Chronic Car Buyers Anonymous (Archived)

sda

Careful! As much fun as it is to add to the stable, buyers remorse is not fun. That said--what is the new find?

Oh, did you ever get your DeSoto (or Dodge??) back from being restored?

fezo

Yes, those old Accords indeed had clearcoat. It was great. My first experience with that.

Mine was a 5 speed. It wasn't a jackrabbit by any means but it was eons faster than my old Volvo.... Best combo of fun and reliability I'd had up to that point.

Yeah, I remember those old rust colored ones. Rust is actually what killed mine but it did spend four years on a barrier island. That salt takes out almost any car before its time.

corvette

Still has the factory tape deck. The body looks straight in the pictures. I'm impressed it went over 300k, but you never know how much work it's had done.

corvette

If you're looking for a newer model, I think the Ram Tradesman package is hard to beat. 390 HP Hemi, 5 speed automatic, independent rear suspension, and I think it has a two-tone vinyl interior that actually looks pretty good. You can add the power option group, spray-in bedliner, and tall axle ratio and end up at around $20,500 TMV for a regular cab 4x2 after incentives on a 2011 model.

I've kicked around the idea before, but I'm sure it's not nearly as comfortable as my Altima, nor would it hold as much cargo securely (no trunk). And it's big and impractical, but dang, 390 HP...

roadburner

I posted this a few days ago in another thread, but it is relevant to my CCBA status as well...

Back in August I predicted that my BMW 2002 would be running by September 2; as things turned out it took another week to get the sled moving under it's own power. The Recaro seats and rebuilt Repa three-point belts have really made the car much more pleasant to drive. I also wound up rewiring the radio and lubing the door lock mechanisms; now my wife has commandeered it- abandoning the X3 to my son.

Fast forward to today. I broke out the Meguiars NXT wax and magically transformed the old sled from a twenty footer to a ten footer. It really is fun to drive, even with the automatic; it's refreshing to drive an autobox that doesn't try to second-guess the driver. I still need to replace the propshaft coupler(the "guibo") and I want to throw on some new plugs and plug wires, but since my wife prefers it to the X3 it looks like we'll be keeping it for a while- unless I win the BMW CCA annual raffle...

nyccarguy

That reminds me, I've got to send in for the BMWCCA raffle. Usually I send it right when it starts. I changed my strategy this year & am waiting until the last minute.

isellhondas

Unless that truck has a lot of other problems, a bad water pump isn't a big deal at all.

Rust on your suspension parts doesn't condemm them unless it's really bad.

Now, you may be just wanting a nicer truck and that's a different story.

kyfdx

Guess I've learned my lesson from the Z4...

My wife drove the following cars, today... in order..

Audi Q5
Acura RDX
Volvo XC60
Toyota RAV4 Limited V6

I only drove the Volvo...

We tried to drive a Tiguan... but, one dealer only had two, and one was a base stick.. and, we would be third in line to drive the automatic... the next VW dealer had NONE...

Not a bad day.. . we stopped at 7 dealers, total... drove cars at four of them.. and we were only gone for six hours, including stopping for lunch...

akangl

I decided today to check the oil, I spent 10 minutes looking for the dipstick, had to go get a step ladder so I could find it. Finally found it, but after pulling it out I had to take it with me into the house, find a flashlight, and then go back to the garage to put it back in. No underhood light on a $45k truck?? Really Ford?? Not to mention they could NOT have found a worse place for the dipstick.

Guess its a good thing I don't need to check the oil very often because wow, that sucked. :sick:

js06gv

Tell me about it. Try finding an underhood light on a current vehicle these days, no matter what the cost. The only vehicle of four I own with a light is the oldest one, a 2000 Trans Am. It also has a glovebox lamp, which is missing in a 2011 Mustang and a 2005 Avalanche, but my 2007 Santa Fe does have one. Cost-cutting at its best.

ab348

Does the Ford have a prop rod for the hood? They are notorious for that even on expensive models, but I dunno if they do that on their trucks. A prop rod drives me crazy.

I think my '02 Intrigue had an underhood light but my '09 Buick does not. I should check if it has a glovebox light now that I think of it. Odd.

corvette

GM did a ton of decontenting in 2003 at Lutz's demand, including removing standard ABS, side airbags, lighted vanity mirrors, etc. I can't imagine a prop rod hood on a modern full size truck--the hood simply weighs too much.

Underhood lights have gone by the wayside on most newer cars. Conveniently, I just installed two 8' T8 light fixtures in my garage today (each fixture holds 4 x 4' fluorescent lamps, so 8 lamps total). They're in the middle of the garage and the hood blocks some of the light, but there's still plenty of light to see under there. One of my two old 4' T12 lights blew a ballast, and I decided to upgrade rather than spending $$ repairing an old light that was barely adequate.

