Our 2003 Dodge Stratus, which we bought used about two years ago, hit 100,000 miles last month. I, like most people, have heard the 100k mile horror stories for years, but I genuinely thought of them as a bunch of exaggerated tales. A kind of long-running joke. Until now.

We first noticed that our engine was misfiring. Assuming it was a problem with the spark plugs, we had them done. When that didn't fix the problem, we took the car to the mechanic again. Somehow, after we left the vehicle there, it wouldn't start. They drove it from the parking space to the garage and couldn't get it to start again. Eventually, after a week at that mechanic and another two days at another, it was determined that the computer and the cam shaft sensor needed to be replaced, and our after-market anti-theft device needs to be removed. $1,500. Oh, and apparently the spark plug wires were arcing, hence the misfires. Another $50.

We get the car back, and almost immediately notice that nothing on our instrument panel is working except the RPM gauge. We return it to the mechanic again, and this time they fix everything except the fuel gauge, which will now cost us $400 to fix for some reason.

Today, the car loses power and then won't start. This time, the mechanic tells us we're going to have to replace a bunch of pistons and possibly the starter. I have no idea how much it's going to cost yet, but obviously it's not going to be cheap.

So, having previously dismissed the 100k mile stories as myth, I find myself reassessing that. And I find myself having decided I'll never buy another Dodge for as long as I live. My level of stress and frustration has hit a momentous high today. I'm just praying the news from the mechanic tomorrow isn't so bad that I have to take out a loan to fix a car I still owe $1,200 on.

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I've heard bad stories about the Stratus Tyral. I have a 2007 Caliber and I'll let you know when we hit the 100k mark. Only at 30k so, a few years to go. I do have a 1978 Dodge Truck that is still running strong at probably 300k. (I rebuilt the Engine about 5 years ago when there was about 275k on it as I only had 7 cylinders at that time.) Hope the news with the mechanic is good for ya.

I buy Honda now.

A good mechanic is worth their weight in gold. Good luck finding one.

My new hobby is going to a repair shop, getting an itemized list of shit that is wrong, buying the parts myself and posting an ad on craigslist to have some body do it for 50 bucks. Results may vary.

I have a 96 LHS, 97 Taurus and a 04 Taurus. The 04 is paid for and just about to hit 100k, and all sorts of shit has had to be fixed on it. I had an 04 Impala, but sold it. The Impala was great. Fords are pieces of shit. Next time, I won't take the cheap route. I will buy a Toyota or Honda. I had a 86 Camry in college with about 300k miles and it was less maintenance costs than any of my newer cars.

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Have a 95 Honda Passport with 175,000 . It has ran great the whole way. The frame is literally rusted through, but the body is ok for some reason, I intend to keep driving it til spring. Out 98 Oldsmobile Silouette hit 100k and blew out a gasket along with some other crap and cost us 2k to fix. Runs great now though.


If they know they are good they will charge that also.

Dodge sucks. Get a Honda or a Toyota.

dodge sucks

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Cash for clunkers....

You still owe money on a car you have 100k miles on? Wow, how much do you drive? =O

Bought it used. Said that already. And we drive a lot.

And it doesn't qualify for Cash for Clunkers.

And the mechanic called. Looks like my fucking timing belt went out. *sigh*

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For what it's worth, that vehicle wasn't really a Honda, was built by Isuzu.

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

So, due to a lazy mechanic that changed our timing belt but not the tensioners, one of the tensioners failed, the timing belt slipped, and now we need a new engine.

I don't know whether to laugh or cry at this point.

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This is why you buy a warranty and take your vehicle to a dealership to have the work done. Look at it no different than regular auto insurance. It's there if you need it.

That whole mess would have only cost you 7-800 bucks for the warranty, $50-$100 deductible and it would have been fixed right the first time at a dealer.

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"Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit upon his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats." -Henry Louis Mencken
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VEGETARIAN -Noun (vej-i-tair-ee-uhn): Ancient tribal slang for the village idiot who can't hunt, fish or ride.

