Car Troubles p2

I have some really tough questions to answer with my car being “damaged”, all in the next few days.

  • Should I spend 2K in hopes that’s all I have to pay?
  • If yes, would I be willing to pay the 2K+ to follow up more repairs if need be?
  • If no, can we do one car? Or should I buy a new car?

2K isn’t much to get my car working, that’s worth it but 5K is cutting it close. And it’s all a gamble, because if I pay them to replace the head gasket and if it turns out they’re right about the heads being damaged I could be spending 2-3K on top of that. And there’s no way for them to just check the heads without the labor being practically the same as replacing the head gasket.

Asides

November 06

Comments

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  • nstryker
    kbb.com then cut as much as a grand off the price they give you to find the actual value. i bought my 2000 saturn for $5k and have gotten great use out of it...even driving to malibu. my "vote" is for a nice 3-5 year old car.
  • Dan
    I'm tracking.
  • Right. I was just asking whether you still owed since you'll still have to pay that off either way, which could become a factor when you're evaluating new loan rates, etc. - like you said.
  • Dan
    Jared: The whole "what it's worth" is the big issue, it's border line wether it's worth 5K running since it almost has 100K. But the car would be running great if the broken radiator didn't "snowball" into the engine. I knew it had a lot left in it before this but now I don't know because now a lot more could be effected. However I could be fixing it to be a better car then I've ever had, no one knows

    I'm not too worried about what we owe, it's more of what we would owe if we bought something else or if we paid 5K. Especially since the APR for loans are so high right now.

    Jason: That's the thing if I paid 4-5K to get it fixed I would just continue to use it for local jonts, so it's buy another used car or fix my own for the same price, and that's what is so confusing. I'm definitely not buying a new car and buying a used 4K car isn't too assuring either because I might drive it for a month and find out it needs a ton of repairs. At least with my car I know what I'll be getting into. I hate used cars for that but I hate new cars worse because of the premium.


    My plan right now is to scour ebay and ask around, Sara's parents might get rid of their van so that would be cool. If I can't get a deal around town or on eBay I'll just have to pay for the repairs.
  • I agree with Jared. But I would save my 2k and buy a 4k used car and limit it's use to local driving. New cars lose way to much value and are terrible investments. We are on the lookout for a 3k-4k car currently, since we just sold Brooke's after her car broke down. Know any grandmas that are selling a car?
  • How much would your car be worth right now, if it worked?

    I think you've got to take that into consideration, as well as the fact (or I guess just hunch) that other things will probably start breaking as it gets older - not to be negative, but in my experience once you start having these kinds of serious issues they seem to start to snowball.

    I guess the other thing is whether you still owe on it, since that will factor into your break even calculation even if you decide not to fix it.
  • Dan
    um, I do have one and I use it more then my car.
  • Buy a bike
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