When do you replace a DD if it's not when you're bored?

Seriously.

I could tell you all about my minivan, its 110,000 miles, how it's been repair free for years, how it's perfect and how I'll need one for about 12 years more, but the general question is: If your DD is fine, how do you predict when it will be not-fine?

At work, we call that a Weibayes analysis. We put the tippy tip of the bell curve at tomorrow, since we've had no failures yet, and then use experience with similar technology to decide what the bell curve shape and size will be.

That obviously won't work for a household automotive budget.

I am genuinely curious if anyone has ever had this happen. We will. Someday. Not sure when, that's sort of the point!

I go by nickle and dime. When i spend more hours on the weekend doing repair and above average maintenance, its on the downward spiral towards sale.

In some cases, when my needs change. Example, two years ago my wife had an 08 Taurus X and I had an 11 F-150. Then we bought a travel trailer. The F-150 hauled it fine, but after a couple of long-ish trips, it was clear that there wasn't enough interior space for our family of four plus two dogs, so we swapped the F-150 out for an Expedition, which is now my wife's DD and our trailer hauler. The Taurus X got replaced because it was old, and I wanted something more fun, hence the SHO.

I usually change mine out when someone else runs into them.

What big maintenance items are coming up? Tires, brakes, timing belt, water pump, fluids? Do a search online, find the common issues and when they arise... what are they and when do they happen?

Ok, we've done that. We've got a time and a dollar figure. Now, how much is the car worth, and how much will it cost to replace it if you don't do all the items? Will it cost more to replace the car than to fix it? Probably. Including your time and the aggravation, is it the same story? Probably.

So assuming that there is no common problem for this vehicle, I'd just start saving the payment you'd make on a new[er] car, and use that as your maintenance bank.

When keeping it, is more trouble than selling it to buy something else.

You must be bored right now.

I wouldn't even bother with the analysis until after you have to call for a tow, or atleast face writing a check.

If you're not bored, IMO, replace it when it becomes too much of a pain / cost to maintain relative to what it is or when your needs in a DD change and it no longer meets them.

Huckleberry wrote: You must be bored right now. I wouldn't even bother with the analysis until after you have to call for a tow, or atleast face writing a check.

If Momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy

Rusted_Busted_Spit wrote: I usually change mine out when someone else runs into them.

Yea that seems to be my trend as well recently

Some of the changing needs can be the easiest one to anticipate. The progress of rust, if you live somewhere that they salt the roads, can at least be somewhat predictable as well. But unless there's a particular key part with a well known reputation for failing at a specific time, mechanical failures are harder to predict. And even when something is known to be a time bomb, there can be a huge margin for error. For example, BMW E36 radiators have a reputation for failing at 100,000 miles, but that can be anywhere from 80,000 to 160,000 miles.

If you're determined to keep a car on the road, and live in an area where they don't salt the roads, most modern cars can be like Tolkien's dragons: They live practically forever until somebody kills them. A crash is probably the most likely thing to render a car not worth repairing.

We have a similar thing going on. My wife's DD is a 2000 Grand Cherokee that she bought new. It's got about 130k on it now and is pretty reliable overall - and obviously we know the maintenance history. But it really needs to be bombproof, especially as she's having to do more long-distance travel through the mountains. It's starting to show little signs like weird little electrical bugs. I think it's going to get replaced this year, but it's sure difficult to give up a car that costs us nothing but fuel and insurance to run!

For us, (normally) it's run it until it starts to become unreliable or the potential failures are going to cost more than it's worth. Since I'm the one fixing the failures, it's gotta be pretty worn out or rust is claiming it. So sell it before it looses all value.

The Forte is the exception to this rule.

I think about this a lot too. We try to buy DDs at about the 5k price point, and sell at about the $2-3k price point (there are a lot of reasons for this, but just work with me here).

If we can get 3 years or 60k miles out of one that means we are paying only $1k/year or $0.05/mile for vehicle ownership, which I believe to be about rock bottom. Of course gas, insurance, registration, maintenance is not included in that figure.

I think for me, I just have to have set parameters (they are a bit arbitrary, though, aren't they) ahead of time and follow them. It would be cool to get a bit more scientific about when to sell.

Either (A) when someone runs into it or (B) when cost of maintaining it exceeds my interest in it.

I'm wondering this now, my dd is a '12 Mazda 5 that turned over 171k yesterday. It's never really needed anything but at some point it will, I'm at the point where I'm driving it to see what DOES go wrong!

tuna55 wrote: Seriously. If your DD is fine, how do you predict when it will be not-fine?

