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Honestly, there is only like a $17 spread there. After doing shade tree repairs for years my advice is to buy the best quality part, because your time is worth more than the $17 part cost difference, if say, its a shitty part and you have to do the same repair again. Plus gas or shipping money to get the replacement item to your car.
However I have been in the other boat too where my time was worth nothing and $17 is $17…. i went to the wrecker a lot more back then!
The only caveat is that you cant judge a part solely on price alone. Brand makes a bigger difference, and brands can cheap out when times are lean. You dont want to read reviews for a $40 dollar part most likely, but amazon has good reviews i find, if you did. Otherwise pick your favourite brand is how I do it! Or i read the history of the company if i never heard of any of them.
I guess i would sum this up as, Look at the highest priced ones, and compare the brand / company / read reviews. Or just go with the highest price because it ought to be better… You don’t hate yourself as much when you haven’t cheaped out on a part. When you know you cheaped out, and it fails, you blame yourself first. If you buy the most expensive part and it fails, you blame the part first!
no the balljoint boot is cracked when you push it it expels grease.
The other worn rubber i saw appears to be the stabilizer link which is cheap as well so ill probably do it. its nice to know that i dont need an alignment after doing that.
thanks
Well I like what you said. I try and make my cars “my own” and can get very attached to them as well. $500 is the ideal starter price to pay for a car for me. However i did rent a probably 2013-2014 7th gen charger a few years ago and that was a lot of fun. Seemed to make similar structural noises at high speeds that my current car makes (although much higher), which made me think that maybe it wasn’t the best build quality. But you can always beef that up with modifications I bet, and it was a rental.
What you said about looks totally applies to me for the chrysler 300. I loved that car when it came out, when we had the entire 90s in love with shitty curved everything! (eg ford taurus). Gimme my damn rectangles back everycarmaker of the 90s!!! So when the 300 came out around like 2004, it was new and had nice lines, and so I said “i will buy that in 15 years when its $500”, and perhaps one day i will.
But i never sat in one, and there is not always enough leg room in cars for me to just pick anyone i like. The windows from the outside look a bit small. But the look is right, so who cares about the maintenance nightmare that a chrysler probably is!
Those, or pretty much any older muscle car that you would see at a car show. An impala SS or Pontiac GTO from the 60s. But then I would never want to take it out of the parkade. I couldn’t ever park it in a stall parking spot like at a mall. Its better if you can beat around a car a little bit and not worry.
Ive purchased some really beat up cars that it takes years to “spruce up”. Don’t judge a car by its current owner necessarily. Dirty intake manifolds, questionable tape and glue fixes, leaks that apparently went undiagnosed for YEARS. These are things that i personally “inherited” with my vehicles.
However I must also say that while *I* really care about my cars interior, my children do not. So my interiors invariably get destroyed after 5-10 years.Probably better to judge a vehicle by its owner. Are they keen to learn exactly what is wrong? or do their eyes glaze over and they go straight to the price. Are they giving you (or the service writer) little tips about this or that quirk, like a parent taking his kid for a checkup.
And yeah, old cars have bad paint. And as a previous poster noted, paints expensive.
Those 3m kits you were pimping a while back are simply amazing for headlights though. Used them on several cars and it really makes the car look better.Just watched your bench balljoint removal video which is the exclusive video tied to this one. All i can say it haters gonna hate! When i watched the first part, i reflected that while i would have just starting swearing that the part didnt fit and went out and purchased a whole new control arm, you used your skills and available tools to fix the problem at zero additional cost. That’s true mechanicing! not just lame ole part swapping, and one of the reasons i really love fixing it forward. Get to see what its like to see the problem through the mechanics eye, with the filter of frugality.
I particularly admired how some welding skills and equipment solved the problem. This demo of how permanent the repair was, is icing on the cake!
it was only for max 2 minutes i ran this through the system. the cars were all fine that i performed this on. run some seafoam through the intake after if you are paranoid.
if someone has a better method to diag vacuum leaks by all means post it. this is quick, easy, and lets you know right where the leaks are better than anything i tried.
I like the short video even though it feels a bit forced (sped up, hit all the points, etc). We used to have pick-n-pull’s but it seems junk yards transfer ownership quite a bit around here and they all have different owners now.
And yes in BC the pick-n-pulls were all like that, gravel not mud like all the more independent ones were. Also encountered were pooled water and chemicals, rabbits, snakes, and i was hunted by a coyote in one yard, which made me not want to lie down for very long!
The nice thing about these pro (chain) places besides all the things you mentioned in the video is they are 100% upfront about all the costs with pricelists on the wall and sales as well. Most independent yards around here one guy gives you one price when you walk in, but when you actually pulled it the price may go up, depending on which employee finalizes the transaction.
They really are better than parts stores especially if the yard is well maintained and all grey gravel is immaculate. They probably have people come around and pick up parts after they close and put them back into the cabin or trunk of the car to keep it neat. That’s where your admission goes, is what i used to tell my friends who complained about paying $1 or 2 for admisson…
and finally, the best part, is you can do practice repairs and servicings on your vehicle twins! a great learning experience.
