When is it time? Repairs every week....

[SwampSurvivor]

With the current used car market - it's not time to move on !

Those small repairs are worth a lot more now that vehicles are skyrocketing in value.

 

[GMFan]

If it makes you feel any better I had to recently put a new rear subframe, valve cover gasket, and new instrument cluster in my 2011 Mazda 6 with 153k. All that work (some done myself some not) was around $2,300. In the past 3 years I’ve put $4,000 into the car.

I look at it this way. Can I take the repair cost and buy an equivalent better condition car? If not, I repair. Its inevitable that cars will need repairs as mileage piles on. I prefer $1,500 - $2,000 in repairs per year than $500 car payments every month.

I believe the math typically shows it’s almost always cheaper in the long run to repair a car vs replacing it. Depreciation and insurance costs are a killer.

If you don’t like the car and can afford it then get something different. If you like the car then repair it.

 

[Dave9]

You pull the plug when the vehicle gives you more annoyance than happiness. Only you can factor whether you like DIY repairs and the state the vehicie is in. Financially it's usually better to keep what you have unless the frame is rotten, as long as you have a good trustworthy shop to do the things you aren't willing to do yourself, but at the same time you can't control all variables, could put $4K into a vehicle worth $2K then some texting teenager comes along and totals it...

 

[vw7674]

looking back on the list of failures, this Flex is not a bad automobile.
wheel bearing units will fail, foreseeable
fuel injectors get wonky, replace. foreseeable
fan failure, you get the idea.
Seems like this ate three days. (Plus one semi-difficult AC issue, the kind that renders the vehicle unusable in summer)

Way cheaper than shopping for anything out there.
It's a Keeper.

 

[dareo]

It is time when you want something better and it doesn't hurt much financially.

 

[SwampSurvivor]

I'm assuming being in Virginia isn't not rusty? In NY that's kinda what makes the call.

 

[tmorris1]

I’m not an expert on AC but I understand that those symptoms may indicate the compressor needs a compressor clutch kit.

They should be able to cycle that with a scan tool to test if the clutch is working.

 

[AutoMechanic]

I wouldn’t get rid of it. At least not yet with the car market. Heck you can’t hardly find new or used cars down here in Southern Virginia. Especially for a good price. And you know me I am not a fan of new stuff mainly because I have done major component repairs and replacements on more modern stuff that costs thousands of dollars one time whereas the not so major repairs on something older would not equal that at all. In my 3 years of fixing cars professionally as a career I can say I have had to replace countless electronics and stuff related to that. I know that every brand has its issues and will but when you do it on multiple brands it kind of shows how low quality they make stuff these days. But I understand it can be frustrating especially if you are having trouble diagnosing something.

 

[GMFan]

I will add that having a proper diagnosis can save you money. The parts cannon gets expensive and fast and only adds to frustration. I have used my local Mazda dealership for diagnostics before and they’ve been good at finding the problem. I had a no start issue and replacing the starter did not solve it. It nearly left me stranded. They diagnosed it as a bad instrument cluster as that is where the security chip reads the key. They replaced the cluster and it’s been great now. They work on that make of vehicle a lot and they have seen some of the problem areas. May not be the worst idea to pay a dealer for the $125, 1 hour diagnostic time. Saved me from going down the rabbit hole of tracing wiring, and lighting up the parts cannon. They used special tools to tap into the ECU and they were able to tell the ECU couldn’t read the cluster and therefore vehicle wouldn’t start.

 

[wdn]

Pretty soon this will be like Cuba where a ”new” car is 30 years old.

 

[vtec260]

My son's 2008 Ford Focus was bought cheap as his first car after getting his driver's license. It had it's share of small, nagging problems over last three years, but nothing too major, other than electrical wiring that somehow was shorted by passenger side and caused crank, no start. Had to call in a mechanic to diagnose and fix for $200.

It allowed me to work on various parts that I didn't have to with our four Acuras over past 20 years. Example: broken driver's door handle, three motor mounts, stuck open thermostat, fan motor, valve gasket leak, small emission leak, front brake pads and rotors, and shot sway bar links. It got nothing, but love from junkyard parts and Rockauto economy and clearance parts and runs still nicely for its age with excellent gas mileage. It doesn't owe anything to us and will be sad when I let this one go as I put decent amount of sweat, tears, and blood from my knuckles. I don't look forward to having it break down, but when it does, it's been a pleasure to learn something new.

Not too bad for 120K miles on dino oil. Now it is getting ST synthetics.

 

[doublebase]

If it makes you feel any better I had to recently put a new rear subframe, valve cover gasket, and new instrument cluster in my 2011 Mazda 6 with 153k. All that work (some done myself some not) was around $2,300. In the past 3 years I’ve put $4,000 into the car.

I look at it this way. Can I take the repair cost and buy an equivalent better condition car? If not, I repair. Its inevitable that cars will need repairs as mileage piles on. I prefer $1,500 - $2,000 in repairs per year than $500 car payments every month.

I believe the math typically shows it’s almost always cheaper in the long run to repair a car vs replacing it. Depreciation and insurance costs are a killer.

If you don’t like the car and can afford it then get something different. If you like the car then repair it.

