Auto gearboxes
ABS
Both £1,000+ repairs.
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Apathy and lack of appreciation
i.e. the car's only worth £500, i won't bother replacing part that costs £400.
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Elderly Mondeo - clutch .
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Judging by what I have seen in scrapyards:
total and utter neglect - of everything. So it's a toss up what goes first. Well maintained French cars last imo.
What % of cars over 7 years old are well maintained? I would suggest it's small. When it's over 10 years old, I suggest negligible.
How many on this forum own and drive a 10 year old or older car? Or rather what %?
I suggest fairly low.
madf
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I do,1989,and it is well maintained.I would think expensive sensors and the cataclysmic convertor will finish otherwise sound cars.
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In the old days, diesel engines were fairly simple things which didn't take much maintenance, and could manage very high mileages on a low budget -- most of the jobs were easy DIY.
But what about these new common rail engines, with all that complex high-pressure rail? They probably need a specialist to service them, and if one of those gets into trouble, isn't the cost going to be crippling for an older car?
I prefer diesel engines in all sorts of ways, but in choosing an older s/h car now I've decided to stay away from diesel, because the potential bills could be out of all proportion to the value of the car.
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"In the old days, diesel engines were fairly simple things which didn't take much maintenance, and could manage very high mileages on a low budget -- most of the jobs were easy DIY.
But what about these new common rail engines, with all that complex high-pressure rail? They probably need a specialist to service them, and if one of those gets into trouble, isn't the cost going to be crippling for an older car?
I prefer diesel engines in all sorts of ways, but in choosing an older s/h car now I've decided to stay away from diesel, because the potential bills could be out of all proportion to the value of the car."
Wife's HDi is 5 years old and has now done 80 k and apart from cambelt and oil/fluids changes the engine has not required any other "servicing". There must be a lot of common rail diesel taxis (Mondeos/Xantia/Skoda etc)out there which have done a lot of miles. Do we know if they are as reliable as the "old" diesels or not?
Phil
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I do,1989,and it is well maintained.I would think expensive sensors and the cataclysmic convertor will finish otherwise sound cars.
Funny you should write this as I was having the same thought yesterday with respect to the missus' 1995 306 1.8 Sedan. This genuine 38k miles car is as spotless as one in everyday use ever will be and drives beautifully. Though in this lovely condition and totally reliable with it, it is probably only worth a grand or only a tiny bit more and the catalytic converter is not going to last for ever.
My conclusion though is that it would be well worth spending say (guess) £350 on a new cat because I would be most unlikely to replace it with a car anywhere near as good without shelling out a pile more than £350. In fact, trying to sell the Pug with a failed cat (and consequently no MOT since this is when I would find the failure) I probably wouldn't even get £500 for it to put towards a replacement; this makes spending £350 on a cat even better value.
Ergo, I suspect that when the Pug leaves us it will either be because it's badly damaged or because we simply want a change and hang the cost.
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How many on this forum own and drive a 10 year old or older car? Or rather what %?
My daily driver is 35 years old. I would hazzard a guess that it's in better nick now than when it was new :D
;) JaB
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My fleet (all taxed, moted and in use) are 37, 34, 28, 26 and 5 years old. The tractor is 51.
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One of our two cars is over 15 years old - it's the one that gets me to work and back every day.
Just passed its MOT again with minimal trouble.
The other car is a year old and gets used for longer journeys.
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and I bet you all maintain your old vehicles to maker's standards or better. (we do with our 13 year old)
madf
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and I bet you all maintain your old vehicles to maker's standards or better. (we do with our 13 year old)
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I too have run several well maintained older vehicles until I delivered them to the breakers.
My last, a Sierra passed its last MoT but with a warning re the door cill worm. "We are not allowed to poke around to explore the extent of the problem" I did poke and did not like what I found.
Remembering those frightening, graphic demos of crashing older cars with unseen corrosion I was soon delivering it to the breakers.
I had reasonable mileage out of it but was happy to see it out of circulation rather than sell it on.
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Everyday car is 12 years old. Does 20,000 miles pa, now on 330,000. Well maintained.
2nd car 41 years old, also well maintained.
I think what happens is that most cars go down a fairly standard route of decline, and barring catastrophe like an accident, are finished off by simple economics - car worth £500, repairs would cost the same, therefore scrap it.
But some get diverted into a kind of backwater, where a whole lot of new factors come in. They may survive long enough to become near classics, and then stop depreciating and get adopted by a new circle of owners. Or they may just slip into the twilight world of bangernomics. The mainstream criteria do not apply here, because in this group are people who either know how to fix cars themselves and so save on the normal repair costs, or else use secondhand parts from scrapped cars from the main pool. So whereas in the "real" world the car reaches the end of its life after say 10 years, in this secondary world it may go on for another 5, or more.
In a few parts of the world, and Cuba I think is the most extreme example, this latter group accounts for virtually the entire car population. Imports are deliberately restricted for political reasons, so the existing cars have to make do. There is then no end to cars' economic life. Everything can be repaired, remade, bodged, almost indefinitely, and it remains economic to do so because there is no alternative.
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ECU's - my Audi is now on a knife edge, anything more than £500 on an unexpected repair bill will have me in neg. equity I reckon - which is insane when you think that I'll drive it home tonight in the same level of comfort and safety as the day it came out of the showroom, as quickly as any car I care to keep up with on the m-way and at no significant loss of economy than when it was new - all these are major components of what we buy a car for, and they remain unaltered over time.
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Good way of putting it Cliff.
My car is 12 year old now, but there has been many a time when the 'costs too much to repair' theme comes in to play.
Firstly, the distributor went. Many would probably have branded this as just a trait of an old car, and thus didn't have the patience or inclination to fix it, so it could have been scrapped then.
Then it was involved in a bump, where the value of repair was equal to its book value (£500), but I didn't want to let it go, so had it repaired via the other persons insurance company
Lastly, the cat went west last year (£200). Again, probably enough for some people to think about sending it to the scrappy.
Many people don't understand why I do this, asking why I haven?t bought a replacement. But the thing is, the car is in good condition so disposing of it, to me, seems a waste. Fair enough, the value of repairs over the years is nearing its value, but I don't have that much money to replace it, so I would buy a car which would probably need just as much work. If I repair the one I have, Its one less thing to go wrong in the future.
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You are right roberson, replacing the cat at £200 would seem to be expensive, but how much would it have cost you to replace the car? A fair bit more than that because someone would be wanting to make a profit on selling it to you. Better to spend the £200 on a known good car than giving £200 to someone else as his profit on selling you another.
Phil
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It's a shame that with modern cars, it will economics rather than 'real world' issues like mechanics or rust, that send cars to the big car park in the sky. Seems such a waste of perfectly serviceable items - typical.
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Cars are going down the same route as most white goods nowadays....how may fully functional fridges, washers, microwaves etc are thrown out simply for being old....so why stick with your ten year old Citroen AX when you can have a brand new C2 for £99 deposit and 0% finance.........
(PS the combined age of my fridge freezer and microwave is approx 35!)
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There is a kind of benchmark. A car with a full years ticket is worth at least 200 quid to anyone. Ergo it must be worth spending at least 200 quid a year to keep a motor mechanically on the road.
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Round S Oxon it's more like £300 for a 12 month ticket car. Sold a base model 4dr Uno (tidy, but no better) for £320 the other day, with 10 months MoT and 2.5 months tax.
Our 94 Golf went to the grave with galloping rust, but that's partly a function of living down a muddy track that's a stream for 4 months of the year.
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