Has anyone got any rules of thumb for deciding when 'old faithful' goes to the scrappie?
I've got a 1987 Saab 9000i which has given 8 years of absolutely faithful service, and has been the most reliable & cost-free car I've ever had. But.....she has now done 195,000 miles. The timing chain is getting noisy (might cost £200 using Trent Saab) - timing gear never been done & full monty job is eye-watering £1500 - might give extra 20,000. Clutch has done 110,000 miles (£300) but shows no sign of imminent failure. Front shocks noisy but still fully functional - £200? Car only worth £300-400.
But if I replace her with a similar oldish 9000, I might still get similar expenses having spent £1000 on a replacement (would buy a 1990 car with moderate mileage).
Dilemma - replace or repair? Anyone got any simple ways of making the decision?
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Run it till it drops and buy another , they dont appeal to me but the brother in law has had them for 10 years at a time, one after another and he is a mechanic
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I would think when the mot is going to cost more than the cars worth
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When some uninsured, drunken a** ***e, uses his untaxed and un MOTed refuse heap of an Orion as a battering ram and writes it off.
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Run it until the next ideal replacement comes along (low mileage and price, FSH, one or two careful owners) and then sell it for a minimal amount if someone wants it for spares or scrap it. If it has a long MOT and tax, recent posts suggest there is a certain element who will happily acquire such vehicles for nefarious use.
David
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Some years ago I was paid a good mileage rate for using my car for work and they didn't specify age or type of car. I would buy anything reasonable with a long MOT for under £500 and scrap it when it eventually packed in. I was driving tens of thousands of miles and made a tidy sum doing this. To give you an idea of how long ago this was the cars were Talbot Alpine, £450 ( engine blew, towed away ), Datsun Sunny, £250 ( rear wheel fell off, left it by the roadside and called the scrappy to collect it ), VW Scirocco Mk 1, £500 ( 2 people crashed into me within a week - went to Kenya on the insurance ). Don't get too sentimental about these things, this was cheapest mototing I ever did and didn't have to put a car through an MOT for almost 4 years. The company went bust !
Scrap it and buy another with a 'good' long MOT.
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STP will quieten the timing gear, and may slightly extend life. Otherwise, keep until you're fed up with it and/or it fails MOT badly. I think I heard of one that had covered 400k...
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A few years ago I was collecting my boss from the local SAAB dealer (a bit of creeping never goes amiss). I got chatting to a guy who was bringing in a 450,000 mile 9000 Carlsson for service - seems the guy went to Spain twice a month on business and was scared of flying. Apart from servicing the only replacement had been a driver's seat.
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If you are only considering keeping or replacing with an identical car 3 years younger, keep her going, better the devil you know!
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What good advice! For myself when I replace a car it is usually for one which is around eight years younger.
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Saabnet.com has a hero's slot re. the mileages attained by some 9000's. I intend to keep mine, currently at 120,000 and relatively hassle free, until my three kids respect vehicle interiotrs/exteriors. Run yours into the ground, as with some TLC en route you've got many years in it yet.
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Keep it, the few things you say need doing are not difficult to do and even if it costs some money do them as it will last a whole lot longer. However I'd take it to a good Saab specialist not a dealer and ask them to give it a good looking over to see if there is potentially anything expensive about to give way.
As some one has pointed out better the devil you know and the car is worth a lot more to you as you know what is wrong/right with it.
110,000 on a clutch is pretty good however my aunt traded her 93 L 9000 cs in with a 120,000 on the clock and the clutch was still as smooth as ever so you could get further performance out of it.
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