Honda is notorious for using prop rods, even on uplevel models.

akangl

Does the Ford have a prop rod for the hood? They are notorious for that even on expensive models, but I dunno if they do that on their trucks. A prop rod drives me crazy.

No, thankfully it does not have a prop rod for the hood, I can't imagine, the hood is so heavy on the truck.

No lighted glove box or lighted vanity mirriors though. Funny thing is our 95 F-250 had a light in the glove box, lighted mirrors, AND an underhood light. Silly Ford. :sick:

stickguy

I honestly can't say if I ever had a light under the hood. Hard to think it would be bright enough to do any good. Plus, who looks under there in the dark anyway? Actually, who looks under there at all?

I also don't mind the prop on my Hondas. My 2000 TL has struts, and they are starting to give out, so whenever I look under the hood I have to get a stick out of the trunk to prop it up so the hood doesn't close on my head.

qbrozen

Just bought mine online on Friday. I've never participated before. Probably a waste of $100, but, as far as lotteries go, it's far better odds, so I took a shot.

mark156

Yep, our Honda CR-V has a hood prop, which is fine with me as the hood is small and light-weight. It has vanity mirrors on both sunvisors but no lighting.

Even the '64 RR Silver Cloud III has hood props.... but, they are built in. The car has a 'butterfly' hood (each side opens separately) the hinge runs down the center of the hood. When you open either side, you have to pull the hood prop back at the center of the rod to lock it in place.

Honestly, I can't tell you which cars we have if they have hood lights or not? I'll have to look. I never look under the hood at night or often.

Mark156

andre1969

Unless that truck has a lot of other problems, a bad water pump isn't a big deal at all.

Rust on your suspension parts doesn't condemm them unless it's really bad.

Now, you may be just wanting a nicer truck and that's a different story.

Well, it does have a ton of other problems, and I'm thinking that the water pump may just be the straw that breaks the camel's back. The tie rods were the first thing I noticed...really rusty, to the point that they look like they're starting to splinter!

Before I do anything rash, I am going to get a second opinion from my mechanic. Even if I have to put $1500 into it right now, if it lasts, say, another year, I'll more than get my money's worth out of it. I'll still have a rusty 1985 truck with a cracked windshield, broken a/c, sagging headliner, ripped seat, intermittently-working radio, that gets about 10 mpg right now, and that will drop once cold weather really sets in.

The main thing that worries me is the rust. In the last year or so, it seems like it's really starting to accelerate. It's mainly in the lower parts of the body, but I'm worried if it gets down deeper, and structural, things could get ugly.

But, I'll see what the mechanic says. I'd actually prefer to NOT get rid of the truck, as it's been in the family since new, and since before I was even old enough to drive, so it would feel sorta like losing a family member!

stickguy

just park it in the back corner of the property, and let nature reclaim it.

andre1969

Careful! As much fun as it is to add to the stable, buyers remorse is not fun. That said--what is the new find?

The car I found was, of all things, a 2009 Nissan Altima hybrid! However, I'm really starting to have second thoughts now. Initially I got excited because the car had been at a no-haggle dealership, and they had just dropped the price from something like $16,500 to $14,800, and it seemed like a steal. Today I just happened to look, and it's back up to $16,488 or something like that.

My reasoning was that I really don't NEED a pickup anymore, so I had thought about selling my Park Ave to my roommate, who expressed an interest, and then I'd buy the Altima. But now I'm going to just wait and see what the mechanic's opinion is, on the truck.

Oh, did you ever get your DeSoto (or Dodge??) back from being restored?

It's a Desoto, 1957 Firedome. And unfortunately it's still at the mechanic. And still looks about like this...

tifighter

(Cue Enabler voice)

Well, you are destined to get an Altima some day...you've been looking at them for years!

fezo

In case you do decide you need a pickup truck after all I know a lady in Alaska who is selling one. Maybe we could manage a road trip out of this. Do the Alaska highway in lemko's DTS.....

ab348

In about 20 years time, I'll predict.

andre1969

here's a link to that Altima hybrid.

Maybe it's even a good deal at $16,488, but when I saw the price drop to ~$14,800 on Friday night, it seemed to scream out my name! But at $16,488, it's more of a whisper. I guess they just had a typo and fixed it.

corvette

I like the color. Heated leather seats, a sunroof, and everything. Looks nice! I don't see a VDC button, but I thought the hybrid had that feature in 2009.

My 2009 2.5S is still ticking with 55,000 miles on it.

akangl

In case you do decide you need a pickup truck after all I know a lady in Alaska who is selling one. Maybe we could manage a road trip out of this. Do the Alaska highway in lemko's DTS.....

