The downside to the in-person info back in the day was there wasn’t a way to know whether the advice was right or just “it’s functional”. Sure, a scissor jack can hold up a vehicle, but should one go under it? Absolutely not, even if Uncle Bubba insisted “it’s fine” while slapping the fender.
My approach was that “it’s broken already; will attempting to fix it make it any worse?” If I failed, well it was going to be trash anyway. If I succeed, then I saved a bunch of $$$.
If the prior (and original) owner of my current daily driver only watched this instead of selling it as-is “dead, needs hybrid battery” for much less than market value.
After I got it started, I did offer her a right of refusal – “yes, I got it started, but the codes still show that the high voltage battery is low, and I cannot guarantee that it’s fixed. If you don’t want to deal with that, I’ll still buy it AS-IS and it’ll be my problem to deal with.” She appreciated my honesty, but ultimately decided that if it dies again, it would have been replacement time – so it became my “problem”.
Currently just shy of 253k miles, still on the original battery.
