HELP! I'm sick and tired of ridiculous motoring costs!

angelboy

bowlhead99 wrote: »

You mention how you have avoided the initial painful depreciation by buying second-hand. Good move.

But say you are driving a car that would cost £20k new. The aircon system doesn't care that you struck a good deal with a former owner to acquire the whole car for £1000-5000 instead of £20000. When the aircon system packs up, why shouldn't it cost several hundred pounds to buy a new replacement for such a system (plus a whole bunch more pounds for trained mechanics to pull out your broken parts and install the new system)?

If your "bloody crappy" Mazda or old Audi is only worth £2000 with everything working, why not buy another one and get a full set of replacement parts for £2000? Then when the next thing goes wrong, you won't have to worry about sourcing replacement parts a decade after the factory production line has shut down, because you will have already sourced all the replacement parts at very competitive second-hand prices: they are sitting on your driveway.

In a funny kind of way - that makes perfect sense!

angelboy

Tobster86 wrote: »

You have a newer German car, not covered by my 'statement' and for good reasons; they're not reliable.

As for the Mazda 5 - it's a people carrier. Big cheap cars built to very tight margins; not many steps up from an actual STD in my view and treated accordingly by many of their owners.

"But I have a load of kids" I hear people say. I'm not going to share my opinion on that as it WILL offend; but let's tone it down to "should have bought a Volvo XC90".

Why on earth did you replace interesting German cars that were covered by my statement and proved themselves, with a people carrier?

Or even the Italian machine? Maybe not reliable or cheap; but if you can, life is too short not to.

In another life - pre-credit crunch - life was good! Today, not so, but hey, you've got to be in it to win in and all that!

I do have that little niggling fire that's still lit in the back of my head that tells me that one day I will be poncing around in a 'flasher' motor but truth be told, my next few years are totally focusing on getting rid of my stupid mortgage. It sickens me every year when I get my mortgage statement so it just has to go. This is the main reason we're driving round in 10 year old cars and when you get a big bill you just think, 'that's another month set back where I'm paying the greedy banks huge interest for my house!'.

I'd love to be complaining about the servicing cost on my 991 - but I do tell myself that everyday post-mortgage, will be filled with sunshine, sweet smelling roses and a slightly trippy-high that I'll be floating around on so who cares if the ABS control units cost £2500......who cares.....?

arcon5

They don't know if its the turbo or valve stem seals? Well if they cannot diagnose which one of these components is letting oil in to the chamber without taking the head off then you need to sack them off NOW

gilbert_and_sullivan

In my humble your present car choices are in that no mans land, they're not bomb proof 80's/90's designs (manufacture up to about 2003), which if carefully bought and looked after can last indefinately.

Post 2000 designs have rapidly increasing complexity and far more electronics/computerisation, which is fine while they're new, but they simply will not live long and prosper Spock, that long life mistake (for the makers) was designed out.

As for being solvent apres mortgage, well it doesn't quite work like you think it might, i get a kick out of owning cars that scarcely depreciate, and being older designs tend to be very long lived in the simpler electronics they have.
This manifest itself in actively avoiding like the plague most of the new must have's, such as the utterly pointless electric parking brake and the automated manual gearbox of doom, etc etc.

roneik

Get a three year old mini from a franchise. Will come with years bmw guarantee. Those mini engines are almost indestructible. I have a pedal foot two miles wide and drive the crap out of the minis I have owned and they take it. :rotfl:

roneik

I have owned some wicked cars in fifty years of motoring ,and strobe light technology is not up to today's computer controlled beasts. You can own a car today that will not skip a beat in years if you service, No distributor , no points to adjust, crap carburetors that are mechanical , no give me the computer run beastie every time . Get with the times, Fred flintstone is dead.


I said Fred is dead , Ya hear dead and rusting in peace

EdGasket

roneik wrote: »

I have owned some wicked cars in fifty years of motoring ,and strobe light technology is not up to today's computer controlled beasts. You can own a car today that will not skip a beat in years if you service, No distributor , no points to adjust, crap carburetors that are mechanical , no give me the computer run beastie every time . Get with the times, Fred flintstone is dead.


I said Fred is dead , Ya hear dead and rusting in peace

..and if a sensor goes you are stuck by the roadside until some goon tows you to another bunch of goons that tell you your computer's toast and that'll be £1500 + VAT to replace. With a carburettor and distributor car, you could carry a few tools in the boot and fix just about any problem you have on the road; I 'm old enough to have done it.

fred246

I keep cars going for years with no big bills. I always wonder why other people can't do it. Is it because I service it myself, do I avoid the damage that garages inflict on cars? My conclusion after years of observation is that it's all down to the way people drive cars. My friends and relatives with high bills always really hammer them. Foot on accelerator to floor and then slam on the brakes. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Collect multiple speeding fines.
Why do I not drive like that? I have a mental picture of a hole in the ground. In it are 3500 dead bodies. That is the number of people killed in a day by stupid motorists worldwide.

angelboy

Little update - Yesterday we had the Audi in for the DS wheel bearing replacement.

This next part of the story is from my wife so I can't fill in the blanks - maybe you can.

The bolts were corroded onto the bearing and the Indy had to get an angle grinder to it. They found a price for 'said part' and were quoted £198. They then got on the internet and found another dealer where the part was £68 but it was 70 miles away and not feasible to arrange it in and get the car on the road the same day. In the end they took it to a machine shop and had the part straightened and welded up. Apparently, a simple job turned out to be a pain in the !!!!. The bearing was the original since new and had never been changed.

Total cost - £110. I think that was pretty good price and not, as some have suggested already, my indy ripping me off.

I buy crap cars do I? - the mechanic working on the car wants to buy it from me and has offered me more than what I paid for it. He says it probably the best example he's seen in a long time.

colino

1. If all this is true, Yes you are being ripped off.
2. Of course the mechanic wants to buy it, it has had unnecessary fortunes thrown at it.