No No, I can't do it, just can't bring myself to sell it. If I didn't like the truck so much I probably would, but the last time I sold a vehicle I loved I regretted it. So, I'm not going to do that again.

isellhondas

"notorious" ??

I'm sitting here,, scratching my head, wondering why having a prop rod is such a bad thing?

I probably look under the hood of our Hondas MAYBE once a month if that, and reaching for the prop rod doesn't bother me a bit.

Funny, the things that are bothersome to some people are of no consequence to others.

Guess that's why restaurants have menus.

isellhondas

Yeah....sure. After that dipstick incident that truck's days are numbered.

Now, who bet what when she bought it?

stever

wondering why having a prop rod is such a bad thing?

Not an issue for me either although I'm not under there enough for it to get in my way. Maybe if I was pulling the plugs every week. Simple, nothing much to break, weighs little.

andre1969

I guess it just depends on what you're used to, and your point of reference. I've never owned a car with a prop rod for the hood (although I can't remember if the ex-wife's '88 LeBaron had one...it may have), so I'm used to just opening the hood and having it stay opened, without having to mess around with a stick...to me a prop rod just seems like jerry-rigging, like they sold you an incomplete car and then stuck a band-aid solution onto it, rather than simply building it correctly.

Now, that being said, I wouldn't NOT buy a car, simply because it had a prop rod. In the overall scheme of things, it's just a minor little detail. But geeze, where will they draw the line?! Next thing you know, they're gonna start putting in compact spare tires and stationary rear windows! Oh, wait, that's been done before, too! :P

Actually, on a small, lightweight, inexpensive car, I think a prop rod makes sense. After all, if you're trying to save weight, or expense, every little bit helps. But when you get into larger, more expensive cars, a few pounds or dollars isn't going to make a difference, other than to make the car feel cheap.

I'll confess though, that my grandmother's '85 LeSabre used struts to hold the hood up, and after about 9-10 years, they started to fail. I thought it was odd that the LeSabre used them, as I've seen similar-vintage Caprices, Parisiennes, and Delta 88's that used the more old-fashioned springs to hold the hood up. For awhile, we kept a broom handle in the car to prop the hood, until one day I went to the junkyard and scored some struts off of a wrecked car.

isellhondas

Those gas struts will eventually fail and once you bust your head on a hood that dropped two inches while you were under there, you may feel differently about prop rods!

andre1969

Those gas struts will eventually fail and once you bust your head on a hood that dropped two inches while you were under there, you may feel differently about prop rods!

I guess those gas struts are sort of a cost-cutting measure, as well. Chrysler was sort of an early adopter for them on trunklids. Both of my '79 New Yorkers have them. They still work fine on the 5th Ave, but on my base model, they failed some time ago, and the previous owner tried replacing them, but with the wrong parts, so they're not strong enough to hold them up. There's a dowel rod in the trunk to keep it propped open. And trust me, you DON'T want a '79 NY'er trunklid falling on you. That sucker is probably heavier than most modern hoods!

Most trunks nowadays seem to open all the way, to about a 90 degree angle, so that's probably not too stressful on the struts. But on the R-body, it only opens to about a 45 degree, and that has to be a stress on the strut.

For 1980, I believe, Chrysler switched to the regular torsion bar hinges for the trunks on these cars. I know they were in place by 1981. I wonder if they got a lot of complaints with failures on the '79 models? Probably a waste of time to retool though. Chrysler sold about 133,000 R-bodies in '79, but only around 64,000 for 1980 and a mere 23,000 in the abbreviated 1981 model year.

I guess as long as I tend to keep cars, and the fact they're not always spring chickens when I acquire them, odds are, one day those gas-strutted hoods may bite me in the butt...er, head!

akangl

Yeah....sure. After that dipstick incident that truck's days are numbered.

No, I can forgive the dipstick incident. The truck is just a sweety and does nothing major wrong. Its not as problem free as my 07 Pilot was, but its twice as fun to drive so I can forgive the broken power adjustable pedals (fixed) and the occational airbag light (not fixed).

Our son is taking hubby's Civic next summer so we will have to replace that. Not sure with what yet.

corvette

Both of the Altimas I've owned had the torsion bar hinges.

The Pontiac G6 actually had gas struts and hidden hinges on the trunk, which was a nice touch, since that prevents the mechanism from impinging upon the cargo area. The trunk lid in that car rubbed up against the bumper, which was not such a nice touch. Never took a road trip in the year that I owned that car due to the transmission issues.

joeshan

I'm still driving my '04 Infiniti-88K miles now.
Turns out we're both Zaino users.
Since my child attends an Institute up your way, I'll have to let membership in Chronic Car Browser's Association suffice for now.
Good luck with the new rides.
I really love the new 5 series. I think that the body looks fantastic.

roadburner

Probably a waste of $100, but, as far as lotteries go, it's far better odds, so I took a shot.

