Image by Thomas Hawk via Flickr

When buying a used car most people’s first concern is if the car has been in an accident. The easiest way to tell is by checking to see if the vehicle has been repainted.





Below are some general rules on how to tell if the car you’re interested in buying has been repainted.



• Feel around the hood, door panels, fender and deck lid for what’s known as a tapeline. A tape line is where the body shop tapes off an area of the car to apply paint. When the tape comes off there is a line where the new paint starts.


• If you can see overspray on the cars molding, that is a good indicator.


• Check the bolts under the hood to see if the fenders have been removed or replaced. The paint on the bolts or under the bolts will have been removed or disturbed in some way.



One popular way of checking for paint work is get a Carfax report on the car you’re interested in buying, but I have seen a lot of Carfax reports that are wrong. So I would use it as one tool but not the only tool.

 Just because a car has been repainted doesn’t mean you had better stay away from it. After all it could have just been painted after a scratch or something minor like that. Ask the dealer, they should be honest. Tell them your concerns, and show them anything you see that is out of the ordinary. You may just get a lot better price!