A man has taken to TikTok to state that he paid $900 for a car that wouldn’t start, only to reconnect a plug that then fixed the troubled motor. What was more surprising, however, was that the previous owner wanted the car back after he had fixed it.
Running Low (@runninglow12) took to his account to showcase what happened. The video recently went viral with over 389,000 views, and he normally posts videos of himself dealing with used and aftermarket cars and parts.
The car in question was an Audi, and the seller did state that the car didn’t run correctly. But the TikTok user felt he could get it going again, so he bought the car anyway. The seller asked for an update, with Running Low saying in his video, “He’s like, yeah, make sure you send me a video when you get it running.”
What the seller didn’t expect, however, was that the problem was incredibly easy to fix. Nor did he expect the TikTok mechanic to fix the problem just after driving a couple of blocks to fill the car up with gasoline, but that is exactly what happened.
What Did the Mechanic Do With the Second-Hand Car?
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According to Running Low, the car had actually got a problem that was easy to fix. The TikTok user spotted that one of the EKP fuel pump sensors was unplugged while he was looking at the car. That was enough to convince him to buy the car and attempt to fix it. But the fix took even less time than you might have expected it to.
“I literally drove down the street, maybe like two blocks up, to a gas station to get some gas, and I plugged it back in, and it just started right up,” he said. So with that done, he promptly sent the seller an update to say that the car was fixed and he could drive it. But the mechanic perhaps wasn’t quite expecting the reaction that he got from the video.
“I sent him the video, and then he started calling me like, wait, bring it back, I’ll go give you $1,500 for it,” he said. “I was like, nah, man, I need $3,000 for it, and he’s like, that’s not right.” The new owner certainly had a point. There was no reason for him to sell it back to the person he had just bought it from, and he could now enjoy the car knowing it was fully ready to go again.
What Was Wrong With the Car?
In terms of what was wrong, it was the car’s fuel pump control electronics. The EKPS regulates the pump in the tank when it is told to do so by the engine computer. It is something that is easy to misdiagnose as something more expensive. Vehicle Service Pros have stated that symptoms of an EKPS failure can be an engine stalling after it’s started when stationary, or it won’t fire up at all.
All sorts of things could be misdiagnosed due to that. I could point to a dead pump or a module, but thankfully that wasn’t the case here. All that the buyer had to do was look at the car, spot that something wasn’t plugged in, and hey presto, the car was on the move again. Viewers of the video agreed that the mechanic who bought the car shouldn’t get any hate just for fixing the issue as well. “Don’t hate the player, hate the game,” wrote rose.wtff in one of the comments.