"trader_4" wrote in message
...
On Sunday, April 4, 2021 at 5:26:21 AM UTC-4, wrote:
On Saturday, April 3, 2021 at 8:28:00 PM UTC-4, micky wrote:

That combination of problems really scared me last night, and I had
just
about given in and was going to take it somewhere, until I thought,
It's
gonna cost me 1000 dollars or more.
Every time I'm faced with an expensive repair like that, I remind myself
that it's cheaper than a new car.

Even $1000 every single year is cheaper than a new car.

Cindy Hamilton

A friend of mine had a Honda CRV, probably had 200K miles on it. It had
an
intermittent problem with the codes indicating that the cat converter was
the likely culprit. I helped him get it through inspection once by
resetting
the codes and when reset they generally stayed OK for months. He does
mostly highlway, long 600 mile trips to rack up the mileage, so the car
was
in overall great shape. I looked up the cost of a new cat for it and it
was
maybe $350, plus labor of course. But he kept driving it, then it was
about
due for another inspection. So, I told him he should either get the cat
replaced
or I could reset it for him again and it would probably remain OK for
awhile
again so he could get through inspection. The cat code problem mostly
happened on his long drives, not when he was doing local driving anyway.
And in NJ I think if the total repairs are more than $700, you get an
exemption
and don't have to even fix it. But he kept obsessing about this perceived
awful
cat problem

Next when he was on his way up to NJ from NC and had been having
trouble starting the car before he left and I think on the way. He
stopped by
here and I determined his battery was old and kaput. I recommended that
he
not continue the remaining 75 miles because he could get stuck on the
Parkway,
where a tow is expensive because they only let certain companies do it.
I convinced him to buy a new battery, so we found a good deal for about
$100,
I went and picked it up and put it in for him.

What's he do next? He took it to Honda for an oil change and they sold
him a
new FIT and gave him a whopping $1000 trade in for the CRV including the
new
battery that was a day old. That car was
probably worth 4 times that. He could have paid $600 or so for a cat
replacement
at an non-dealer repair shop and gotten another 100K miles out of it.

And the FIT is a small **** box compared to the CRV.

Bull****.