I'll let you know if I ever get there...I never keep cars very long

Are there any car sales sites (like cars.com, autotrader, etc) that are "open source"?

If so, it would be plausible that you could download car value data for your make and model and zip and run some analytics about the steepness of the value/mileage curve. That would give you basically the optimal mileage to look into buying at and the optimal mileage to sell at. If you could combine that with maintenance cost data, you could do even better, but I'm not sure where to find maintenance data on cars out of warranty.

I usually go by when others experience failures, but that sometimes bites you in the butt. In those cases I go by cost to replace vs. value of having the repairs done.

Using really vague, rounded numbers:

Example #1: I have recently been looking at Jag XJ308s with the common timing chain guide failure. If you buy one that hasn't had the repair, you can often save $1000 on the purchase price, but then you have a $1500 repair to do. It makes sense to buy one with it already done. Conversely, if you're selling an XJ, it makes sense to sell it without doing the repair.

Example #2: My F150 needed the exhaust manifold replaced (like they all do at about 80k). If I had the shop fix it for $400, it seems like that adds $700 value in buyer confidence so it makes sense to do the repair if my goal is to sell.

Truth is, I usually buy vehicles with high mileage that have shown excellent reliability, (read: cheap and a good gamble) so my experience is often with BUYING the cars that others have sold for fear of getting to the age of money-pitting the owner. In those cases, I simply identify what the common failure points are, assess if the repairs have been done or not, estimate repair costs if something happens, and shop accordingly. 9 times out of 10 I win and come away with a great car that doesn't open the big wallet. My current 02 F150 is not really fitting that bill, but its mostly because I went with the 5.4L and have experienced many of their common failures in the first year of ownership. I also don't foresee myself selling it for another 80k miles, so I don't really mind putting money into a long-term vehicle.

I just went through this with Mrs. Woof's DD.

It was essentially trouble free in the 10 years that we've had it, but it was aging. It was starting to show signs of rust, a number of maintenance items were due, and it was 11 years old with 200k.

It's a judgement call, but I didn't want to be in the position where I'd just put a bunch of time and money into needed maintenance, then something breaks and I'm putting more money into a car that's not really worth it. So I I found her a car, put the old one up for $1200, and sold it to the first guy that looked at it. Now I don't have to worry about surprises.

Interesting thing, we buy 1-3 yr old GM cars, and it's worked very well for us. In 99 I bought her a Z24. In 07 I bought her a loaded Cobalt. I just bought her a loaded Sonic. List on all of them new was within $1000, and what we paid for each one was almost identical, over almost 20 years.

When faced with a similar situation (06 sienna 210k). I started making "payments" to myself. I figure if it dies tomorrow, I know the payment I can comfortably handle. If it doesn't die for a couple years I could pay cash for an '08+ or have a reasonable down payment ​for a 2013+. I got tired of trying to project it's death date--and my wife still likes it enough. This is the solution that I found works for me.

I'm so damn bored with mine I should have ditched it years ago. I'll probably just daily something else and then ruin it on race tracks.

But what will actually happen is that I'll keep dailying it long after it doesn't make economic sense to own it anymore. Then I'll put it on blocks in my back yard.

We're kind of circling around this issue now.

DW is driving a 2004 TSX we bought new 13 years ago. There is precisely nothing wrong with it except it could use tires and an oil change. It has about 65,000 miles on it.

I'm driving a 2003 325i I bought used in 2006. It has about twice the TSX's mileage and is due for the typical BMW post-100k refresh.

We're on the 8-10 year plan for retirement. DD#2 gets out of college next spring. I'd like to buy us both new cars that we can have both paid off before retirement. Shouldn't be a real problem to do, because we have also been making a car payment to ourselves since these were paid off long ago. But it does sort of mean that we will be replacing both current drivers before they are dilapidated piles. I figure February 2018, we'll buy a new car for DW.

The strategic conundrum is this: her TSX appears to be worth a surprising amount of money for a 13-year-old car.

So do I refresh the BMW now at a cost of $1500 +/- and drive it 5 more years until it is a dilapidated pile, and sell the TSX to maximize capital when we buy DW's new car next year?

Or do I ignore the BMW refresh for another year and unload it for cheap, then drive the TSX myself until it is still clean but nearly valueless?

For me its out of boredom. My wife on the other hand has had her 04 ion since 06. 11 years and 120k miles and its been rather trouble free. She hauls clients (mentally disabled folks) for a living now amd wants something newer so we will likely look late this summer unless something large fails. Trans etc.

When I come across something I want more than the current one at a price that reflects that level of want.