Okay. I took my last car to a mechanic to check everything out b4 i bough it but i dont think he did much besides looking for collision damage in the underside, checking hoses, rust. how do i know if the a/c hasnt been leaking and simply recharged or things of that nature where a guy can do a quick fix and fool ya?

 

you ought to do a compression test and a leak down test for the engine

as for collision, I used my hand to feel the car to see if everything is flushed in, look for signs of new pain or cracked pain, stuff like that

as far as for rest of the stuff, it's really hard to determine. You just have to test each and every function