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Thanks. I typed a big long reply but then the baby deleted it.
First of all its all metric, thats how we rolls up here.
Secondly thanks for the advice, i wont worry to much about it, but i may try and stick a bit more to the manufacturers recommended oil change intervals. I was letting it slide a bit because i figure if i have to constantly fill it and i use a mobil 1 filter, then its probably OK for longer (new oil in every month!).
i consider 180,000kms on the motor to be a young car! maybe thats just me….
My driving habits are good, but i have only owned the car for 20000kms so.. I try not to ever go over 2200 rpm and such. My wife is a bit rougher on it. The car is great because it has more leg room and trunk room then any car i tested from the 1999 -2005 era. And i sat in a lot of cars. Impalas , regals, altimas etc were all much smaller than they looked inside. The grand am has so much god damn trim inside i dont know how anyone fits in there! and i didnt want a luxury car like a Cadillac because they cost too much to fix. The kia has been great maintenance wise requiring few repairs. Have to do the timing belt at 200k but thats reasonable i guess with this sort of motor. The 4 cyl is supposed to be good on gas, but in the city i guess nothing really is.thanks for the comments!
I’m about to clean up a ground wire as well so i had a question about that.
I noticed that you did not wire brush, clean up, or replace the rusty bolt that went into the body for the two ground connectors when you reinstalled it. Perhaps it was just cut from the video? however the bolt still looked pretty rusty. Do you not think that will affect the connection? i always spend like 20 minutes painstakingly cleaning the bolt and area. Perhaps that’s unnecessary?
In terms of grease, do you think its ok to use petroleum jelly over the connectors? I think you were using chassis grease or something like that? you didnt mention.
I love how you didn’t let that transmission leak slow you down one bit. If i ended up causing a problem that was arguably worse/more visible than the problem i set out to solve, I would be super upset with myself. However you dealt with it in the coolest and calmest way possible, and it didn’t even seem to slow you down. Very nice!
Glad I live on the west coast where they don’t salt the roads. Can’t imagine how hard it is to work on a car which is basically rust with a bit of steel here and there.
Well first off, for “classic” car status in BC (and reduced insurance rates and special plates), your car needs to be 25 years old. Just throwing that out there as a sort of benchmark at least in my province.
That said, I think an “old car” is a car without a computer, so something pre 80s. However i was born in the late 70s so maybe that effects my perception.
Its 100% about perception. My 88 chevy that i used to have was great. When you stepped on the gas, there wasnt that 500ms lag of the computer figuring out what you wanted to do. It just opened the throttle and instant power to the wheels.I have a “new” 2002 car now, and it hesitates because there is more computer control. However my 88 was falling apart and built like shit. There were firewall leaks where the welds came together, and every 6 months or so something major seemed to fail. It was great to work on though, because it was all steel everywhere. Can just pound shit back into shape, no problem.
But you cant get stuck in the past. Your going to upgrade your car every 10-15 years, most people sooner than that. My new car has more horse power with a 4 cyl, better on gas, more safety features. But also more to go wrong.I had to reset the SRS code a few weeks ago. There was nothing wrong with the airbags, but i let the battery run down one too many times and it set the code. If i didnt have a scanner that read SRS codes, id be out a bunch of money to figure that out, or id be looking at an SRS light staring me down every time i used the car.
I think its not worth getting nostalgically attached to a car or decade. At the end of the day, cars like computers are tools. And upgrading will most likely give you more features in the long run. Although I do love people who have sweet older cars, and put time in to fix and maintain them. Even a dodge K car, that someone puts money into, babies, and loves. You can’t not appreciate the effort involved and the car definitely comes across better than it ever would have been new.
was awesome to see the zipties used in the exact shadetree way i use them. I heart fix it forward for money saving tips like that. Why go to the wrecker when you got zipties!!!!
You think dealers are bad, you should try canadian tire! Every time I took any car there they broke something additional to what they were trying to fix and tried to weasel out of it. I had no problems towing my car out of their bay one time when they broke my fuel pump and wanted to put in an OEM one in for like 400 bucks. Took it to a friend, he soldered it back together and the thing still worked when i sold the car 5 years later.
The recalls i’ve had done were good experiences at the dealer. I did make sure to warn the techs when i had a seat that was broken away in one place from the frame. But I would warn anyone who sat in the driver seat as well about that every year till i had it welded proper.
The kia/hyundai dealer washed the car for free when all i had is warranty work done and wouldn’t take no for an answer. “Standard practice sir”.
I wouldn’t go near a dealership but for warranty work. Cars come from craigslist. Take it in for free repairs, and if they point out any other problems that you didnt notice, thank them and decline the service. If they break my shit then they better fix it. That’s the cost of doing business. Sometimes you screw up and have to eat the cost.