So I have this 2000 Honda Civic with 190000 miles on it. I take it to the dealership every 15000 miles. Some of you know that HOnda recommends oil change every 7500 miles, service B every 15000 miles and service C every 30000 miles. I do oil changes every 3000 miles and disregard the 7500 mile advice. The other two mileage intervals I attend to religiously. Here is a list of my last 5 visits for these services.

Sept 06 15000 mile service - $892.57
July 07 30000 mile service - $1500.00
March 08 15000 mile service - $1465.54
Feb 09 30000 mile service - $1424.59
July 10 15000 mile service - $2100.00

All you do-it-yourselfers or people who call me a dumbass for going to stealerships and not repairing my own **** please kindly eat a dick and troll somewhere else. Your opinion is of no interest to me. I don't have the tools, the skill, or the time to do the maintenance that the dealership is doing and only dealerships perform scheduled maintenances.

The point of this post is a question. What is the essential difference between keeping an old car with no payments to make and paying these sums of $ every year and buying a new car. Sure, with the new car the intervals won't be as costly simply because the parts haven't had time to wear themselves out, but you're stuck with the multiyear payment plan that, while may not be costly per month, is very costly in the total. But with the old car, old **** wears out and you end up with bills like these. These are cracked manifolds, worn brake calipers, worn suspension and exhaust systems and so on.

So, on a practical side, is there at all a difference between holding on to a car that still works and runs great (seriously) with annual 4 digit repair bills and driving a new car, but owing it to the bank?

 

Love the sig, but to stay on topic, not all old cars **** the bed on a regular basis. I've had my '97 civic for 4 years now and I've put maybe a total of 1 grand of actual fixing maintenance into it. coming up on the 5th year of ownership i have some things that do need fixing and will prob cost me bout 500 bucks but I'd say 1500 over 5 years is a pretty low cost as compared to a car payment. admittedly my car only has 83,000 miles on it but it still is 13 years old so it is headed towards the typical things like cracked and worn suspension bushings.

To alleviate the costs associated with the dealership's scheduled services you could purchase a haynes manual and follow the service schedule in there but take it to an independent mechanic and have them perform the maintenance. I'm sure you will save a few bucks there.

edit: o and i bought my car pure cash originally.

so total cost for the car since day one of ownership including maintenance like oil changes and what not, as well as original purchase cost hovers around prob 7.5-8k.

 

yea really you cant complain if your the one taking it to the dealership for repairs they are the most expensive place to get repairs. i am a mechanic and i do all my own work and i will never buy a new car because for me a cheap used one is alot cheapier for me to repair than to buy a new vehicle and have payments. you cant say because you dont know how to work on cars, because at one point none of us new anything about cars. im pretty sure your well educated, buy a manual on the car and read and teach yourself. there is tons of info on the web also. and we are here to help.
i personally would rather have a 2000 civic than a 2010 civic.
right now i have a 97 civic sedan that i bought for 800$ and ive put 6k miles on it so far and its only been 3 months. and ive spent a total of 28$ for repairs on the car. bought 1 used tire and 1 a/c belt.

 

Mitch, time is an issue in his case. Not everyone has all the free time in the world like you ya lazy bum.

 

I really don't know what to say. My 00 Civic had 100,000 miles on it when I bought it 4 years ago, now it's sitting at almost 180,000 miles. Besides getting a tune up/tranmission flush/engine flush when I got it, along with a recent timing belt/water pump change getting the oil change every 7500 miles I really haven't had any costly "maintenance" like that over the years.

Everytime honda sends me a letter saying it's time for a check up I throw it away. If you can find just a little time to change the air filter yourself, inspect the seals on the front axles/ball joints(even spray them down with some lubricant so they last longer) and get oil changes at some other shops that charge less than Honda you'll a lot more money. Most of the stuff they check you can easily do or it's just unnecessary and can wait a little longer.

On average you've spent $1476.54 annually for those 5 years, about $123 per month. Obviously a new car will have a higher payment, it depends on financing on how big of a difference it will be.

And like 94 said, I'd never buy a new car unless I could pay for it within the year. I'd always go used, save money and search around for places that'll do the same work for less and I'm not talking find a place out in the middle of no where that says "Hicks Auto's" lol

hope that helps some.

 

While I appreciate everyone's input, I specifically said that I don't care to do things myself. It's not the lazyness factor, though it definitely is present, it's the time and lack of skill.

I do not know nor want to learn how to replace a cracked manifold.
I do not know nor want to learn how to replace a leaky gasket that requires taking apart half of the engine.

