We have four bays and, for the most part, work on four brands. Our shop only has two advisors in the office, so there’s rarely a slow moment. Within our four brands, we see a wide range of cars; anything from brand-new high-performance sports cars to abused four-wheeled appliances that haven’t seen more than a quick lube joint in the last decade will show up in our parking lot. [Ed Note: This is Andrea’s first article! She’s a new voice with a great Twitter account. A friend suggest I reach out and I’m glad I did as it’s great to be able to highlight new, fresh voices. If you enjoy this column let us know in the comments and maybe we can do this more regularly. – MH] Eventually, something on most cars will go bang. Or sometimes it’s a tapping noise. There are often puddles involved as well. Sometimes the voice on the other end of the phone is frantic, other times rather casual. Usually, a tow truck is involved in these calls, but some manage to weakly limp in under their own power, shaking like a nervous chihuahua or pouring fluids in a way that the EPA might declare their parking spot a superfund site. Instead of the usual two-ish week wait for an appointment, we try to fit them into the schedule in a day or two. At the very least we’ll start with a diagnostic so we can perform a little bit of triage. Sometimes this can take mere minutes, such as “I can put my hand into the transmission.” Other times the list of problems is very, very long. A couple of times a month I make the same phone call: Each time, I always try to deliver the news in a tone of voice one might use to tell someone a beloved pet has terminal cancer. I tell them what their car needs and that the repairs would exceed the value of the vehicle. The reactions can vary wildly, from sounding on the verge of tears to outrageous laughter.
— Andrea Petersen (@Neondancer) December 20, 2022 Everyone expresses grief differently and, at the end of the day, I’m delivering news of a death; dumping a bucket o’ grief over them like a water park splash pad. I have seen the full five stages of automotive grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. Often, these are related to the recent history of the car: If you are ever in this situation and have full coverage, you might consider jumping to that last one. I’ve seen cars mechanically totaled with all sorts of surprising stories, from driving over a heavy local agricultural product to “my dog jumped on the park button.” Our job is to say what’s wrong with the car, usually not evaluate how it got to that point, so if you say you ran over a cabbage at 70 miles per hour and it somehow put a hole in the block, who am I to doubt you? “The guy I bought it from said it only needed a…” “Can you fix it?” “What am I going to do now?” “I guess I should call my insurance.” “How much will it be to fix it?” is a normal question in this situation. Replacing an engine is not cheap, on the low end, it’s $8,000 at our shop to replace a dead engine with a good used one. Usually, that’s when people realize this really is the end. They come to collect their belongings, pay the diagnostic bill and leave the key for the tow truck driver who is taking it to the junkyard or the insurance auction. I once took photos of a young couple posing in front of their dead car. I’ll never forget the sticker on the driver-side mirror of that one, “object in mirror is close to death.” Rest in peace, little Mini. Roughly one-in-10 will ask for an actual engine replacement estimate and go through with it. They bought it at auction and expected it would need work or the car has sentimental value far beyond the monetary value. For the former, I’d like to say cut your losses, but it’s not my call to make. For the latter, I will move heaven and earth. It may take a while but you’ll get to ride with your dead loved one’s ashes in the passenger seat if you want to. I usually count myself lucky that, overall, I like my job. Granted, I’d rather be a fabulously wealthy beach reviewer or become some sort of Italian shitbox nun living in a cloister surrounded by questionable delights, but I get to be around cars all day and often get to teach people a little about them, which brings me a bit of joy. Unfortunately, because I care so deeply about cars, it also breaks my heart to declare them dead on arrival. I have to take a couple of deep breaths before making those calls. I know what it feels like to be on the other end, too. At the end of the day, sometimes what’s in the best interest of the owner is to tell them it’s time to say goodbye and I would hope to get the same honesty if I was in their place. My job is to break the news, but I’m here to help you find the best way to move forward too. (topshot by Sally Torchinsky)
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Understanding the “sunk cost fallacy” suggests that you ask yourself “Would I buy this truck for $3,500?” Given it’s overall condition and what else you might expect to pay? $3,500 for a 30 year-old truck with a quarter million miles on it is a stretch for me, but I don’t think it’s a crazy one. If a 3d vehicle is valuable to you, I’m not sure you’d get anything better at that price.
