How do people pay for their car repairs?

[der_kluge]

I've often wondered how people who live paycheck to paycheck afford things like a new set of tires or major automotive repairs.

I think the trick is to manage car maintenance effectively so that these things don't happen. It's one of those life lessons we all have to learn the hard way, unfortunately.

 

[reveal]

I've often wondered how people who live paycheck to paycheck afford things like a new set of tires or major automotive repairs.

I think the trick is to manage car maintenance effectively so that these things don't happen. It's one of those life lessons we all have to learn the hard way, unfortunately.

And don't live paycheck to paycheck anymore.

 

[Harmon]

Credit cards, and a second morgage.

 

[Harmon]

I've often wondered how people who live paycheck to paycheck afford things like a new set of tires or major automotive repairs.

Some of them barrow from friends or run on bald tires.

Living like that sucks, but its a fact of life for oh, so many. You either work or your homeless. Is it food or gas this week?

 

[frankthedm]

P2P sucks. I can't recommend strongly enough doing everything one can to get off that rut. Even if i means never leaving the house and telling friends who want you to head out with them on your day off to sod off.

How is this "hyundai" warrentee thing that gets advertised so much?

 

[Storminator]

Even though the chain was expensive, it's the design that strikes me as weird. "Yeah, when the chain goes, it tends to tear up the engine." Now isn't this like putting a small bomb in the car and waiting for it to go? :\ I've had cars with timing belts before and when they broke, they didn't take parts of the engine with them.

As fuel & air enters the cylinders and exhaust is expelled, the valves open and close. Simultaneously, the pistons compress the fuel/air. If the pistons hit the valves, you'll need to replace them all, at huge expense (they are all internal to the engine, which means tearing it apart). The timing belt (or chain) coordinates the mechanisms so none of the moving parts hit each other. So if the timing belt goes when the engine is revving high, everything must be replaced.

Sometimes you can hear it start to go. If you get a little extra chatter under the hood on hard acceleration (often called "valve clatter") you might want to get the timing belt looked at.

I have a Mazda MPV, and no matter what happens to it, it's a thousand dollars to fix. Two things break? Two thousand dollars. My Geo Metro is dirt cheap to fix. Just the way of things.

I usually put it on a card or cut a check.

Used to suck when I was young and poor tho.

PS

 

[Simplicity]

How is this "hyundai" warrentee thing that gets advertised so much?

We got a brand new Hyundai elantra for $10k (manual transmission) in 2003. It came with a 5-year bumper-to-bumper warrantee. $2k per year for a car that doesn't break is worth it. Who cares if it doesn't last to 120k like Toyotas? For that price, we could just buy a spare CAR.

First thing we did after we got the car was drive cross-country. Twice.
We've never had any problems with the car. That's more than I can say for my Camry, which lost it's exhaust system due to a faulty valve seal (which Toyota refused to cover
under their warrantee). And although the Camry has run for a while, it's always had weird stalls and idle problems.

Hyundais have gone up in price since we bought them. At one point, we could have actually sold back to the dealer and made a *profit* on it because the cars have become so popular.

 

[SWBaxter]

Well, I've got a 4 year old Saturn SL200. The timing chain blew. The timing chain is in essence a bomb that destroys your car's engine.

Just got the bill. $3,500.

Thread's a bit old so this has probably been pointed out and I'm too lazy to read through the whole thing, but it'd almost certainly be cheaper to buy a new (or reconditioned) engine and have it installed.

So how do people deal with huge bills like that? Dip into the credit cards or the 401K? Grin and bear it?

I drive for a living (same day courier). If I have a breakdown, it's critical that I get the car back on the road ASAP - no car means no income. So I pay for repairs with a credit card. I have two - one is for normal expenses like gas and oil changes that gets paid off every month, the other is for these kinds of emergencies, with a high enough limit that I could buy a used car if I really needed to. That gives me a month or so to work out whether I'm better off paying off the emergency from long-term savings, or carrying the debt for a while.

 

[der_kluge]

P2P sucks. I can't recommend strongly enough doing everything one can to get off that rut. Even if i means never leaving the house and telling friends who want you to head out with them on your day off to sod off.

How is this "hyundai" warrentee thing that gets advertised so much?

I think that's a Kia warranty you're thinking of. I actually drive a Kia, but I bought it used from CarMax. The bulk of that warranty is non-transferable, so to get that 10-year warranty, you have to buy it new.

 

[reveal]

I think that's a Kia warranty you're thinking of. I actually drive a Kia, but I bought it used from CarMax. The bulk of that warranty is non-transferable, so to get that 10-year warranty, you have to buy it new.

The Hyundai warranty is 10 years, 100,000 miles. We bought one new. However, it's only a 3-year, 30,000 mile (or something like that) full coverage warranty. The rest is powertrain only.

They do offer you a good deal, though. For an extra $900-something (which equates to about $10 a car payment) you can make it a 10 year, 100,000 mile full coverage warranty. That's what we have.