[brassmouth]

I am considering buying a 2007 FJ with 137,000 miles. Asking price is $12,000. I ordered a pre-purchase inspection of the vehicle from LemonSquad, which came back pretty clean, except in photos attached from the report I can spot signs of fender tears/cracks, which I've attached below.

I've also included some other pictures from the report in case there were any visible red flags I could be missing on the vehicle. I'm a new buyer so don't wanna make any big mistakes.

I was ready to pull the trigger until I saw the photos of the fender tears. Is this going to be a big issue? How much should I pay for this vehicle? This forum has saved my ass before so I figured I'd try it again. Thanks for any tips.

Passenger side fender:

Driver's side fender:

Lemon Squad pre-purchase inspection report:

 

[norm356]

Looks to be nicely rust free, for an '07.

Fender tears look bad but harm nothing. Pretty typical on the '07s, and very early '08s, until the additional panel was added to prevent them.

 

[Datajockeys]

I’d deduct the cost of properly repairing the tares from your offer.

 

[Sanderhawk]

My 07 has had big fender tears now for 13 years. They don`t cause any problems at all. That's a nice price for the lower miles.

 

[justinjam]

I think it looks great!

I don't have the fender tears on my '07, but there's more rust underneath than you've got, and I'm at 45k miles!

 

[mir207]

My own sense is that the fender tears are a huge nothing-burger. But if you can get some discount using that, all the better. My sense also is that it's totally not worth doing anything to fix the tears, as unless they / you retrofit the post-2008 (or was it 2009?) reinforcement, they seem very likely to be back. And as far as any factual information has been presented (that I have seen) in 14 years, the tears do nothing. Except maybe worry the person who you might eventually sell the vehicle to (which is a consideration).

 

[Winterpeg]

If the tears get bad enough it can make the hood go out of alignment.
I've had them since 2010.... The hood isn't exactly in alignment but only I can tell typically... I'm picky. Lol.

And I'm not exactly gentle with my FJ.
I've recently busted my front coilover spring by mistakenly thinking my heavy FJ was a desert pre-runner. Lol

 

[piratejason]

Looks just like mine. I would negotiate down from the $12k more for the missing windshield top cowling than the fender tears. Looks like a nice rust free FJ. I had good luck polishing out the faded black paint and coating with ceramic. Brought back a lot of the shine and made some areas that had weak clear coat not noticeable at all. Good luck!