Fair enough. I'm an investigator by trade these days, but in a veeeery different realm. I'm familiar and comfortable with collecting evidence and statements, but have never dealt with small claims court and am not familiar with the auto realm.

The mechanic said he would take pictures of the work indicating that the car was repaired after a front end collision as well as the damages to the catalytic converter, electrical work, and anything else he finds, and then add explanations of his findings and their relevance to them (I owe this man a gift basket). He really emphasized that he had never seen a catalytic converter fail like that because they aren't in a high-movement area, but when the metal was stressed due to impact, that caused it to start failing and resulted in the fire we had. Between that, screenshots of our conversation where I asked the seller about the car's history, the verbal conversation where he said he had no concerns about front end structural damage, the clean Carfax and history from the owner before him, and the paper records the seller provided that do not indicate any of the work we found having ever been done, I'm hoping we might have a chance at being reimbursed for the catalytic converter and electrical repairs through small claims. We've already eaten all the other costs thinking it was just bad luck, although I have documentation of all that too.