Spend Money On Keeping A High-Miler On The Road, Or...?

[Clan]

Originally Posted by Prufrock

I disagree with much of this -

most cars will not go forever (see my 3rd and 4th owner comment, as once they join the multiple ownership club the owners cannot afford the maintenance.
Newer cars, let's say those in the 5-10 year old category will often (in my experience) need much more money spending on them than a cared for older car (say a 700/900 - I'll stay with Volvo for obvious reasons).

Fleet cars (majority of new cars sold in the UK are company cars), when they reach the second owner/used market they'll be defleeted when maintenance is due (dual mass flywheel, maybe DPF issues).

Digital cars are more complex, AND more complexity equals less reliability and therefore less durability.

I have doubts about our V70 lasting until 2023: the 745 is already approaching 30 (in 2016).

Jon.
700/900 Register Keeper VOC.

Indeed , I don't know why people think new cars are less trouble than older ones it is simply not the case ! I believe they have that word WARRANTY to reassure them .( talking volvo here , not neglected hanging other makes )New cars have all sorts of problems , clutches lasting 60000 miles or less , and noisy chirping , clutch release bearing/cylinder within the gearbox housing leaking , alternators , driveshaft joints and boots , radiators leaking after 4 years , coolant barely lasting a year , Plastic clutch master cylinders breaking , mysterious network systems causing electrical havok with no fault found which fix themselves and the car carries on , seat upholstery showing signs of wear after 2 years , it must be the Polish cows .. uneven tyre wear , wheel bearings going noisy ,belt tensioners failing , water pump issues , electric window motor connectors overheating and melting , Diesel pumps not machined correctly , so the pump isnt square to the engine resulting in the cam belt running off and wrecking the engine .

These are not all volvo , just some of the faults on new car makes which i am familiar with on a daily basis and can run a list of out of my head .
The main cause of all this is COST . they are trying to save money by cutting costs .. Your V70 from say 2002 would cost over £50000 to make now due to the quality built in to it .. Keep them going , it will cost FAR less than buying new , if you buy new expect to spend a lot more than you do now :-)
I have only ever owned 2 cars in my whole life , both are still owned by me and running fine ... how many cars have you all owned in your life . 15 ? more ?

[Prufrock]

Originally Posted by Clan

... how many cars have you all owned in your life . 15 ? more ?

Me personally - lost count of how many company cars, and quite a few of my own.

However: here's three of the oldest (age and ownership) I still own -

1977 BMW 320* - in family from 6 months old, mine since 1981
1986 Volvo 745GLa* - in family from 6 months old, mine since 2010
1989 Mercedes 300CE - owned 12 years, I knew previous owner.

Jon.
700/900 Register Keeper VOC.

*both oldest of their type.

[Laney760]

I am very happy to keep my high miler on the road with one proviso - once the body starts to go and welding is required then for me it is time to say goodbye but my 1996 940 is still rock solid underneath

I imagine I am one of the many drivers who cannot afford to buy or maintain a newer model but I am very happy to own a thoroughbred Swede pre Ford-input to be honest. Last year, due to being so busy working and clocking up high mileage for my job my 940 needed many repairs which I did not have time to do myself and it was pretty soul destoying paying garage prices on top of a £1300 top end lpg conversion but when I have the time and energy to do repairs myself I am very happy to have an old high miler on the road. I am always proud of her, I love to drive a car that stands out from the crowd!

[Dirty Rooster]

Originally Posted by Phaedrus68

So what's the general feeling - spend your money on keeping your loved-and-trusted high-miler going? Or spend that money on replacing it with a younger, lower-mileage car?

I really need this model, and none of the younger cars can do what this old 940 can do ... so either I flit from old 940 to old 940 or repair and run this one forever.

[TurnipSpeed]

I bought a 940gle 9 years ago, not knowing anything about their reliability or quality, and sold it 5 years later because I thought it needed too much work to keep it going( big regret!).
I have very little money to spend on maintenance, but I do my best.
My new 940gle has 142000 on the clock, and I will try to keep it going regardless of cost, as the reliability and build quality are just phenomenal!
It sailed through two MOT's with no work.
Paintwork and general appearance are amazing for a 19-year old car(the silver sand metallic seems a very durable paint job!).
I wonder if this is the end of being able to buy good quality cars that are 18- plus years old, as modern cars seem to be throwaway items( wonder how much wear stop-start technology puts on an engine?).
I hope to get 20 more years out of mine!

[Phaedrus68]

Originally Posted by TurnipSpeed

...as modern cars seem to be throwaway items

This is what really gets me. There are some items that IMO should be considered "lifetime" items - car, house, TV...

Marketing makes gullible people feel that they NEED to replace stuff. A car should run forever, if maintained and repaired as necessary. That's not from a tightwad or even impoverished perspective; I just hate that a car that could be maintained and kept on the road is discarded just because people swallow the marketing that ostensibly creates profit/wealth for other people.

[moorgate]

Oh boy do I ever recognise this dilemma! I wouldn't even be here (in this forum, I mean...) if I hadn't been up close and personal with all these issues over the last few months. Basically, I sold out of my Mercedes brabus D6 (E-Class estate) because not only did it throw up an electrical fault at only 38k miles; not only did it do it at a deserted Autobahn ****-stop in the driving rain near Trier; not only did I have to pay to have it recovrered; not only did the main dealer not really recognise the problem but also my very trusted Merc specialist took 3 more goes to figure it out and fix it.