- You are comfortable building your own battery. 2. You are familiar with all the safety need of HVDC. 3. Where you live won’t bat an eye for registration/no inspection. 4. You’re comfortable putting in more than double the cost of the shop transmission and not being able to walk away at any moment for no value back. 5. You’ve checked on what liability insurance for it (and where you park it!) may be like and are good with all that. That said, I always vote to keep the old soldier! It’s a body on frame truck. Should be simple to LS manual swap if you want, or find a way to add a cheaper transmission with a little fabrication. I guess that’s why cars in other states without mandatory inspections are “less safe” somehow? All snark aside, it’s enough to make me wonder if there have ever been class action lawsuits against state DOTs for this kind of nonsense. What if you’d crashed into someone else and hurt or killed them or yourself when this happened? Who’s at fault? I mean, your ‘Blazer had literally just been certified “safe” by your state for use on its roads. Isn’t that fraud? Some vehicles just have weird little spots that collect salt, mud, whatever and do not correctly drain. Then you get random failure points that aren’t obvious until they go. Usually if it happens often enough to be a widespread problem, you get regulatory action, TSBs, and recalls (e.g. third-gen Honda CR-Vs that could lose a critical rear suspension bolt to an internal rust-out). And I have literally driven the wheels off my cars. I had a 2005 Focus where the front passenger side wheel came off due to advanced rust (lower control arm failed). And I’ve had other cars I decided to get rid of when attempting to jack them up and the jack would go through the rockers that had been converted to rocker-shaped rust. Usually for me, it’s rust that kills my cars as opposed to any catastrophic mechanical failure. I’ve never gotten rid of a car for just rust, though. It’s usually a combination of rust and some other issue, like burning through oil like a high schooler burns through Monster Energy drinks. For my wife’s ’96 Civic, it was the rust AND the driver’s window that wouldn’t roll up properly, AND the spark plug that shot up through the hood. At some point the cost and headaches just outweigh the value of keeping them. RIP little Midori Civic. Great article, Andrea! I hope to read more from you in the future! I had a similar conversation many years ago about my 95 Nissan pickup. At around 75,000 miles I had someone cut me off at the end of a highway offramp and after an emergency stop just inches from her bumper my engine was dead. Towed to the shop and they couldn’t even turn it over by hand; dropped the oil pan and they found some non-metallic grit. I assume maybe a spark plug head shattered, but by that point I wasn’t going to pay for more investigation as my insurance refused to help unless I was actually in a collision. I recently sold a car that had become too troublesome for me to want to keep dealing with for $3,500. The car I replaced it with cost north of $20,000. I’d been sinking time & money into the old car for a while, learning to wrench and keeping it going without having to pay the cost of a mechanic. That bought me about three years. When it got to the point where A) I no longer trusted it to be “reliable transportation” to and from my job, and B) I was putting basically a car payment’s worth of parts into it every month anyway and cursing every minute that I had to spend fixing the damn thing, that was when it was time to bite the bullet and replace it. But it wasn’t as simple as just, “Sell old car, replace with new car of equal value.” A car of equal value would still have been a shitbox. I needed to spend way more than the value of the old car if I wanted to get into something decent. I went through the work history and tallied up the expenses on the van to over $35,000AUD. I couldn’t believe it. My favorite advice in such situations comes from Click and Clack the Tappet Brothers of “Car Talk.” When a caller would tell a tale of some devastating mechanical failure in a long-winded, beloved car – transmission went out, needs a complete new steering rack, anything with a higher price tag than the retail replacement value of the vehicle – they would ask a simple question: “Do you LOVE the car?” Because if you love the car – I mean you really, really, LOVE the car – spend whatever it costs to keep it on the road. But if your love doesn’t run that deep, say goodbye and get something else. Only prayer, deep reflection, and long conversations with whatever higher power you acknowledge can answer this question for you. When’s that edit function coming again?
