Looking for a new (to me) car. Asking about personal experiances

[Spartan1980]

Just another piece of unsolicited thread drift commentary from the peanut gallery:
As others mentioned, probably can be fixed, and IMO the financial scope of what is reasonable to pull off a repair to a vehicle that you are otherwise quite happy with is probably higher than we are accustomed to thinking. Spending thousands of dollars on an old car seems unnatural, but the reality is the replacements all cost tens of thousands of dollars.
I am contemplating this with my F-150. It will be ten years old later this year, but still only has ~125k on it. It still looks great, and it is set up exactly how we want one, and we need a tow vehicle for the boat that weighs ~7k. But it is doing the startup phaser rattle and at some point the turbos will start leaking coolant, but I am conditioning my brain to accept that I can spend thousands on refreshing things if I need to. Hell, sales tax alone on a new one would be almost $5k.
We recently faced the same thing with my mother's 18yo Mini that needed an expensive repair (transmission valve body, ~$3500), but is otherwise in perfect shape and she loves it. The shop doing the work even suggested it was not worth fixing and my quick response was just WTF am I going to be able to buy her for $3500?!?!? If we get a new car it would depreciate more than that in the timespan she has left to use it, in reality it needs to last another 5-10k miles.

And, especially if you live in a larger urban, affluent, area you might need to go out of town to find the right shop to deal with it. Dunno where you live, but that Safe-T-Cap place is in RI, might be worth a round trip ticket back home, and go retrieve it in a few weeks.

Anyway, just sharing some of my own brainstorming, since my thinking has shifted since replacement costs are so high, there are no good deals it seems.

^^^ This 100%

My F150 is a '06 and if it shits the bed it's getting fixed. Crate engine, trans, transfer case, whatever...

It's paid for and is in good shape mechanically at this point with 127k on it. It has the features I need and want with no rust. To replace it with comparable equipment and mileage but newer model would be well north of $20k. You can do a whole lot of repairs for that.

[JTMcC]

Just another piece of unsolicited thread drift commentary from the peanut gallery:
As others mentioned, probably can be fixed, and IMO the financial scope of what is reasonable to pull off a repair to a vehicle that you are otherwise quite happy with is probably higher than we are accustomed to thinking. Spending thousands of dollars on an old car seems unnatural, but the reality is the replacements all cost tens of thousands of dollars.
I am contemplating this with my F-150. It will be ten years old later this year, but still only has ~125k on it. It still looks great, and it is set up exactly how we want one, and we need a tow vehicle for the boat that weighs ~7k. But it is doing the startup phaser rattle and at some point the turbos will start leaking coolant, but I am conditioning my brain to accept that I can spend thousands on refreshing things if I need to. Hell, sales tax alone on a new one would be almost $5k.
We recently faced the same thing with my mother's 18yo Mini that needed an expensive repair (transmission valve body, ~$3500), but is otherwise in perfect shape and she loves it. The shop doing the work even suggested it was not worth fixing and my quick response was just WTF am I going to be able to buy her for $3500?!?!? If we get a new car it would depreciate more than that in the timespan she has left to use it, in reality it needs to last another 5-10k miles.

And, especially if you live in a larger urban, affluent, area you might need to go out of town to find the right shop to deal with it. Dunno where you live, but that Safe-T-Cap place is in RI, might be worth a round trip ticket back home, and go retrieve it in a few weeks.

Anyway, just sharing some of my own brainstorming, since my thinking has shifted since replacement costs are so high, there are no good deals it seems.

It's very natural for us. But we pay cash for vehicles and never have a car payment. Pencil it out and we are way ahead putting a grand here, a grand there in solid old heaps.
I just dropped 1k in the old 05 Caddy SRX, no problem.
My work truck, a welding rig (2002 Dodge/Cummins dually 4X4) is at about 315,000 miles and I fix everything that comes up. It's new replacement is about 100k today and has MAJOR quirks. Dropping 4k or so per year, with solid, old bones, that I can order parts from at several sources, is a business no brainer for us. I'd drive it across the country tomorrow.

[MGW]

Thanks

I was looking at the Crosstrek, even before this. Not actively, but keeping an eye out if something were to suddenly pop up that was too good to pass up. This is how I wound up with my 4Runner. I know the basic difference between the Subies AWD and other AWD, which is why I was keeping an eye out for one.

