To Fix, Or Not To Fix?

As I mentioned a couple days ago, the Green Beast needs work. Lots of it. After getting the details and doing research, Ben decided we might be able to repair the $1,500 worth of repairs for between $500 and $800 if we omit or put off some things and he does some of the work himself. A ray of hope!

Yesterday, the last day the Beast was legal, I was driving up to my mom's house. I took 1800 South in Bountiful, which is a bear of a hill. The van started seeming gutless. Then it started to shake like I was driving over washboard. The power continued to diminish, and as I turned onto 900 East, I lost all power. The engine would rev, but I would only drift backwards.

I turned it off and asked my mom to come get me. I made some more calls, and the people whose house I was in front of helped me push it closer to the curb and farther from the corner. We left it there until evening when Ben's dad helped tow it home. It will go in reverse, but no other gears will catch.

Broken transmission, anyone?

In summary:

$800 to repair lots of stuff ourselves
$175 for a new windshield
??? for a new/rebuilt/used transmission.

We bought it for $3,000 14 months ago, and we have already put almost $1,000 into it on repairs.

I wish so very much that we could get a new car, but it's just not an option. It's fix this or be down to one car. Also, Ben had his bike stolen recently, which makes that harder. And who wants to wander around with a stroller in the winter?

Even if we do fix it, with a 14-year-old car that has 200,000 miles on it, I just have to ask myself what will go wrong next and when. So far, if you average out what he have paid, it's still lower than a car payment for a new equivalent vehicle. But it still comes unexpectedly in lump sums, and we can't save up for a new car because we are constantly paying for the old one. Grrrrr...

There are 2 silver linings on this cloud of automotive doom: 1) We kept the blue van instead of the sedan, so at least we still have a car that holds our whole family, albeit a tight fit, and 2) At least we didn't have them repair the $1,500 and THEN have the transmission go out.

Any thoughts, hints, suggestions, encouragement, and empathy would be most heartily welcome. I'm really upset about this whole mess.

Car Trouble

Just how do you know when to give up on a car? An eternal question that we will never have a solid answer to, of course. Our van is a 2001, and it has over 100,000 miles on it. It ran great for 2 years. In April, we had it in the shop twice. Both repairs totalled to over $1,000--while we were remodeling our house, no less!

Lately, the van has been stalling when we hit a bump while turning left with a foot off the accelerator. Talk about weird! The check engine light comes on sometimes, and then it goes off again. It was diagnosed with a misfire last time we had it fixed, and it still has that hesitation. It hesitates over bumps quite often, but it stalls completely only when going left.

Today we took it to our usual mechanic. They pulled the codes from the computer, which made no sense whatsoever. The temperatures varied wildly, but the weirdest was -198 degrees Fahrenheit in the engine!!! Our mechanic said we had to take it to the dealer. On the bright side, they didn't charge us since they couldn't fix it.

During Ben's lunch, a neighbor came to stay with the kids while we dashed to our mechanic and took the van to the dealership. The first thing they said? "So, can you be without a car for a couple of days?" Do we have a choice? Well, we could go on driving as we have been, but we do have plans for some trips later this month. It has to be fixed (or given up on) sometime. Might as well be now.

Ah, the joys of cars. So every day since this has been getting worse we keep asking ourselves if it's worth shelling out money every month or two to fix this car or if we just give up and decide to have a car payment instead. Aaaargh!