So I thought; that's fifteen grand doing me naff-all good tied up in that car, and went and bought a £1,500 V70 instead. I didn't *mean* to directly - I wanted an E300TD, having had one before, but the guy sold it before I got there and the V70 was sat there, so in pursuit of avoiding any more stupid, ill-documented, ill-managed systematic faults in new cars, I went for it.

Very modern cars are in a very strange design space for a reason that nobody else has so far mentioned: They were designed during a 3 year almost-zero lull in the car business. There was effectively no demand from 07 to 10: Nothing the vendors could do would stimulate the market. So the design guys had several years to re-imagine the new models, for the day when the markets picked back up again. They dreamed up all kinds of crap, basically, in a long vacuum with no feedback, no comment, no sanity checking.

Older cars are in a funny space for that same reason too: they have had their lives extended by the recession. People have *had* to keep running htem, *had* to keep using them, because there was just no money for a replacement.

Now, we are in a post-recession market, and the pricing of pre-recession cars (like my Brabus estate) is completely mad; I think I lost no more than £750 from purchase to sale, over at least 2 years. My Jaaag (2.7 diesel twin turbo *manual* S-Type) has if anything, gone up a bit.

The value of any car, I believe, is not it's sale price: it is rather, the value of finding a genuinely equivalent replacement *including all the work required to bring it up to standard*. This means that my £1,500 V70 has a "replacement value" of about £4k, that being how much it would cost me to go and find somehting with all the broken bits fixed.

[Backhill1]

Very interesting thread as we can have fairly new cars that have no rust and are genuinely in good condition but a simple amber triangle "engine system service light" could potentially make a repair unviable. That and when you factor that Dealers or a good Indy will be the only ones able to fix so you are looking at circa £100 an hour.
I myself had spent approx. £5.5K in 5 years on my (56) V70D5 and 70K miles (90-160K) that's almost 13p per mile which is almost comparable to fuel costs.

I think most fans of the Older cars have skipped 10 years to where they could be repaired and components were considered "service" items. If we consider a petrol vehicle from the 80's you would have lots of parts that should be serviced regularly and if so the vehicle would be reliable (plugs / point / distributor cap etc.) also there were many adjustable items that were actually done and not just "Visually Checked" hand brake etc.
Take a Diesel from the same era that had to be robust and reliable as they were generally only bought by high milers. Injectors changed at say 60K for £15 a pop and injection pump at say 120-180K at say £300 that and glow plugs and a timer and you had nothing else to go wrong fundamentally.

So now we have all these components that we didn't have in the past, computers EGR, DPF, MAP, 4C suspension etc etc.

There does not appear to be access to cheep parts either now like there used to be where you went to the Scrappy with a box of tools and took what you needed for nominal cost.

So as far as being green I think we will have a range of cars now that approaching 10 years old will be very difficult to keep on the road and make financial sense.

I have just decided to buy new for various reasons, it has a 5 year warranty and 3 years maintenance also I intend to keep it for a long time as I will have it from new.
But what I found astonishing was that the cost of nearly new cars is astronomical. They appear to have went up in Value. Making the cost very comparable when you consider the finance incentives with new vehicles.

I would dearly love a 240GLT or a 740/60 and one day I hope to have one and im sure it will be easier to fix and maintain but my only fear is that like my defender you spend all your time on it and it constantly needs something?

Agree with previous posts once you start welding or rust sets in its time to let go.

Are people genuinely getting from service interval- interval without popping the bonnet for anything other than checks?

[Dirty Rooster]

As a sort of own-car-mechanic I would be too scared to buy a nearly new modern car as I see the huge cost of parts (never mind labour) each time I visit my local garage, and the silly unnecessary common failures of new car items, even the engines.
Either new with warranty or old enough to fix cheaply ... those seem the sensible choices.

[Squealey]

I guess I'm quite well placed to have an opinion on this.

I purchased my 2003 S60 D5 manual SE earlier this year with a paltry 322,000 miles on the clock and have just spent near on £300 getting it through its mot. The way I saw it was the car cost me £500 to purchase, so really the purchase price was £800.

I replaced what I would consider to be fair wear and tear items, front shocks, arms, drop links all round, rear arb bushes and rear discs, pads and shoes. In my opinion a 2003 Mondeo or similar with a quarter of the mileage would have needed a LOT more than that!

I'm very lucky that many years ago I trained as a car mechanic and there isn't a great deal I can't do, apart from welding and deeper electrical issues. This has saved me literally thousands over the years.

But my S60 tripped over 326,000 miles at the weekend, the engine feels very strong, the dual mass flywheel rattles a tiny bit when cold but its done that for ages (the previous owner is my neighbour), and it is quite honestly one of the most comfortable places to sit, especially with that amazing stereo. It is virtually rust free, looks classy and It doesn't creak, knock or rattle at all. The MOT inspector said that its better than most cars with 1/4 of the mileage.

So unless the engine sticks a rod through the block or something else catastrophic goes wrong (not sure what!) I certainly won't mind throwing a few quid at it every year, its never going to depreciate any more, and at least by buying and fitting parts I get to see where my hard earned has gone, whereas my dads Lexus has lost £8k+ in the past two years just because its getting older!

Just my two peneth worth!

Cheers all