Philosophy on repair: What’s the best investment?

[Robert Sypniewski]

Hello to all in the forum,

I am the proud owner of a 1998 Honda Civic EX with an automatic transmission and just rolled 165,000 miles. I purchased the vehicle for $3,200, 3 years ago at 130,000 miles. I am noticing the vehicles performance slowly diminishing. The specific symptoms consist of the following:

1) lack of power resulting in slow acceleration and difficulty maintaining highway speeds, requiring me to shift manually into a lower gear to get back up to speed. Overall, the car is running under-powered.

2) When the car shifts gears it is occurs at high RPM’s, usually between 4,000 and 5,000.

I will soon be faced with a decision which will consist of the following options:

1) Sell the car while it is still in good working condition to apply the money from the sale towards another used vehicle. (Its worth between $1,500 and $2,000)

2) Repair the car under its current conditions. (No current assessed cost or diagnosis. I understand that this makes the decision making process difficult for this option which is why I included the vehicles performance behavior above)

3) Buy a new engine and transmission. (About $5,000 in parts alone. Labor cost not assessed)

4) Drive it until it becomes an unusually large driveway ornament. (Priceless. Think of the old MasterCard commercial)

My concern is not necessarily the money in this matter as all options are affordable to me. I am curious to know what the best investment is or rather what will result in the best turnout as far as having a reliable vehicle for the longest time. What I am really trying to avoid here is having a monthly car bill. All of the vehicles I own are paid off and I would like it to stay that way which is why buying a new car is not one of my options. I realize that the answer may be a combination of the options listed above and could include other elements I have not foreseen, thus making the options I listed not all inclusive. This is all the more reason to reach out to a community such as this to help me consider this in more depth and I thank you in advance for sharing.

Please share your opinion on this matter and I look forward to all responses.

Very respectfully,

R. Ski

(P.S. A shout out to Eric. I have been watching your videos since the early days and you have helped me with various repair matters resulting in savings in the amounts of hundreds of dollars. In return I continue to recommend this site and the videos to others for guidance in repair matters. In short, Thank you)

Topic

[Lorrin Barth]

First, it depends on what is wrong with your car. If inexpensive to fix then fix and drive.

Otherwise, I can only tell you what I did in a long life (now retired). I bought new and kept the vehicle until well near shot. In the meantime I was saving for the next vehicle. I liked knowing the entire service history and how the vehicle was treated. Buying new is expensive but pays off over the years.

Everyone has their own thoughts and feelings about car repair, refurbishing and buying. Do what fits you.

[Jon Hart]

To me buying new makes no sense as a car can lose 60% of it’s new sale price within the first 2 years. and the cost saving from buying used that alone would buy me a whole new engine and trans with money still in my pocket. personally I don’t keep cars long 2 weeks 2 months a year There are so many cars out there I tend to just buy something run it till i get bored and move onto the next, that being said the new company i work for has a very good car scheme so I’ll probably be moving onto that fairly soon.

All said and done there is no right answer My friends still got his first car that he paid $500 for it’s cost him over $3000 to keep it road worthy but to him it’ll always be his first car and that is priceless

Throwing money at a junk car is a waste in my eye almost anything gearbox related is going to cost more than the car is worth to sort only thing i’d do is plug it in check the for fault codes give the trans fluid a flush if it’s still the same I’d put it on ebay.

[Andrew Button]

Dont assume its worn out. Tune it up. You cannot buy a Honda now as well made at that one. Civics went downhill after the 2000 model was over, and your ex was one of the better models, probably a coupe, and I say diagnose and repair as needed. I doubt your engine or trans is trashed, and even if it were, it would cost far less to replace them than buying something newer, less than 5000 for parts, t to buy a newer car that you WONT be able to repair cheaply. New cars are a waste of money. Nurse yours along, it maybe me alot cheaper than you think to keep it chugging along. Now it were a 2012 Civic, I would say do whatever you could to rid yourself of it.

[Ingvar]

Sell. Do real basic tune up, as in – new plugs, wires, ATF change, maybe run Seafoam through tankful two tanks in a row. Sell.

