The title card comes up before anything has gone wrong: “Buying a truck GONE WRONG.” Behind it, a small red Ford pickup sits in a parking lot with its hood up and its driver’s door open. The man filming has driven his own black Ram to the lot to look at it, and for the first 50 seconds the visit goes the way these visits usually go.

The video is from @daytonflipswhips, who tags it #facebookmarketplace and #flipping and shoots the whole inspection from his own point of view. His caption gives away the ending without explaining it: “Y’all be safe, this was a close one!!”

 

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He pulls into the lot, spots the truck, and greets the seller, a man in a black hoodie whose face is blurred in the video. Then he goes straight to the engine bay. A note on screen records the first thing he notices: “I heard some grinding noise.” He leans in over the radiator and the intake to listen, and a caption a moment later reads “it goes away.”

The next check happens on his phone. Standing at the open driver’s door, he pulls up a vehicle history report, and the screen note says why: “Seeing if miles are rolled back.” He compares what the report says with the current mileage on the truck. Nothing in the video points to a problem there, and one caption from the conversation reads “It’s real nice.”

Then the video gives the viewer a warning that he did not have at the time. A still of the engine bay appears with a red arrow pointing down at a thick black hose near the front of the engine. The label reads: “The hose that’s about to explode.”

Back in real time, he is not looking at the hose. He is checking the oil. He pulls the dipstick, wipes it with a blue rag and studies what comes off. His reaction arrives one word at a time in the captions: “Ooh.” “Chunky.” “That’s scary looking.” He is still standing at the front fender with the rag in his hand when it happens.

The camera jerks away, an explosion graphic flashes on screen, and the seller is seen running across the parking spaces. When the picture steadies, it is from a safe distance. The red truck is pouring steam from under its hood and there is a spreading wet patch on the pavement beneath it. “Y’all it gets WAY worse!!!!!” says the text on screen.

He walks back toward it, and the captions show him wanting the engine turned off. Another note appears as he looks into the dripping engine bay: “PANIC about to set in.” The spoken captions give the diagnosis in three words: “hose blew up.”

The panic is about his own truck. The black Ram was parked right beside the red pickup, and its hood and fender are now covered in spray. He hurries to the bed of the Ram, pulls back a blanket, grabs a plastic jug of water and starts pouring it over the hood and windshield, saying he has to do this real quick first. The video ends there, with water running off the paint.

The video does not say whether he bought the truck. What it does show is why his caption tells people to be safe. He was standing over a running engine when a hose let go.

That is the first lesson for anyone looking at a used vehicle. A cooling system on a warm engine is under pressure and the fluid in it is hot enough to burn. Do your under-hood looking from the side of the vehicle when the engine is running, keep your face away from the radiator and its hoses, and never open a radiator cap on an engine that has been running.

Look at the hoses before the engine is started, while everything is cold. A hose that is swollen, soft and spongy when squeezed, cracked, or crusted with dried residue at the clamps is near the end of its life. The one in this video was in plain view the whole time.

His other checks are worth copying as well. Pull the dipstick and actually look at what is on the rag. Clean oil is smooth. Sludge, grit or anything he would call chunky means the engine has not been looked after, and a milky look can mean coolant is getting into the oil. Run a history report and compare its mileage records with the odometer in front of you. And take any noise seriously, even one that goes away.

Two smaller habits come out of his bad luck. Do not park your own vehicle right beside the one you are inspecting. And keep a jug of water in the back. Coolant should not be left to dry on paint, and it should be rinsed off the ground too, because its sweet taste attracts pets and it is poisonous to them.

He had the water with him. Most buyers would not have.