Glad I got my BMW certified pre-owned. 100k warranty, hooray!

Learn to maintain your vehicle yourself and you won't have issues like "spark plugs and plug wires". Those issues baloon into serious mechanical issues very quickly.

If you let your car misfire for even a few minutes, you can SERIOUSLY fuck up your timing mechanisms, cam surfaces, and the pistons and cylindars.

I think this has less to do with the 100k curse and more to do with sub-par maintenence. As is the case 99% of the time.

I was gonna ask you that. Soooooooo many people neglect to change that belt....and once it actually breaks and the car is running you're fairly fucked. Happened to my girlfriend a few years ago and she just had to go get a new car...as the repairs are insane.

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Larreth Wolfsong (long retired)
Lanys T'vyl, Everquest

Zinky, Lvl 60 Warlock
Thunderhorn, WoW

We just had the belt changed in November. Wasn't the belt that went out, was the tensioner.

Bleh.

I have no mechanical aptitude, by the way. I fucking hate working on cars with a passion. I spent months working on a '72 VW Superbeetle and there's no way in hell I'll ever do that shit again. That's why I pay people who are supposed to be competent to do it for me.

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You change timing belts/chains at 60k, and again at 120k. If you don't do it on time the first time you're asking for shit down the road. Maintenance, maintenance, maintenance. As long as you do maintenance most engines will run 150K+ without issues.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

If you want to bitch at someone, bitch at that douche that changed your plugs and didn't have the decency to check your wires and the way the car was running before taking your dough and handing you the keys.

Let me guess what this dickhole charged you. Was it $20 something for plugs and $80/hour labor with 1 hour minimum charge?

Something like that.

As some halfway good news, the mechanic called last night, told me they ran a leak test and that my engine passed and I'm not going to need to replace the whole thing. Instead of having to drop 3 grand on it, I may end up paying less than a $1,000 to get everything else repaired.

And apparently the Dodge dealership (the ones who replaced my computer and cam sensor) did some damage to various things while they were mucking around. The mechanic I'm currently using was more pissed about it than I was, so there's that.

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Garages are always good at spotting stuff the 'other guy' missed or screwed up. It makes them look better in your eyes, nothing more than marketing.

By the sounds of it, they tested the waters to see if you were okay with replacing the engine, sounds like you freaked, so they just going for a smaller repair bill, so they still get some work out of you.

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

I don't ever believe mechanics when they say "the last place you took the car too fucked something up"

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I would have just bought another car at this point.

Course, I am not ashamed to drive around in a $2k car. As long as it is dependable, has a radio and air conditioning, I am fine. (hell, my College camry was 600 bucks.)

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Right. "Just bought another car." Fuck, I wish I'd known it was that simple, I wouldn't have gone through all this.

I swear, sometimes the people on this board are fucking idiots.

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I think that comment is pretty fucking funny coming from Draagun.

Ooh, a Tyral vs Draagun matchup in the shitty human being Olympics. What could go wrong?

If Minnesota is not too far away, here are some good deals;

A friend asked me to bid on a van for him tomorrow, so was checking out the crankyape web site today.
http://www.crankyape.com/default.asp?pg=DisItems&Cat=11

A site I bought a repo'd quad from before;

http://www.crashedtoys.com/

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

Like you're such a shining example of goodness and light. News flash, Jox, you're no better than anyone else on these boards.

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In the shitty person olympics, I have $50 on Tyral to win by fatality.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I'm not betting against Tyral until Dolalin and/or Skycrasher make their return appearance.

I bet he can change his own plugs/oil.

Stupidest fight ever.

Don't buy a new ford truck, my friend is blown away as he has to leave the truck at the shop overnight while the glue sets for the plugs, apparently ford glues the plugs in.

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Jake Rivers - Senex Legio
Get off my Lawn alliance

People sell $2k-$3k cars everyday that are plenty reliable, they just aren't the prettiest things on the road. I can only imagine how many people got fucked with the clunker program buying new cars they can't afford just because they got an extra $4500.

