General give up

[raineuk]

Okay decided to give up. When the multipla needs it mot in feb I'll either be scrapping it ( if it fails ) or selling it on. Three years of DIYing and constantly searching for parts has had a toll. Time for a car that's cheap to fix and where parts are plenty.

 

[boilermansab]

Why what's up with it?
There is no such thing as a car that's cheap to fix...unless its an old fiesta!
I've just spent £300 on routine service on our 3 series which really guts me as it would of cost me £100 to do it myself!! But due to warranty I had no choice!
End of the day..all cars are money pits!!

 

[QinteQ]

It depends on the car :

- some are bought good ones, and maintained so they stay [ for their year ] good ones
- some are bought not so good ones, but are 'made good, and maintained as good ones

If you start with a dog no amount of money will make it good and then keep it good, it will always bite you when you least expect it.

Apart from a NSF spring, I've had to do nothing in years, it's never even needed oil or water topping up in years. I've chosen to replace legal tyres for a brand new set of 205/65 R16's on big Fiat Alloys, I choose to do an all oils and filters full service every January but with an average mileage of 2kpa it's not needed. I even chose to do the plating of the jacking points and gave the underside a Shultz while I was under it replacing the wishbones etc that did not need doing.

You see I was lucky .. .. really lucky - I managed to get a good one from the start, not clever, just lucky, but I've made sure it stays it in good nick because I was lucky to get a good one as a starting point and anyway its cheaper in the long run.

It depends on the car

 

[Zundapp]

Quite right, it greatly depends on how lucky you are with the car you get. Much depends on whether the previous owner(s) was a decent driver with a degree of mechanical sympathy and whether it was maintained to a reasonable level before you got it.

I've had two, and both were as reliable as any other car I've owned - apart from front springs of course! No maf, egr, pump or injector problems at all, just a crank position sensor on one of them, easily sorted. Oh, and an awareness that Italian electrics can be a bit random - but iffy electronics are an issue on many modern cars.

With a design life of seven years, many of these cars are well past their prime, and it's really a matter of prolonging their life till an uneconomical repair scraps them.

Which is where this forum comes in...

 

[BikeDoc]

...I choose to do an all oils and filters full service every January but with an average mileage of 2kpa it's not needed...

Not quite true.
Oil change intervals will (or should) be quoted in both mileage and calendar time, e.g. 14000miles/12months.
So even if you do much less than the specified mileage, you should change it within the time limit.
How the car is driven affects the life of the oil as well.
A car that does mostly Motorway miles will need oil changes less frequently than one that spends most of it's time in and around town.