While you might think that a 14 year old 150K mile car is in pristine condition, that $3K of engine work was just the minimum I could spend to get the engine running and back on the road.
The air conditioning had stopped working, probably due to a bad compressor, one of the back windows wasn't working, the rear struts needed replaced, the power steering pump was making an awful racket when cold, the car was burning oil (which could have been the head gasket, or could have needed more engine work), the transmission needed work (it would sometimes take several shifts to get it to go into reverse, I tried to always park in pull-through spaces), it was nearly time for new tires, brakes needed serviced (and the master cylinder needed to be rebuilt). I don't even know if it would have passed a smog check due to the amount of oil it was burning. And that's just the problems I knew about.
Oh, and it was missing out on the past 14 years of car safety improvements (ABS, multiple air bags, etc) as well as modern emissions and fuel economy improvements. Meanwhile it was sitting at the shop and I was renting a car to get to work.
It really made no sense to keep it, so i visited a car dealer and got what I think was a good deal (with 0% financing) on a new car - they towed the car from my mechanic and I drove home in a brand new car, that 8 years later, has had zero problems (so far).
The air conditioning had stopped working, probably due to a bad compressor, one of the back windows wasn't working, the rear struts needed replaced, the power steering pump was making an awful racket when cold, the car was burning oil (which could have been the head gasket, or could have needed more engine work), the transmission needed work (it would sometimes take several shifts to get it to go into reverse, I tried to always park in pull-through spaces), it was nearly time for new tires, brakes needed serviced (and the master cylinder needed to be rebuilt). I don't even know if it would have passed a smog check due to the amount of oil it was burning. And that's just the problems I knew about.
Oh, and it was missing out on the past 14 years of car safety improvements (ABS, multiple air bags, etc) as well as modern emissions and fuel economy improvements. Meanwhile it was sitting at the shop and I was renting a car to get to work.
It really made no sense to keep it, so i visited a car dealer and got what I think was a good deal (with 0% financing) on a new car - they towed the car from my mechanic and I drove home in a brand new car, that 8 years later, has had zero problems (so far).