Repair or Replace
My old Town Car needs some major repairs...1-2x the value of the car. But, a new car is 5x plus the value of the repairs... How do you judge..repair vs replace in this circumstance? Yes, ...
Forum Discussion
2112 wrote:
My stand on this issue is $200/mo. ~1/2 the cost of a car note.
If I drop $2000 into it will it last another 10 months?
I got to the point on my 15yr old F150 that the answer was no, probably not so I traded in. It needed a front end plus all the rubber under the hood such as vacuum lines were brittle and falling apart.
Now I'm faced with the same question with my 2005 Ford Fivehundred. With 230k miles it has a stretched timing chain and needs 4 struts. I'm questioning if I should put new tires on it when the time comes.
I do the same math when looking at repairs of older vehicles. We seem to average 125-150K miles before we sell one because our needs have changed - This usually means they are on their third set of tires and second clutch, battery and set of brakes and belts as far as maintenance. Perhaps the fact that we replace vehicles roughly every 10-15 years has prevented us from having to make a difficult choice in quite a while. It was different when I was younger and could only afford someone's used up vehicle which then required much more of my time and money to keep running (although acquisition cost was low).
