Rusty steering wheel axle

Here in the UK flood damaged vehicles are written off and put on a register as a category N write off. They can be repaired and sold on, but will show up on a vehicle check such as HPI and the seller must inform a buyer that the vehicle has been written off and it should be sold at a much lesser price to reflect this.

 

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In the US such a vehicle would be likely be considered totaled for insurance purposes and an a salvage title would be issued — making it impossible to sell for for $18k even if restored to a very high visual quality.

Unless of course, the game were played with the title.

This is not a situation where I would rely on the honor of the dealer to make things right, or accept the notion that all sales ar simply “as is” with no legal recourse.

My first question to a layer would be “Criminal or Civil?”

 

Sounds like you bought a flooded car as there shouldn't be any reason to have any rust in the inside of a car. Sorry to say but you got jacked by the dealer. You should never blindly buy a car without getting it inspected by a Pro Mechanic.

 

o/p must be busy sanding down the rust.

 

Re the paint lifting on the hub-caps - you're right, they're not originals. They look like cheap supermarket ones, and, my experience with the cheap ones is that the paint on them is only designed to last long enough to sell the car.

For some reason the (expensive) originals have been removed and replaced with these cheapies.

The plot thickens - why?

 

Yeah this was bugging me : it's bubbling paint on plastic wheel cover??

 

I can't see how the paint can bubble on plastic ?
Or are they metal covers ?
SWMBO's gen 2 wheels have bubbled like that on the original 16" alloys, under the covers, but it is 11 years old, never garaged and not washed often.

 

There's a pic of the overall plastic wheel cover, and the close-ups with the bubbling appear to be just that, the same wheel cover, albeit maybe on another corner. All I can think is someone resprayed the wheel covers, without bothering to clean?

Original poster needs to update, because everyone loves a mystery, lol. I hope he gets to the bottom of this, gets some resolution.

I keep thinking of one time when my son and I were looking over a used Nissan Maxima on a used-car lot. He didn't go for it, and one thing I noticed was the seat hold-down bolts were badly corroded, even though the interior on the whole looked good.