I know five people who won. I figure I'm due... :P

roadburner

I really love the new 5 series. I think that the body looks fantastic.

I also like the F10's styling, but I drove a 535i and felt like a geeze; the only new 5ers that I truly lust after are the D5 and the M5.

qbrozen

I know five people who won.

OH, well, sounds like just knowing you increases the odds. I feel lucky already.

ateixeira

While we're on the subject, I have to give props (no pun intended) to Subaru...

Dual struts on our Forester's hood, in fact the hood lifts itself, and does not sag even when it's freezing cold.

Even better, all the dipsticks and caps are in bright yellow, consistently, so it's easy to find everything.

I don't think it has a light, but I use one of those headlights whenever I'm working on the car anyway.

Pleasant surprises given the price point.

corvette

That's handy... The transmission dipstick on the Altima is black and has a lock on it that requires a screwdriver to open, and a foil label on the top warning you to only use CVT transmission fluid. Probably enough to discourage the quickie-lube places from opening it, which may have been the intent.

I think Honda, Nissan, and Subaru may be some of the last manufacturers to actually include a transmission dipstick. A lot of manufacturers are dropping them on the newer transmissions.

kyfdx

My wife drove a Tiguan, yesterday....

That's five test drives in two days...

Naturally, the higher the price, the more she likes it... :surprise:

michaellno

My wife drove a Tiguan, yesterday....

That's five test drives in two days...

And you'll get a dozen phone calls and emails over the next two days.

What do you think she'll want you to bring home?

kyfdx

In order..

Volvo XC60
Audi Q5
Tiguan
Acura RDX
Toyota RAV4 (does not want, at all..)

What really sucks, is almost all of these models are in short, short supply, except the RAV4...

The Volvo she drove was a 2011, and it was the only one they had.. didn't even have a 2012.. However, it had the perfect option/color combination for her... But, I'm eligible for the A-plan price (basically, invoice), and with no incentives on the 2011, it wouldn't make any sense, not to wait and get the 2012 model...

But, her current lease on the X3 isn't up until the end of October, so I have some time... Not one of these vehicles has a decent lease deal.. I've never paid over $30K for a car, before.... so, swallowing $40K on a purchase is a big deal... not sure I'll do it...

tifighter

But, her current lease on the X3 isn't up until the end of October, so I have some time... Not one of these vehicles has a decent lease deal.. I've never paid over $30K for a car, before.... so, swallowing $40K on a purchase is a big deal... not sure I'll do it...

That's how I ended up with a CPO RDX. Leases for a lot of the same suspects were not very good, and buying a new one wasn't much better. CPO with warranty thru 2015 and new car APR for a shade under $22k? Well okay, then.

stickguy

That is 1 thing that always intriqued me about leasing (as you proved with the Z4). The car and the payment are often quite disconnected.

I am sure you can get a lower payment on an XC90, with a higher sticker (by a lot) than you can on an XC60, and it might not even be close!

I too will be doing a similar search next year about this time (for an Xmas 2012 "gift" to the wife). But we will include some more modest items (Santa Fe and new design CRV most likely).

My wife also really liked the XC60 and (my wallet is gasping) the new X3.

kyfdx

That's a good price for a used RDX...

A new one is $36K MSRP... It was nice.. probably the fastest of the cars we drove (maybe the RAV4 V-6 was a little quicker)... but, even though the same dimensions, it had less cargo room... and, the worst EPA fuel estimates.. The ride reminded us of the X3... busy... Very nice interior, but dark, and a car-style moonroof, while most of the others has the Panorama roof....

We are kind of stuck on Euro models.... to the detriment of my wallet, I'm afraid...

Amazingly, the Tiguan is at least, if not more expensive than the RDX, when comparably equipped... However, you can buy a de-contented Tiguan, if you wish (she doesn't wish)...

tifighter

That's a good price for a used RDX...

Pre-tsunami this year. I haven't looked, but everything is probably higher now.

kyfdx

My wife would take a new X3 over all of them... but, at least $5K more than the Volvo and Q5... and, at least $250/mo. (or more) than our current lease on the X3..

So... we didn't drive one...

She had her chance at a new BMW.. But, her friend will be driving it, and I hope she waves and honks, every time she drives by...

andres3

Naturally, the higher the price, the more she likes it...

That only shows that she has good taste. She likes the finer things in life.

You should commend her, after all, she did choose to marry you.

ab348

The Tiguan and the RDX just strike me as too small to make sense, and the RAV just doesn't impress me much.

No love for a Lexus RX?

isellhondas

As I understand things, the RDX has been a flop for Acura. They are a glorified CRV and people can see this.

Used ones should be a bargain because of this.