Did they stop using the boxer engine? Never heard about the wheel bearrings but did about the valve gasket? I think thats what it was. Needed to be changed out every 100k miles. At least the bearings dont seem expensive and 80 - 150k miles is quite a while

I owned a Crosstrek for a little while. It’s not a bad car. It drives fine, gets good gas mileage, handles snow and light off-road well. The CVT is very smooth. The paddle shifters were kind of fun. It was very underpowered but drivable. The one drawback for me was it is a very small car inside and out. I drive a 4Runner now. There’s no way I could go back to a Crosstrek.

[4RNR]

You're talking about the headgaskets - on most vehicles, but especially Subarus, that's an engine-out job to do correctly.

The valve cover gaskets are very simple and do not need to be engine-out to get it done right, it's just a bit tricky. Downside is that oil leakage can occur from either the headgaskets or valve cover gaskets, so it's quite common for valve cover gaskets to start seeping, get repaired, only to have oil leaking out of the headgaskets next.
If left unchecked, the oil leak from the headgaskets will eventually include coolant and compression loss from headgasket failure, and if that's pushed at all, there's a good chance the water contamination in the oil will take out rod bearings... or you'll get the 'subie triple play' and after paying for an expensive engine-out headgasket job, you'll change the oil once or twice and a rod bearing will spin while you're merging onto the freeway. With any of the turbocharged EJ Subaru engines I've long espoused 'if it needs headgaskets, just rebuild the whole longblock' as a buy-once-cry-once sort of solution.
Then again, back in my speed shop days, we kept a shelf-stock built 2.5L STi longblock with Manley rods and pistons so we could have a 'fixed in three days' option for all the various WRX's and STi's that came in needing a fresh engine. I've done a LOT of Subarus. Which is bad because things like rod-knocking STi's show up on FB marketplace and I think about fixing & flipping it, and I do NOT need any more car projects!



Rudely getting back on-topic - the car market is in a weird space right now where spending a few grand fixing an otherwise known solid vehicle is a better choice than it ever has been.

I agree with @SS90 in that too many shops that say 'it cant be fixed' really should be honest and say 'we can't fix it at all' or 'we can't fix it and make any money'.

I'm pretty convinced that you can find a decent off-road 4x4 shop that does suspension lifts and chassis fabrication, and they can install whatever frame reinforcements etc you need or re-fabricate whatever part of your truck is failing. It'll probably be a four-digit bill, but it'll never fail again. Might be cost effective to drop some fresh Bilsteins in there while you're at it, too.

I found 2 shops locally that (supposedly) do this kind of work. One specializes in Jeep restorations.

Im afraid its going to be more than just needing fresh Bilsteins. This started with wanting to get new break lines.

I owned a Crosstrek for a little while. It’s not a bad car. It drives fine, gets good gas mileage, handles snow and light off-road well. The CVT is very smooth. The paddle shifters were kind of fun. It was very underpowered but drivable. The one drawback for me was it is a very small car inside and out. I drive a 4Runner now. There’s no way I could go back to a Crosstrek.

Power and size usually dont bother me. Im all over the place with styles and years. Its almost always a combination of price and known quality. Before the 4Runner I had a Corolla. A few cars before that, in the early 00s, I had a 98 Ram 1500. Between the 2 big "trucks" were a series of Japanese compacts.

[UNK]

Issue has already been solved I believe, i just wanted to add I follow this father son shop, they actually have quite a few employees, and they recently did a break down on vehicles seen in the shop for maintenance and the leader was Mazda for least repairs. Ive got a 17 CX5 and the one repair at 60000 has been the belt tensioner which has been redesigned and the drivers front seat fore and aft motor growls but its still works. The 17 model was the redesign year which included a really nice interior and super quiet in the cabin.

[Kirk]

I owned a Crosstrek for a little while. It’s not a bad car. It drives fine, gets good gas mileage, handles snow and light off-road well. The CVT is very smooth. The paddle shifters were kind of fun. It was very underpowered but drivable. The one drawback for me was it is a very small car inside and out. I drive a 4Runner now. There’s no way I could go back to a Crosstrek.

Yeah this is very accurate. My wife drives a Crosstrek and it’s a very reliable, solid vehicle. Really good warranty if anything does happen to go wrong (hasn’t yet for us). Decent for our uses, with the most strenuous driving being going to hiking trails and dealing with some light snow. It is underpowered for sure, but that doesn’t really bother my wife much. The thing is that it would be way too small for my preferences. If someone is coming from a 4Runner, the small size will take some getting used to I think.

