I have a 2011 Toyota Rav 4 and I only have about 5 payments left and then I will be debt free. Lately I have been tempted to trade it in. Let me preach on it…
When I bought it, it came with 2 years of free maintenance (free? yeah right, but I know) and when that 2 years was up I decided to change the oil myself, the dealer wanted $159 to change the oil WTF? This car doesn’t have a spin-on filter like most, it has a canister filter, you pull the canister off, replace the element and put the canister back on.
When I went to change the oil, I pulled the canister off and there wasn’t an oil filter in the canister!! Another WTF? How long have I been driving this car without a filter? I don’t know, at least 5,000 miles as that is the change interval. I raised hell with the dealer AND Toyota, nobody cared!
My debate with myself is…trade it in or keep it? It is 5 years old and has a 10K trade in value, I could probably finagle a 3 year loan at a payment I am comfortable with or I can keep it and be debt free soon…
I want to change jobs to one (if debt free) to a less stressful job, if I buy a new car I would need to keep my existing job.
Debt free living is nice. And my philosophy has always been to drive a car until it has no value left. A five year old Toyota is practically brand new. Take reasonably good care of it and drive it till the wheels fall off.
I’m still kinda torqued that my wife crashed our 2006 Prius with 210K miles on it. It was running great! I wanted 300K out of that car at least!
I am not a mechanic. But one stint without a filter doesn’t seem like too big of an issue as long as there was still actually oil in the thing. But if you are worried about it, you could sell it, then buy a used car that is more to your liking and still be debt free.
I can’t really comment on the missing filter issue. We have some mechanics on the board, though. Hopefully one of them will chime in.
But if it’s still running well, and you’ve replaced the filter, and you intend to follow the recommended maintenance schedule from here on, I vote for pretending the oil filter thing never happened and driving it till the wheels fall off. Cars are commodities. If it’s getting the job done for you, spend your money on something else.
I like cars, too. So, I have an old Corvair that’s my toy. I have a few grand sunk into it. I drive it maybe once a month. But, my daily driver is a 98 Corolla because, by God, it still only has 118K miles, and it’s Not Dead Yet. My wife, after having prematurely killed our 06 Prius, now drives an 09 Prius with 80K miles. With luck, I’ll be able to force my son to drive it to college in 13 years.
Maybe start a new thread or ask for a title change on this one. The mechanics who post here may not readily click a thread with the current title, but one asking about 5,000 miles without an oil filter may get some responses.
Well, you can request a title change from a mod to attract the professional mechanics.
I’m only a shadetree mechanic over the last two decades, but I’ve worked on a lot of vehicles, some abused beyond belief before I got my hands on them. My advice would be that if you haven’t seen a problem yet, you probably won’t see any problems arriving early in the future if you continue to use an oil filter and maintain the engine well. If there are particles free in the engine, they’ll be caught by the new filter. If the particles have attached themselves to the engine in a place where they will eventually cause a failure, they already have. But! it will probably take a lot of their smaller buddies attaching to them to cause the eventual problem. The engine’s life has probably been shortened, but I’d imagine you would get a heated debate if you asked by how many miles it had been shortened by.
When regarding the financial aspect of maintaining an older car, or buying a new one, I follow this maxim: Will it be likely that the cost of repairing the vehicle this year be greater than the cost of making payments on a new one?
Payments on a new car seem to run around $250-300, depending on a lot of factors, but if you’re in a good position, that seems to be a reasonable number for transportation. That works out to $3000-3600/year. In the case of less exotic vehicles, you’d have to be ruining a transmission or engine every year to make buying a new car make financial sense, in the long term. There are piece of mind reasons to buy a new car: such as not wanting to deal with the headache of getting it repaired, or if you have a vehicle that’s so old it’s becoming hard to find parts. But unless you’ve wrecked it, it’s hard to justify buying a new one on financial grounds alone.
Being debt-free is great, but I really like having a dependable vehicle. I drive a lot. Once I hit 100,000 miles I start worrying about things failing. Personally, it’s worth the monthly payment to not worry.
I don’t think so. Even if you spent $1000 a year on repairs (Which would be highly unlikely on a five year old car) you are still coming out way ahead.
My philosophy is that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. A car I’ve driven for many years is one know and trust. A new car, not so much.
Keep in mind that people have a finite amount of money. What else could be done with the money that would provide an even greater amount of security? E.g., having some savings for a rainy day or retirement.