Reason being is 2fold.
1. you may easily get tangled into costly repairs. What starts as a “touchup” somewhere at that age, can go in few grand easy in repairs.
2. those are CHEAP to buy. With a bit of patience and maybe a few hundred more.
http://seattle.craigslist.org/skc/cto/4867988414.html
http://seattle.craigslist.org/sno/cto/4881702663.html

[zero]

$5000 seems a touch high for a motor and trans, check car-part.com for local pricing and availability.

If you’ve never done basic tune-up/maintenance stuff that would be a good place to start. Beyond that if you’re having trouble identifying the issue it might be worth spending some money to have someone look at it.

[Jesse]

[quote=”R. Ski” post=127684]Hello to all in the forum,

I am the proud owner of a 1998 Honda Civic EX with an automatic transmission and just rolled 165,000 miles. I purchased the vehicle for $3,200, 3 years ago at 130,000 miles. I am noticing the vehicles performance slowly diminishing. The specific symptoms consist of the following:

1) lack of power resulting in slow acceleration and difficulty maintaining highway speeds, requiring me to shift manually into a lower gear to get back up to speed. Overall, the car is running under-powered.

2) When the car shifts gears it is occurs at high RPM’s, usually between 4,000 and 5,000.

I will soon be faced with a decision which will consist of the following options:

1) Sell the car while it is still in good working condition to apply the money from the sale towards another used vehicle. (Its worth between $1,500 and $2,000)

2) Repair the car under its current conditions. (No current assessed cost or diagnosis. I understand that this makes the decision making process difficult for this option which is why I included the vehicles performance behavior above)

3) Buy a new engine and transmission. (About $5,000 in parts alone. Labor cost not assessed)

4) Drive it until it becomes an unusually large driveway ornament. (Priceless. Think of the old MasterCard commercial)

My concern is not necessarily the money in this matter as all options are affordable to me. I am curious to know what the best investment is or rather what will result in the best turnout as far as having a reliable vehicle for the longest time. What I am really trying to avoid here is having a monthly car bill. All of the vehicles I own are paid off and I would like it to stay that way which is why buying a new car is not one of my options. I realize that the answer may be a combination of the options listed above and could include other elements I have not foreseen, thus making the options I listed not all inclusive. This is all the more reason to reach out to a community such as this to help me consider this in more depth and I thank you in advance for sharing.

Please share your opinion on this matter and I look forward to all responses.

Very respectfully,

R. Ski

(P.S. A shout out to Eric. I have been watching your videos since the early days and you have helped me with various repair matters resulting in savings in the amounts of hundreds of dollars. In return I continue to recommend this site and the videos to others for guidance in repair matters. In short, Thank you)[/quote]
If you’re worried about your car getting worn out, take it into a mechanic and ask for a leak down, and compression test — or if you’re mechanically inclined do it yourself. That should give you a good idea of your engines overall health. If you have good compression then your engine most likely still has life left. After that I would replace the spark plugs and wires, maybe even change the distributor cap. If you haven’t done those things in awhile your cars performance will suffer considerably.

On a side note, has the car had its timing belt changed? I believe every 90 k they need to be changed (at least on Toyota’s they do, i think its a similar story for Hondas). If it hasn’t been changed it needs to be immediately. If the timing belt breaks your engine will essentially tear itself apart. Sometimes when timing belts get worn the timing gets knocked off by a little bit and performance suffers. Also check your transmission fluid.

If you don’t have the cars service manual I would by it. That will tell you exactly what you need to do to keep your car running. If you follow the service schedules, and procedures you can keep that Civic running almost indefinitely.

You should also keep this video in mind, if your throttle response is not what it used to be this could be the reason why: Check out Eric’s 0 dollar performance upgrade video.

[Mike]

No car can ever ‘die’ do a mechanical problem. Corrosion/Wrecking the car is the only way a car can truly die, and therefore is the baseline consideration to be made when questioning whether to invest in said vehicle. Even rust can be fixed, but doing it properly takes many times longer than even the most time-consuming mechanical repair. The only reasons I’ve ever parted with a car were due to rust or crash damage beyond my ability to fix. It’s all about the body, the piece that ties every other part of the car together.

[Author]

Replies