The average car payment in the US is $485 or so, that same money invested in an average growth fund over 40 years becomes 5.6 million. But hey, if you like having a car payment then have fun.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I got lucky when I bought my car new in 2006, car payments of $300/mo and my insurance actually went down. Granted, the car resembles a pregnant rollerskate and I get "nissan versa!" all the time, but it gets 36mpg on the highway which makes it a perfect commuter ride.

I just wish the goddamned air filter wasn't so hard to get to.

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World of Warcraft: Kallaystra, Gweila, Steakumn, Tarathia [ Feathermoon/Horde ]

I'm not trying to shit on you, honestly I'm not. I'm just saying a 600 dollar car to get you by is better than thousands upon thousands in repair bills on a car that is falling a part. Fuck vanity.

Sometimes, you get stuck with a lemon. Dems' the breaks.

But, you really need to quit getting fucked by repairmen. There is no excuse for a grown ass man to be taken advantage of the way you have.

Instead of calling strangers on the internet "fucking idiots", maybe you should channel some of that rage towards your shady mechanics.

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Yeah, lets forgo having a nice car for our entire lives so that when I'm 65 years old and dying of cancer, I can have millions that my kids can spend!

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

Why do you need to buy a brand new car? Are you honestly willing to take the depreciation hit? The point is, you pay cash for cars. Why not let your money make money, instead of doing the same thing for someone else? You can drive a crappy car for a year or 2 and save enough to buy a $6-8k car without having to pay *anyone* any interest.

But if you really like borrowing money, go for it.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Oh no, without a hot car how will you get the chicks??!!??

We Americans are pathetic. =/

How is it that wanting to have nice things is pathetic, but wanting money to not spend is not? Don't get me wrong though, if you get off on having pieces of shit because it allows you to pretend that everyone else who has nice things are shallow and will ultimately die poor, more power to you.

Do you live on a compound, Bov?

Saving money for retirement and having nice things are not necessarily mutually exclusive. And if you know what you're doing, leasing is always a very nice option in terms of vehicles ;P

That's as if to say saving money and investing never gets you anywhere.

Live like no one else, so that later in life you can live like no one else is pretty damn true.

I have no debt, I'm able to save virtually everything. Which means I'm actually able to make some progress despite not having all that great of a paying job. I could pay cash right now for a car and not owe anyone anything. No payments, no paying a few extra grand for a vehicle because I couldn't save up and wait a while. I've made a few luxury purchases lately, and I've set back my saving a few hundred bucks. If I kept that up I'd be broke right now, but since I've kept myself out of debt it's not a big deal and I just go back to saving.

Who said anything about being shallow? It's about not being financially stupid and fucking yourself. If you can't pay cash for a car it costs too much. Think about how many of your other debts you can pay down quickly without a few hundred dollar car payment.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Riddle me this: I want to upgrade my 27" CRT TV with a 50" plasma TV; in light of my wife starting work in ~1 year do I (a) wait for the year to elapse whereby we can pay cash for the TV with the extra income or (b) buy the TV with borrowed money which ends up adding ~$100 to the final bill?

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Kuwen Furyblades
Hunter of Memento Reejeryn
Champion of Faydark

If you can afford a monthly payment, whether you get the item now or wait until you can pay cash for it should only be determined by whether or not the interest paid is worth not waiting, and whether you are capable of dealing with emergencies that may rise up. It's not "fucking yourself" or being "financially stupid", it's making an educated decision based off of your current circumstances.

Is that $100 really worth it to you? Are you willing to give up $100 of your money on top of what you're already paying for that tv? You really want it that bad? How many times have you made decisions similar to this that cost you $50+ a pop for a want.

