The good news is...
Mar. 4th, 2008 04:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
johnpalmer... that I was right about the car. It needs new rings. However, the tech at Saturn seems to think that, at the mileage of the car (165+k), it wouldn't be enough to do rings and such; she said that it'd be time to go straight to a remanufactured engine. So, hey, I'm learning enough about car engines to figure some stuff out. I was right about my car needing engine work.
The bad news is, yesterday, it wouldn't start. Cranked like a sonofagun, but didn't cough, sputter, fire, or (obviously) turn over.
The worse news is, they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Everything tests just fine, it started on the first try for them, etc..
So now I'm stuck with the only thing more troublesome than "no car", and that's an untrustworthy one. I mean, with no car, I'd do some searches, make some calls, find a car I couldn't exactly afford, but whose loan payments wouldn't kill me, and I'd get a car. Now... well, now I'm not quite sure what to do, because I don't know when (or how often) my car will decide not to start.
I guess, first and foremost, it's time to stop reveling in having money, and start living by a tighter budget. (Not that I've been spending unwisely, but I've been feeling the pull of "I can buy stuff!".) I have to get my debt down to 0, ASAP.
Then... well, I don't know. Conventional wisdom says never put a remanufactured engine inside a car that old. It's not worth it.
That's because conventional wisdom keeps thinking of cars as salable assets. Put a (wild guess from the Saturn tech) $3500 remanufactured engine into a 1997 Saturn SL, you don't have a $3500 car to sell, so it's a net loss. You'd have been better off selling the Saturn, and using the $3500 (+ whatever you get for the Saturn) to buy a better car.
But you don't buy cars for resale; you buy them to use them. And just because a car is worth more at retail doesn't mean it's any better. If I spend $3500 + (a bit) to buy a used car, I'm risking having a car in much, much worse shape than the Saturn. If I spend $7000 on the used car, and the engine would have lasted as long as the used car does, I'm potentially losing money.
And all of this is complicated by the fact that I want to go back to school, and need a reliable car to consider doing that. I have the money right now to get a car loan and make payments, but I don't want to be making payments for three years.
Ah well... no point in worrying about this right this instant. But if anyone has any advice to offer, I wouldn't mind hearing it.
The bad news is, yesterday, it wouldn't start. Cranked like a sonofagun, but didn't cough, sputter, fire, or (obviously) turn over.
The worse news is, they couldn't find anything wrong with it. Everything tests just fine, it started on the first try for them, etc..
So now I'm stuck with the only thing more troublesome than "no car", and that's an untrustworthy one. I mean, with no car, I'd do some searches, make some calls, find a car I couldn't exactly afford, but whose loan payments wouldn't kill me, and I'd get a car. Now... well, now I'm not quite sure what to do, because I don't know when (or how often) my car will decide not to start.
I guess, first and foremost, it's time to stop reveling in having money, and start living by a tighter budget. (Not that I've been spending unwisely, but I've been feeling the pull of "I can buy stuff!".) I have to get my debt down to 0, ASAP.
Then... well, I don't know. Conventional wisdom says never put a remanufactured engine inside a car that old. It's not worth it.
That's because conventional wisdom keeps thinking of cars as salable assets. Put a (wild guess from the Saturn tech) $3500 remanufactured engine into a 1997 Saturn SL, you don't have a $3500 car to sell, so it's a net loss. You'd have been better off selling the Saturn, and using the $3500 (+ whatever you get for the Saturn) to buy a better car.
But you don't buy cars for resale; you buy them to use them. And just because a car is worth more at retail doesn't mean it's any better. If I spend $3500 + (a bit) to buy a used car, I'm risking having a car in much, much worse shape than the Saturn. If I spend $7000 on the used car, and the engine would have lasted as long as the used car does, I'm potentially losing money.
And all of this is complicated by the fact that I want to go back to school, and need a reliable car to consider doing that. I have the money right now to get a car loan and make payments, but I don't want to be making payments for three years.
Ah well... no point in worrying about this right this instant. But if anyone has any advice to offer, I wouldn't mind hearing it.
