a few things I forgot to mention in this about police interceptors, but if you have any questions, just write them below.

I will try to answer it the best I can. Keep that in mind, but thanks anyway for seeing the photo of Mike's garage. I'll see you next time.