Car died 400 miles from home with $2000 repair bill- options? (auto, buy, selling)
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A few months ago I was driving my old run down car up in rural upstate New York and it died. I had it towed to a dealer and he said I needed a new transmission and a number of other repairs. I had it towed again to another dealer and he told me the same thing.
The car had a blue book value of about $2000, so I would be spending its value to get it back on the road and back home. I spent the money but now think it was a mistake because it started to cost me lots of money after that with many small to mid-sized repairs. 190,000 miles and 14 years old.
Would it have been better to just sell it for junk and fly home?
Sell it on Craigslist, and emphasize "Brand New Transmission". You will probably have to take some loss on it, but at least you can cut your losses and move on.
i've been going through the same thoughts with my daughter's car. the transmission is one of the biggest repairs you'll see and the repairs you're now seeing are probably just maintenance items that needed to be done whether you fixed the transmission or not.
Have you kept up with maintenance items?
it would be a shame to spend $2k on the car and then give it up or donate it for another 500-750 worth of repairs. it's a tough call if you are not mechanically handy and can't do many repairs yourself because $500 paid to a mechanic will get you 2 repairs but $500 in DIY repairs will get you 3 or 4 repairs because you are using your own labor.
if you've never done anything to the car (failed transmission is probably due to skipping the $25 diy transmission fluid change) and you have no trust in it, trade it as a running vehicle for something else.
Yes. With 190K on the clock, it is near the end of it's life.......good money after bad. For $2000, or a little more, you could have found something with lower mileage and in better shape.
Lol. I guess all my vehicles are in need of replacement in the next 15-30,000 miles. Never mind they look new and drive perfectly fine. To replace my current vehicles I would be spending a minimum of 60-80,000 to get a new equivalent. About 30-50 to get a slightly used one. About 12-20 to get a same year with unknown issues and not in such good shape.
Plenty of cars can be maintained indefinite a lot cheaper than buying a new car. If the car is a pile of crap and worth 2k and needs 2k worth of work AND it has a lot of other issues yeah dumping it may be the right decision. But if everything works and car looks fine and a transmission breaks it may be a better idea to fix it.
Yes. With 190K on the clock, it is near the end of it's life.......good money after bad. For $2000, or a little more, you could have found something with lower mileage and in better shape.
Cars must be selling for less in your area of the country. Around here, any vehicle under $2k is pretty much worn out garbage.
Also, 200k miles isn't necessarily a bad thing. All of my Volvos have closer to 300k and are completely road-worthy.
i've been going through the same thoughts with my daughter's car. the transmission is one of the biggest repairs you'll see and the repairs you're now seeing are probably just maintenance items that needed to be done whether you fixed the transmission or not.
Have you kept up with maintenance items?
it would be a shame to spend $2k on the car and then give it up or donate it for another 500-750 worth of repairs. it's a tough call if you are not mechanically handy and can't do many repairs yourself because $500 paid to a mechanic will get you 2 repairs but $500 in DIY repairs will get you 3 or 4 repairs because you are using your own labor.
if you've never done anything to the car (failed transmission is probably due to skipping the $25 diy transmission fluid change) and you have no trust in it, trade it as a running vehicle for something else.
It's a hard call. I have had vehicles that I invested more than the car was worth in repairs. In the end it was totally worth it. The car lasted another 10 years. On the other hand I have had vehicles that just bled money, until it drained my bank account, and I gave up and sent the vehicle to a junk yard. As has already been pointed out, once a car gets into wear out mode, you have to make a hard decision.
The car had a blue book value of about $2000, so I would be spending its value to get it back on the road and back home. I spent the money but now think it was a mistake because it started to cost me lots of money after that with many small to mid-sized repairs. 190,000 miles and 14 years old.
Are we talking a Buick or a Honda? I sold my 04' Honda CRV with just over 260,000 miles on the odometer and not a single problem. If it's built by a manufacture with a poor reliability reputation then you probably should've just ditched it and bought something else instead of letting it nickel and dime you.
A few months ago I was driving my old run down car up in rural upstate New York and it died. I had it towed to a dealer and he said I needed a new transmission and a number of other repairs. I had it towed again to another dealer and he told me the same thing.
The car had a blue book value of about $2000, so I would be spending its value to get it back on the road and back home. I spent the money but now think it was a mistake because it started to cost me lots of money after that with many small to mid-sized repairs. 190,000 miles and 14 years old.
Would it have been better to just sell it for junk and fly home?
This is the classic trap old car owners fall into. Pay for a major repair hoping this has to be the last one. What else can possibly break? Of course, there are many more. I have three words for you: Cut your losses.
Tough call. Many seem to fall into this trap, the straw that breaks the camel's back. Ergo the age-old recommendation of "replace when the repair exceeds value of the car". Although I think a better metric is "when the repair exceeds what it costs to replace the car".
But sometimes we wring our hands over nothing. A transmission can be a wear item (automatics that is), and having to replace every 200k isn't the end of the world. Not everything is going to fail all at once.
For me, on a prior VW I had to replace the flywheel at 249kmiles. Did the clutch at the same time. Few months later the turbo blew. Few months later the fuel pump went. All that within a ~10k window. Guess what? It had minor issues for the next 2 years or so that I owned it (like well under $1k to drive the next 60k, until I sold it). The ~$3k or so I spent at 250k "bought" me another 2 years and 60k miles. Not too bad, especially since it was a car that I loved driving.
With 20/20 hindsight, but likely what I'd have done was shop two or three dealers for best trade bucks they'd give me and find a cheap lease.
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