I’m not expecting an answer to the subject. I’ve owned my car from new and it hit a decade recently. I think I’ve mentioned various minor problems elsewhere in forums and I finally got some of them sorted. Without anything majorly expensive don’t feel any need to replace it yet.
It was time for routine servicing. I’ve been kicking the can down the road with minor services for last two years. Time for a bigger one, but I didn’t know any garages in the area. On my road I’ve often seen a guy doing work to various vehicles, so I got chatting. In short, he works for a local independent garage by day and does a little extra from home on the weekend.
Service got done, and I bought up the question of the cam belt myself. Their price was about half that of the last one I got from main dealer. Had I looked at independents earlier I might have just got it out of the way. Remember my (lack of) fan control? They can do that. My aircon has lost its magic in recent years. They can do a regas too. So I threw money in their general direction and all that is done. I’m ready for a road trip. When’s the next meetup? I’m going to bet it’ll collide with a wedding I got late summer.
£40 for cam belt itself, £59 for rheostat as they call it, 4.5 hours of labour and £80 for the regas. +VAT. I asked for the old cam belt, not that I have any clue what to look for. To my untrained eye, I’d think it was new.
Look for cracking on the old belt; thats the normal sign of age for them.
Am only 3yrs in with this V60 I have (2013 plate) and its cost me a pretty penny over the purchase price so am kinda in the mode of trying to get the most out of it, don’t know what i would replace it with if i did.
We had a Shogun for over 14 years and other then normal items i think the only big spend was on tyres for it and a new fuel filter after the original one rotted through
Cam belts are funny old things that can magically just go pop after a period of time, even if it looked good it was probably worth the change after a decade anyway better than an engine rebuild which I had on the old Alfa 147 I had when it jumped and mushed the values
Other cars I’ve owned, by the time they reach about 8 years they’re worth around a grand or so, and start needing more expensive work. So I replace them. My current car seems to be holding value based on a few samples I saw for sale, and implicitly anything I could replace it with would be similarly expensive. Seems to be mechanically fine still so might as well keep it until that changes. Averaged 3600 miles a year and that number is going down.
There’s only two minor problems remaining, neither of which I care about to get fixed. 1, radio reception is rubbish. I got main dealer to look at it just before warranty expired and they replaced the antenna base. That helped a bit but got worse again over time. 2, the removable satnav/trip computer doesn’t get data. I think there’s a loose connection somewhere. I mainly used it for seeing mpg and estimated range in the early days. It was a really rubbish satnav even when new. Phone does much better.
The value of a car now depends on factors that didn’t really exist when it was manufactured.
Is it a pre 2015 diesel ?
Then it is the Devils progeny and should be killed with fire, or traded at WeBuyAnyCar.
A ULEZ compliant car may even go up in value.
Bottom line, dont get rid of a post 2006 Petrol car just yet, Message me, I can find space for one or two more projects.
When the time comes, if it isn’t too fatal, I’ll let you know. Wont be any time soon. Think used car prices started going up around lockdown period and I guess they never really recovered. To buy the same car new today is about 50% more than when I got mine.
And it is good for ULEZ. I’m on something like £20 road tax a year (might have gone up a little).
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