My car has 223,000 miles and hasn’t had too many problems until recently. I just replaced my clutch yesterday at a cost of $440. This is on a car that is worth maybe $1000. I’m not sure how much I should spend on the car at this point. Before I took the car to the shop I told myself I wouldn’t spend more than $500 on it and the repair came pretty close to that. There comes a point when it is better to quit repairing an old car and get a new(to you) one. I’m not sure what that point is but I do not plan on making any more repairs to my car. I’m hoping to replace it with a van this summer so I’m not even sure that I should have fixed it now. I could get by during school without a car if I had to. I’d just prefer to get a little more use out of my car.
The answer is that it depends. If your car is running great and doesn’t need any other major repairs, then that $440 could turn into a couple thousand dollars in savings on the replacement. The reason for this being, you can shop for the right replacement and not worry about when the car will finally die on you. No pressure = Potential savings.
In my case, I didn’t shop enough and ended up paying too much for a car that, in just under a year, needed a new transmission. To avoid that pressure, I have slated an estimated time to disposal of about 5 years, approximately when the mileage will be double what it was when the transmission failed. I will probably start seriously looking in 4 years.
I’ve heard the rule of thumb is: If you are spending more on your car to fix it (per year) than you would in car payments, then get rid of it. ???
Have you heard that if the transmission goes you only get about double the mileage from the new (rebuilt) transmission? Just wondering because my transmission was replaced before I bought it (second hand) and it will give me an idea when to start looking for something new(er).
Brenda- I’m not paying as much for car repairs as car payments would be so I’m ok by that rule of thumb. I haven’t heard that about the transmission not lasting as long but I’m not that knowledgeable about cars.