This^^^.

And I will freely admit that I don’t take this advice (or even my own advice) about fixing and keeping the vehicle rather than trading it in and buying something new/newer.
Ive actually wrote a note to myself in my cell phone that I have saved, it goes like this...

Fix your car! You do this every time! The miles add up and you don’t want to do THAT next repair and you dump it. Then you buy that new vehicle...you get the $700 tax bill in the mail. You write that $300 dollar check to the registry to get it on the road - in less than two weeks you’ve spent $1,500 bucks just in BS fees! Then you talk to your insurance company and your insurance premiums go up, but “only a little bit”. Then for the next five years you pay another $3,000 total in registration/tax bills. That “new” car costs you $5,000 grand in the first five years on just registration, taxes and higher insurance premiums...and at THAT point it is no longer new...now you’re looking at repairing the things that you sold your other car for!

And yet I won’t listen to myself ^^^. I know I’ll be stupid and do it all over again.

 

[K-Man]

Stop when the repair bills get to be larger and larger. $100 here or there is one thing. $1,000+ all the time is something else.

In 2012 I sent my 1998 Taurus wagon to the knackers because it was going to need another engine. The car had overheated despite careful maintenance. Changing the thermostat did not help, as the temperature still quickly spiked to hot on the gauge afterward. Years later I found out it probably had been a water pump failure, but there was none of the usual evidence of that then.

The Taurus had 220,000 miles. Reasoning the Duratec DOHC had cracked a head or a block, I junked the car because even if I had had the money to replace the engine, it still had the original transmission. How long did the trans have left? The car was worth only $1,000. That's when you call it quits.

Severe rust is another reason to call it quits. At some point that isn't practical to patch. States are getting more strict on it. My brother lives in Pennsylvania and says that state just changed the rules to say rust-through for any body panel now is an automatic fail at the annual inspection, and that includes a front fender. Other states in the Northeast have had that rule for a long time. So have some Canadian provinces.

My hunch is that in the next several years some vehicles will have to be junked because replacements for failed electrical or electronic parts won't be available. This subject has come up for 1990s Corvettes because the electronic instrument panels have not been available new for years, and failure will brick the car.

Lots of comparable examples exist for other cars. Lincoln Mark VIIIs had failure-prone HID headlamps with ballasts, and I doubt Ford still has replacements.

The hardest part is letting go. I really had liked that Taurus...

 

[HM12460]

When your vehicle gets to the point where you don't have confidence in it's reliability, time to replace it.

 

[2strokeNorthstar]

When your vehicle gets to the point where you don't have confidence in it's reliability, time to replace it.

I haven’t had confidence in my BMW for many years

 

[zzyzzx]

When your vehicle gets to the point where you don't have confidence in it's reliability, time to replace it.

Actually owning two beaters that you have little confidence in works, and is usually quite economical.

 

[Lubener]

In the past couple of months I have repaired on the 2009 Ford Flex with approx 115k in my signature:
1. Front right wheel bearing - it was getting really loud. 4 hours around $100 for the part
2. 1 Fuel injector - was getting misfire codes. Thought it was a coil, took hours to diagnose correctly. Full day $50 for part
3. 1 electric cooling fan, did a hack repair with a part that didn't fit exactly right - but it works well now. Full day $35 for parts
4. Now the AC is working intermittenly, thought it was a $15 sensor...it wasn't. Found the pulley for the AC compressor isn't turning after the engine heats up. Suspect it is a bad compressor clutch (I know very little about AC systems). Tried to pull off the clutch to inspect it, gave up after about an hour and took it to an indy repair shop.

I keep on telling myself these are all minor issues and to be expected on an older vehicle....but ole Flexy may have a date with my 12 gauge if it takes up my Memorial Day weekend.

For what it would take to fix these items would be less than what the sales tax would be on a new vehicle. I'd fix it.

 

[K-Man]

When your vehicle gets to the point where you don't have confidence in it's reliability, time to replace it.

This. I demand reliability, but I understand vehicles need maintenance and light repair. It's the possibility of a breakdown with a beater leaving me stranded that irks me. Been there, done that.

 

[zzyzzx]

This. I demand reliability, but I understand vehicles need maintenance and light repair. It's the possibility of a breakdown with a beater leaving me stranded that irks me. Been there, done that.

I've owned beaters for decades, and this really never happened much. I was almost always able to make it home. One time after work I almost got onto the highway and turned off when I was having issues (turned out to be a timing belt stripped) and waited in really cold weather for an hour while waiting for a tow. Another time I was pretty close to home and the weather was nice, and it was on a weekend, and I had AAA, and another vehicle to drive. Of course that same weekend I was driving someone else's beater truck (because I needed a truck), and the crankshaft position sensor went out, so I actually used AAA towing twice in one weekend.. Good times!

 

[The Critic]

If it makes you feel any better, I have probably done the equivalent of $5k in repairs on a neighbor's Odyssey to keep it going for another year:
https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/2007-odyssey-private-party-sale-price.341915/#post-5788371

This included removing the timing belt three times and I am about to do it a fourth time to replace the front camshaft. From a parts standpoint, I think we have spent under $1K total.