As far as cars go, it's a car, not a house. We're not talking $100,000+ for a house here. We're talking $6-15k for a decent-really nice car. Staying out of debt is good. Regardless, if you don't have a bunch of payments what are you doing with that money that's coming in? You could buy a house for cash. Let your money make money for you, instead of letting other people's money cost you money.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I'm your huckleberry. I'm currently leasing both of my vehicles. My wife and I have pretty damned good credit, and were able to get absolutely amazing deals. Mercedes has a good lease trade program, that actually works out well for us, and I'm going to buy my H2 in cash at the end of this year for about $6000. Had I purchased that same vehicle in cash previously, well, you can probably guess where Hummer values went the past 18 months.

I think not having a ton of debt is good advice. However, having NO debt is bad advice. The best advice someone can give, is be responsible in your borrowing and put a good 1/3rd of your income into savings if possible. You can enjoy your lifestyle and retirement.

You only need credit if you're borrowing money.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

not so much now adays....

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Someone is a follower of Dave Ramsey.

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Nice try.

What's pathetic is the attitude of, "zomg I MUST have that nice car, saving is stupid!!" like Agrax was posting.

I was already living the lifestyle, but finding Dave put some extra words to it.

It's pretty damn hard to argue with paying off debts aggressively and having very little debt. And yes, you only need credit if you're borrowing money.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

...except when you are getting a job* or renting an apartment*.

*some jobs and some apartments

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Or getting a security clearance, or buying that phone, or getting utilities w/o a down payment, or how about insurance on that vehicle? There's a lot of reasons to have a small amount of debt. Hell, I put my cable bill, and groceries and various other sundry on my credit just so I can pay it off. Small price to pay for good credit.

You're trying to tell me that if you're paying cash money you can't get a phone contract? Seriously, that's what you're saying?

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

I'll tell you what, Elessar has the right of it. There's a lot of reasons to build up SOME credit.

I played the, "Live on cash" game for a long time. Now I'm 30 years old and can't do shit with regards to credit-related things.

It's funny..I've made it to 30 without getting terrible credit or into financial trouble, and yet when I go to do anything that requires credit I get treated like a criminal because apparently "no credit" makes you even worse than "bad credit".

That's exactly what I'm saying. Unless you want a cheap Sprint or a Cricket.

I have zero harmful debt (what I call credit card.. anything other than a car pmt and a mortgage). 1 of 2 vehicles paid off (both 2005 or newer) and the other will be by next year. We use our Amex to pay for literally everything we can, then pay that off each month completely. Used my Amex points to get Delta skymiles and went to Switzerland for free based on those points.

But it's nice not having anything hanging over my head. Good peace of mind.

I've never had a credit card, I signed a contract with verizon no problem. I had no credit of any kind, the only thing I had was a stable checking account with no dings or overdraws, ever.

You can do nothing with a credit card that you can't do with a debit card, except go into debt.

Congrats Jox, that's awesome.

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Marauder Harabakc Goat

Yeah, I am in the "no credit" category too. Well, a few hospital bills that are bad, but my report is pretty empty. Generally, it doesn't matter to me. I did get turned down at an apartment complex once. Anymore, any one you want to rent from is going to run a credit report. A lot of jobs run credit reports too. Banks, retail... I really don't know who all does, but you get the idea.

More and more, everything you want to do requires a credit check. It is the only way that someone knows they can get to you if you don't pay your debt. I consider a credit rating a "fuckability" rating. The higher your score, the more fuckable you are to a company. (the more money they can make off you)

For example, I once left a checking account +5 dollars. It was one of those "free" checking accounts. Well, in my mind, I was giving them a 5 dollar gift and I figured they would close the account out after a while - no biggie.

Well, about 2-3 years later, I get a letter in the mail saying I owe this bank (some Army bank) over $200 dollars! Yup, They charged me something like an "inactivity fee" and then it just snowballed from there with over draft fees, excessive over draft fees, inactivity fees, more overdraft fees...

I never paid that debt. Fuck them. Several years later, it doesn't show up on my credit report anymore. Pfft. IF I had a good credit rating and wanted to keep it though.. I would have been there paying their stupid fees. I didn't though, and they didn't get paid.

I dunno. I just don't concern myself with credit. I feel like I am better off without it, though it does require some creative work arounds and an ability to save, save, save.

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