Buyer Beware, Go somewhere else.
TLDR; Purchased a pickup that was supposed to have been inspected and had a lift professionally installed but it ended up being a dangerous death trap that someone threw together and failed to do proper maintenance on. The owner called me, convinced me to take the review down, and then ghosted me.
In early August of 2023, I purchased a 1988 Ford F-250 diesel from Auto Magic. They claimed that their in-house had given it the once over and had a 4-inch lift professionally installed. I do understand that it was a 35-year-old pickup, and it was possible some issues would not be obvious on a typical inspection, but they claimed their mechanic was great and went on about integrity and honesty. The body was in great shape and besides the oil cooler leak, which is typical, the truck seemed to be mechanically sound. They all seemed like nice enough folks, and Jeremy showed me their sales for the month, an impressive 45 or so vehicles for a lot that holds 60 or so cars. The Google page for the dealership, at the time, had a 4.9 out of 5 stars on Google, and I read through a fair few of them, and they didn't seem to be obviously fake. Now, that is down to 4.1 stars, which does raise some interesting questions.
I agreed with them that they would lower the price by a few thousand and I would have the repairs disclosed repairs, oil cooler leak, repaired at my mechanic since they were quite busy. Seemed like a good enough deal. I honestly should have known better, but I decided not to go with my gut. Once I took the truck to my mechanic, they identified numerous issues, some extremely dangerous. I will list them in order of severity. First, the U-bolts for the front suspension were too long and ran out of thread before they were tight; all eight nuts on all the U-bolts were barely torqued and were nearly finger-tight (who checks that on a walk-around? I will now!) The lift kit was improperly installed, they had not installed the proper drop Pittman arm and one of the front blocks was in backwards. All the issues with the lift caused the alignment to walk over to the passenger side by about 25 degrees in just 30 miles of driving, which led me to park it until the mechanic could get to it, not to mention the issues with bump steering with the Pittman arm. They also failed to install the included re-enforcement brackets included with the lift kit. Downright dangerous to say the least.
Furthermore, the rear end seals were shot and needed to be replaced, rear wheel bearings needed to be replaced, rear brakes were shot and had been tightened down so far that they were dangerous under heaving braking, brake lines on all four tires needed to be replaced. Some of these things I noticed and should have taken as a sign that whoever did the work did a lousy job, but I figured it was simply that they adjusted the drums wrong, and that could be corrected relatively easily. The brake lines were simple enough to replace. I also just had to replace the glow plug solenoids as they were not working at all, but during the warm temperatures, it wasn't immediately apparent, and it only started up once it got into the 40s this fall.
The owner did call me back in August and was very upset with me that I had not approached him to rectify the situation prior to writing a review. I was a bit surprised at that given that it's a used car dealership, but he seemed genuinely interested in rectifying the situation and I agreed I should have spoken to him first about this. I agreed to take the first review down. It's been about two months, and I have attempted to contact him at least a dozen times with no answer or call back. I tried to contact him one last time on Monday of this week and I am posting this review on Thursday morning. I would be happy to change it if we could work something out. I look forward to hearing from you, Dan. Review cross-posted on Facebook, Yelp, Google, Bing, Auto Trader, and anywhere else I find a place to do so. read more