The maintenance and repairs are that expensive largely due to the labor intensive jobs. Literally 60% of these costs is just labor.

Whatever I save on doing my own maintenance I will lose spending time buying tools, parts and maintaining the car. I am busy, I got things to do. But I still want my Civic to be in tip-top shape.

Also, calling around for prices for independent shops to do the work is, again, time consuming and (THE IMPORTANT PART) the savings are very marginal. Calling for quotes and driving around voids whatever little I get to save doing the repair at some place other then the dealership.

Of course, the regular oil change/tire balance rotation and other simple petty stuff is something I do elsewhere. It is the scheduled maintenance only when I go the dealership. And they always find a whole bunch of crap wrong. Legitimately wrong. Leaky gaskets is no joke. Neither are busted up brake calipers that the car had for 190000 without any replacement.

Just wanted to clarify that.

But I got y'all's answer. Stay with the old car. It will cost less then getting a new one. Gotcha.

 

So you have time to come on here and complain about being charged up the *** for work/parts at a dealer when you could have spent this time at a local parts store buying cheaper parts and atleast giving it to a privately owned shop to do the work?

What the hell is the dealership doing that makes you spend $2100 on a 15k service?
That work alone shouldn't cost more than $30-40. Now, here's what typically happens at a dealership that most, like you, might not know about and end up being taken advantage of. Car comes in for simple service like this, mechanic checks over car(or in some cases DOESN'T at all), and writes up what other services it needs(or may NOT need but writes anyways). Customer looks at what the mechanic writes up and says "sure, do what needs to be done". BAM, $2000 later you're complaining about a big bill, mechanic is happy, dealer is happy, car is potentially the same as when you drove in...

Many people don't know exactly what's going on with their car. Like you, they don't have time to check under the hood or may not know what they are looking at and understand it. BUT, it's not hard, it doesn't take much time to look or learn to understand and it'll save you money. It sounds like to you, time=money. Well if you took a few minutes(time) to check your car out before you take it to the dealer, you can SAVE money.

If you don't make an effort to know what's going on with you're car and take it to a shop, there is a very good chance you'll be taken advantage of. Trust me, I know first hand. I was a technician at a Toyota dealership for 2 years. One of the reasons I left was because I couldn't stand watching other techs literally write up work without even looking at the car...

 

Keep going to the dealership for services. It helps mechanics like myself make money

Playing devil's advocate here, not all techs are evil. Yes, I personally know several service techs that sell parts that don't need replaced; I've seen techs do 4-wheel brake jobs on cars with over 50% pad life remaining and no rotor run-out. That doesn't mean everyone does it; some of us are honest and trying to make the customer happy. Trust me, it pretty much makes my week when a customer thanks me for the work I've done. Hell, about two hours ago I spent an hour fully inspecting everything on a car simply because the customer asked for a thorough inspection when buying a 25-point inspection. I'm getting paid 3/10 of an hour (18 minutes) for that inspection and checked quite a few things that aren't even on the inspection paper.


At any rate, OP... unless you buy a service contract with your new car, you'll still be paying for the services. New cars still require regular maintenance.

 

My auntie just paid 580 for pad and rotor replacement like last week, DOH. I felt bad, i'm glad I was brought up being told a man should know how to fix things himself, or at least try.

OP if you really just refuse to touch your car or work on anything mechanical. The key is to find a solid mechanic, stick with them. Most shops aren't anywhere near as useful as dealerships, and problems continue. But once you find one that actually knows what they are doing, stick with them.


At least read up a lil, learn a lil about your car. A lot of dealerships/shops will charge for something completely random, or tell you they decided to replace [insert worthless part] for so and so reasons.

 

That's not even close to being true.

Surely you must have a couple of hours free... the 15k mile maintenance that you paid $2100 for is easy as pie and doesn't take long at all.

I'm going to make a guess here, but you probably don't make $2000 at your job even in a whole day. Therefore, taking a day off (if possible, I don't know your situation) would have been well worth it because you would have saved about $2000. Oil and filter would have costed you about $15-30 (depending on what you get). Inspecting brakes is free to do on your own. If they replaced parts, pads are about $20-40 a pair, and rotors are usually less than $50 a piece.

Depends which gasket... the majority of the gaskets in the engine are easy to replace. Which gasket was it?


I know for a fact that you can get calipers from the auto parts store for MUCH cheaper than the dealership. Independent shops also probably would be using the less expensive ones. And I am talking about remanufactured OEM calipers, not just some crappy brand.