Alright, in order to fully grasp the extents of how terrible my experience with Maximum Deals was I need to first give a little background information. I was, at the time, a senior in high school who fell into a series of automotive misfortune. My first car was a 96 Ford Taurus GL which had been working more or less well for the time that I had the car. I live in a suburb of DC with a single driveway house which could only effectively fit 2 cars. My family had 3, so in order to keep from having to reorder cars in the morning, my father and I would park on the street. One Saturday night out of pure misfortune, a firefighter coming home from work in a 5.0 Mustang hydroplanes on my road and slams into my dad's car, putting it completely ON TOP of my car. His mustang then, proceeds to spin and slam into the side of my car. So in a single night both my dad's car and mine were totalled, leaving my family of 4 with only one car to split. AFter losing 2 out of 3, I proceeded to get into an accident with the lone remaining car the next week putting it out of commission for a two week period. All of this having nothing to do with Maximum Deals, but rather just serving to give reference of the desperation of our family for replacement cars.
Now. On to Maximum Deals.in our frantic search for cars, Craigslist was our top source. I wanted, like most high school seniors to take advantage of the insurance money that we were recieving from the firefighter to put towards a sports car, a Mitsubishi Eclipse to be exact. I went through a long process of looking at cars from a private seller on craigslist only to have it sold out from under to me. At this point I was thoroughly frustrated and tired of taking the bus to and from school. So I find another Mitsubishi Eclipse on Craigslist, from a dealer called Maximum Deals. Eager to jump on the opportunity and keep it from being sold out from under me, my dad and I drove an hour to Manassas to take a look at this car. It drove fine, had a nice deep sounding exhaust, tint, the works. The only minor flaw it seemed to have was similiar to someone elses story - the brake pads were below 10% of the pad remaining. Disregarding this, I paid for the car outright in cash. I drove it off the lot not 10 minutes after signing a bunch of paperwork stating that the car was sold AS IS.
Not 2 miles down the road, I start to notice something that I hadn't seen during the test drive. The temp gauge was cycling up closer and closer to the hot side. After a few minutes, the gauge was pegged, indicating that the car was severly overheating.in the middle of the highway I pull over and notice what appears to be smoke coming from under the hood. We (my dad and I) pop the hood and find that it wasn't smoke, but steam spewing from a cracked radiator. For all you car techies out there, you might ask yourself why was there steam in the radiator to begin with, you'll see. So knowing at this point, that we had been ripped off, but also knowing that we had just finished signing all the paper work that said it was an AS IS deal and that no problems were to be related back to the dealer after it has been driven off the lot. So we proceed to limp it home, stopping every 10 minutes to let the car cool down and refill the coolant resevoir. 6 stops and 2 gallons of coolant later, we made it home with the car.
Note that this is all happening in the middle of December of last year and that its very VERY cold outside during alot of the scenarios this car put us through.
Thankfully, my dad previously owned a speed shop and both him and I are mechanically inclined to do things ourselves and cut costs. The next chance we get we're out in the garage turning wrenches to replace the radiator (the replacement was about $100). This was one of the easier fixes we completed. Replacement goes smoothly, and low and behold, the temperature gauge is still cycling and so the car still can't be safely driven without damaging itself. Considering the symptoms we had noticed: cycling temp gauge, overheating, and steam in the radiator. Our first thought was that the thermostat was bad. This is the valve that opens and closes, allowing the coolant to flow through the motor to cool it down. If it was stuck shut than that would mean that the coolant couldn't flow and that was why the engine was overheating. Replaced it ($30) and yet, STILL no change to the cycling temp gauge. Next on the list of things to replace, was the water pump ($130).in my experience, on most cars, this is a relatively easy process, but NOT on a 2000 Mitsubishi Eclipse GT. A V6 crammed into a tiny engine bay, it took my dad and I well over 20 hours of work to get to, replace, and reassemble the car for the water pump. Turns out, it wasn't the water pump either.
For the car techies who might have already guessed what the problem was, it wasn't as easy to figure it out in our case. A blown head gasket. This problem usually has some very unique symptoms like white smoke out the exhaust, coolant in the oil, etc. Which my car didn't have. But sure enough after replacing the water pump, radiator, and the thermostat, a head gasket was the only remaining alternative. This is normally like a couple thousand dollar repair job at retail price purely because of the labor involved. So we bought all the parts needed for the opperation ($300) and went to work. This project took us well over 40 hours in the dead of winter with a garage that is not insulated, but it did fix the problem.
After we got the car running it had several other problems down the road just because it had been abused by the previous owner and fraudulently put up for sale at Maximum Deals. After six months of ownership, in the middle of the summer it turns out that my black eclipse did not have air conditioning and could not be repaired as teh previous owner had TAKEN OUT the compressor and tubing. Other problems ensued until I finally sold it 7 months after buying it.
Maximum Deals is a 100% scam. Even though I live an hour from this dealer, the gas station I went to to get it inspected revealed a car that my dad was looking at that was previously at Maximum Deals. Upon comment about having seen that car before at the same dealership as the eclipse, the state inspector says, "well its a good thing you didn't buy that car, because it has well over two THOUSAND dollars worth of work to get it past inspection." On a seperate instance, my dad randomly came into contact with a guy who had been having an insane amount of car trouble, turned out to be more handywork of Maximum Deals. I have yet to meet a single person who has been satisfied with a car they bought at that dealership. They sell cars that have extensive problems, problems that can cost more than the cost of the car in order to fix. They KNOW that these cars have these problems and they sell them regardless. I hope to be contacted to help shut this place down.
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