Economic to repair?

bdfh

I have a 2010 Mondeo Mk4 2.0 petrol which unfortunately lost its exhaust back box on a recent trip down the M11. The view of the AA recovery man was that the hangers had failed, causing increased stress on the pipe which then sheared off under the extra strain - seems logical. On its way out the box clipped the bottom trim of the bumper which houses the parking sensors, these no longer work. Bumper trim itself seems just to have clipped back into place, but no idea if there is further structural damage from the back box coming off. 

Local garage is still short staffed due to the virus so they won’t be able to see it for a little while to assess the damage properly. Since the car would have been replaced anyway in the next couple of years, wondering if anyone with more knowledge than I has any rough idea of how much this will all cost to repair, so I can decide whether to just scrap it and get something new?
I understand that the back box itself wouldn’t be terrifically expensive but I’m concerned by the parking sensors and possibly having to replace the pipe / hangers etc...
Thanks in advance for your thoughts!

VFR

From what you say you are looking at ......
Rear box & some pipe.
Set of rubber hangers.
Some wiring repair ?
Cheap fix I should imagine.

Norman_Castle

Phone a few local independant exhast centres for exhaust quotes. If the sensors are expensive to repair don't repair them.

AdrianC

You're thinking of scrapping a perfectly good 10yo car because it needs an exhaust back box?

The parking sensors are entirely optional. Your neck works and you have mirrors, right?

BTW, the box would almost certainly have been dangling and bobbling around for a while prior to the pipe shearing under the strain - I bet there were odd vibrations and noises, right?

lesalanos

parking sensors possibly/probably a broken wire/connector so should be cheap enough to fix

MinuteNoodles

£100 or so for the exhaust, you'll probably be able to get the whole exhaust from the CAT back done for £200. It's most likely the hangers on the exhaust that rotted off rather than the ones on the floor/chassis legs of the vehicle. I don't think I'd bother with the reverse sensors unless you're incapable of parking without them. Doubt very much there'll be any structural damage from the box falling off.

Seems completely ridiculous to scrap or replace a perfectly good working car for a couple of hundred quid of repairs but then again it seems to be a common theme on here.

Grumpy_chap

A new exhaust on a 2010 Mondeo seems really like a wear and tear issue that you expect to come up at some point.  Not that expensive really either.
It is unlikely that the back box coming off caused any further damage and, as you say, the bumper just clipped back into place.
Parking sensors are optional but, again, a cheap repair.

Is this really that the OP wants a new car and is looking for this event to be their justification to trade up to something newer?  If that is the case, then the OP still needs to cover the cost of the repair because the sale value of the car will be reduced by the cost to repair the exhaust.  A ten-year old car should be far away from scrap.

AdrianC

MinuteNoodles said:

Seems completely ridiculous to scrap or replace a perfectly good working car for a couple of hundred quid of repairs but then again it seems to be a common theme on here.

Not "on here" specifically, just reflecting Joe Public's attitude these days, fuelled from both ends by the perception of dirt-cheap monthly tick for new cars and the likes of Fred with his scaremongering tosh about how all garages are just a ripoff.

fred246

Sounds like OP was hoping we would advise a new car. I insist that everything works on my cars. If something doesn't I fix it. My theory is that people neglect to fix things and then when there are so many things not working they say it has had it. So everything must work perfectly. I don't think I have said that all garages are a rip off. Servicing is certainly more expensive than it should be especially at main dealers. My issue is the quality of work. If I do a job I disassemble carefully, complete the task and carefully re-assemble. Garages rip parts off. Do the job. Break some bits. Throw some in the bin. Damage some other parts. If they're servicing they just choose to do what they want. Their workmanship is just not of a high enough standard for me.

bdfh

Thanks for all your comments - I simply didn’t have any real idea how much it was going to cost, with both the garage and the original recovery people being quite cagey in their initial assessments... so, pleased that it sounds like it won’t be terrifically expensive and makes sense to keep the car. It’s literally worth £1k anyway and I hope you’ll all agree that some repairs are surprisingly expensive and can get up to near that amount easily. 

I just don’t have the knowledge, and found it difficult to find a clear answer online - so I don’t think trying to find out was a ridiculous endeavour and I now know what to expect. 

Grumpy_chap

The thing about "bangernomics" is that you might have a car worth £1k, but you know whether it is fundamentally reliable (keeper) or not (get rid).
If the car is worth £1k and you get a bill of £1k at the MOT but that is going to be it for another year, then you are still in an OK place as the alternative is to scrap the old car with no MOT and either:

• Buy another car for £1k, which you might be scrapping in a fortnight if it's a lemon
• Buy a brand new car, in which case £1k only covers 3 month's payments
• Buy some car at some point in between the above two, say £5k to £10k, and still taking a gamble, yet unlikely that you'd lose all the money in a fortnight even if it turns out to be a lemon.

My car is a 2007 Focus purchased for £2k in 2016 and it has run faultlessly.  Last year's MOT landed around £700 bill to pass, but much of that was really wear-and-tear items so I paid and have had over another year trouble-free motoring.
The other benefit of an older car is that you can not worry about parking knocks and things, whereas a new car, that would be another cost to put right.