Hi,

I am new here and looking into buying a Sebring off a customer whose father passed away and it's been sitting in her driveway for a few years. It last ran 1.5 years ago for a few minutes from the street into the driveway. Prior to that it sat for 2 years and was in excellent shape with a new roof in 2017. It only has 70,000kms on it and was babied. Basically it mostly sat for the last 4 years.

I looked under the hood and the 2.4L engine belt has a bunch of tiny cracks. The engine and tranny oil looked pretty clear. Battery is dead of course. Rad coolant is brown.

I assume all the fluids and brakes need to be changed or at least looked at.

Is it safe to start it up? I don't want to damage anything.

Thanks
Mike

 

By "engine belt" I assume you are referring to the serpentine belt. If that should break it won't destroy anything as long as you shut it down immediately. You might want to have a look at the timing belt before you crank it up. If that breaks, you could make a mess of the engine. If there's any doubt about its appearance, change it first. Even if it looks good, change it soon. Change the coolant soon also. The gas is likely to be pretty nasty. Changing that could be a chore. The tires probably have flat spots from sitting so long and might give a rough ride. Because of all the unknowns, your offer to buy should be appropriately low unless you want to do your customer a favor.