[Welder]

Yep, Crosstrek is literally an Impreza with a 6" lift and some different body cladding. My ex-wife had a loaded '15; it was a fine car but the leather seats were too hard and flat for a long comfortable trip. It got low 30's mpg IIRC. Looked cool on the outside but fairly soulless to drive, it was an appliance like my current '15 Forester. I never heard that she had any problems with it.

[Stephanie B]

The right wheel wheel on my 05 Accord was starting to rust out. Two different people told me that it was probably due to damage. Anyway, I had it fixed out of body shop for two grand given the cost of both new and relatively lightly-used cars, I plan to drive this thing until the wheels fall off.

And then I’ll get them welded back on.

[Trigger]

You're talking about the headgaskets - on most vehicles, but especially Subarus, that's an engine-out job to do correctly.

The valve cover gaskets are very simple and do not need to be engine-out to get it done right, it's just a bit tricky. Downside is that oil leakage can occur from either the headgaskets or valve cover gaskets, so it's quite common for valve cover gaskets to start seeping, get repaired, only to have oil leaking out of the headgaskets next.
If left unchecked, the oil leak from the headgaskets will eventually include coolant and compression loss from headgasket failure, and if that's pushed at all, there's a good chance the water contamination in the oil will take out rod bearings... or you'll get the 'subie triple play' and after paying for an expensive engine-out headgasket job, you'll change the oil once or twice and a rod bearing will spin while you're merging onto the freeway. With any of the turbocharged EJ Subaru engines I've long espoused 'if it needs headgaskets, just rebuild the whole longblock' as a buy-once-cry-once sort of solution.
Then again, back in my speed shop days, we kept a shelf-stock built 2.5L STi longblock with Manley rods and pistons so we could have a 'fixed in three days' option for all the various WRX's and STi's that came in needing a fresh engine. I've done a LOT of Subarus. Which is bad because things like rod-knocking STi's show up on FB marketplace and I think about fixing & flipping it, and I do NOT need any more car projects!

Wow. You just told my Subaru story. I blew the engine on a 1999 2.0 JDM STI on the track in Sendai Japan in 2007. No overrev, no money shift. But it started to run/sound like a diesel. Long story short, ordered a short block, pulled the motor, swapped everything over. Reinstalled. Had to PCS with the military 3 months later. Had to sell the car. I never found out what failed in the motor.

Compared to my gas-and-oil track car experiences with BMWs, I was disappointed with Subaru. But that car was fun in the snow! I bought it with two sets of shocks (Ohlins for Summer, and red STI rally struts for the winter. Two sets of wheels and tires). In the winter on Blizzaks it was a hoot!

Makes me want to build an STI with a Crosstrek suspension ride height just because reasons.

[JRB]

Wow. You just told my Subaru story. I blew the engine on a 1999 2.0 JDM STI on the track in Sendai Japan in 2007. No overrev, no money shift. But it started to run/sound like a diesel. Long story short, ordered a short block, pulled the motor, swapped everything over. Reinstalled. Had to PCS with the military 3 months later. Had to sell the car. I never found out what failed in the motor.

Compared to my gas-and-oil track car experiences with BMWs, I was disappointed with Subaru. But that car was fun in the snow! I bought it with two sets of shocks (Ohlins for Summer, and red STI rally struts for the winter. Two sets of wheels and tires). In the winter on Blizzaks it was a hoot!

Makes me want to build an STI with a Crosstrek suspension ride height just because reasons.

I vaguely remember you sharing that somewhere else on this forum at some point in time - bummer, any way you slice it!

Since it happened on the track, tossup between fried #4 piston or an oil starvation failure - the pre 08-09ish EJ20/EJ25's suffered a pretty poor sump design that would starve the oil pickup if you sustained wide, fast, high-G turns. A few places like Killer Bee and even Moroso sell vastly improved oil pans now for those cars. #4 is the cyl that seems to melt the first if anything runs lean or gets too hot on prolonged higher-HP runs and if anything is even slightly off with the tune or the fuel used.

Those cars are really fun, a GC Impreza coupe set up with an EJ25 and STi 6-spd powertrain is exactly how I'd build a Subaru for myself if I was starting from scratch. But there's a lot of other cars I'll buy and build before another Subaru.