Rough week with older cars

andrew_j said:
Hoping for new(ish) car one year from now when daughters last tuition payment due we pay in full. Tall order as wife drives 30k/year
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Yeah it's crazy ain't it, my wife and I both put 25k on a year and I've got a kid off at school with a car made in 1999. The chaos will pass, the kid will move on, and you'll miss the "excitement."

All three of these cars take the same size tire and I've got a stash of 12-14 new or nearly new ones, and 50-odd oil filters. Just trying to stay ahead of things. 😁
 
andrew_j said:
Thankfully brother lives in area of 2nd breakdown suggested honest shop who arranged $65 tow said starter , battery cable and battery need replacement $1300(only use OEM parts).

Definitely cons of older high mileage(150k+) vehicles. But we have 4. Wife frazzled
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Not sure an occasionally $1300 repair bill on a reliable vehicle is a con. Surly beats a $1300 monthly payment for 60 straight and mandatory months.

I am about to purchase a new OEM driver seat bottom seat cushion and cover for my Wife's 2014 RDX. About $1100. Don't mind spending $1100 once every year or two, instead of having a car payment/ loan liability.
 
I think some are being needlessly hard on the OP.

Tiguan - At that kind of mileage something like a WP failing is to be expected, I certainly wouldn't proactively replace a perfectly good WP unless it was part of a TB service

ILX - Battery that was less than 1 year old failed. Bad luck, got a bad battery

RDX - Starter went bad, again an older car with a failure like this happens. Another part I wouldn't proactively replaced. Sounds like the battery tested bad too, that's something I would have investigated further when buying the car and going through it for deferred maintenance
 
A 2013 Acura RDX with 177k miles should still be a pretty good vehicle. (Says the guy who drives a 2007 Accord as his second car.)

Seems odd that any vehicle would need a new starter and a new battery. Do battery cables even wear out? Corroded and need a baking soda soak maybe.

I think I'd start with a new battery and go from there. You can call me a skeptic if you like.
 
andrew_j said:
Thankfully brother lives in area of 2nd breakdown suggested honest shop who arranged $65 tow said starter , battery cable and battery need replacement $1300(only use OEM parts).
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I’m lucky that a starter rebuild was never over $200 for me

TJ rebuilt could rebuilt/rewind any starter regardless of whether parts were available, sad to see them gone.
 
ecotourist said:
A 2013 Acura RDX with 177k miles should still be a pretty good vehicle. (Says the guy who drives a 2007 Accord as his second car.)

Seems odd that any vehicle would need a new starter and a new battery. Do battery cables even wear out? Corroded and need a baking soda soak maybe.

I think I'd start with a new battery and go from there. You can call me a skeptic if you like.
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The negative cable in my sons Forte corroded out and reduced the cable. It had a flat braid cable and under the covering it looked like a science experiment. Probably 1/2 the cable had corroded through. Terminals were clean as was rest of motor etc. Fortunately he just needed a new cable and have the ground bolt drilled/tapped as bolt was frozen solid and snapped.

Could all happen together, sure, I think. Starter getting older and weaker, putting harder load on battery and crappy cable. I'd probably do the battery and cable myself and go from there. If starter needed like other high mileage Honda's, shop may get that job.

@andrew_j 's daughters car, not started for over a month with single digits? Yea that could need at least a charge if not replacement. When my daughter and father in law traveled for at least a week I would take their car to work one day each week just to get running and full temperature.
 
gman2304 said:
^^^ Your cars aren’t that old or at an extreme amount of mileage. It looks to me like there’s a lack of maintenance issue going on….
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Or just bad luck. As they say, Murphy was an optimist.

It could be a flukey confluence of unpredictable events.

Before winter I load-test the batteries in the several vehicles I look after, but a few years ago had a battery fail catastrophically in February after testing well in October or November. I suspect it probably dropped a plate.
 
I suggest the OP not buy a boat. You cannot go out in a boat with "when it breaks I will fix it mindset for maintenance". You need to be an over achiever on maintenance. Least you will find yourself a few miles offshore without a working engine and no one living close by you can call. Maybe drifting. Maybe storms.
 
Sometimes things hit from out of the blue without significant indication something is going sour. Some are too judgemental of the OP. Not everyone is super mechanic full of hindsite sitting in his armchair on the internet.
 
ecotourist said:
Seems odd that any vehicle would need a new starter and a new battery. Do battery cables even wear out? Corroded and need a baking soda soak maybe.

I think I'd start with a new battery and go from there. You can call me a skeptic if you like.
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They kinda do. Enough corrosion kills clamps and there may not be sufficient quality wire and length to attach a new clamp.

At some point new OEM cables are like a new, clean degas bottle -- just so nice to start fresh. Like changing your underwear after a few weeks :D
 
That's not old, lol. My parents, up until buying their 2024 GC-L almost two years ago now, were driving a 2000 Expedition that they bought new, so it was 24 years old. My dad's "summer car" is the BITOG wet dream: a 2003 Lincoln Town Car.
 
dishdude said:
I think some are being needlessly hard on the OP.

Tiguan - At that kind of mileage something like a WP failing is to be expected, I certainly wouldn't proactively replace a perfectly good WP unless it was part of a TB service

ILX - Battery that was less than 1 year old failed. Bad luck, got a bad battery

RDX - Starter went bad, again an older car with a failure like this happens. Another part I wouldn't proactively replaced. Sounds like the battery tested bad too, that's something I would have investigated further when buying the car and going through it for deferred maintenance
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I agree. And as someone else said, sometimes a perfect storm type thing just happens. Also the repair bill on RDX would probably not have been that much cheaper had OP had them use aftermarket parts. And being in the situation he was in at the time I think made he made the right decision getting the car repaired where he did.

One thing I'm surprised about though is OP has no AAA? My wife and I have been with them for about 2 decades and have never regretted that decision. Saved many times in unforeseen circumstances as well as helping friends out of a jam a few times.
 
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