Buying a High Mileage Vehicle

I have a 2000 Nissan XTerra I paid $600 for at 190k, put a little work into it, and I have put 40k on it and is going strong. For many years I ran a car service / taxi and I dont think there is a used car worth over $1000 as you are always taking a risk. I have had Crown Vics that with regular oil changes have gotten over 400 K miles. As stated above as long as you are handy with basic mechanics and willing to walk away high mileage is the way to go.

Oh yes, my kids are finally getting ready to sell the old '76 Chevette. We don't know how many times the speedometer has turned over, but they paid $100 for it over ten years ago and its sat part of the time and been a daily driver for years. The tranny needs work now, but otherwise it runs fine and they think they can get more than they paid for it - of course they've put more into it than they paid, but not a whole lot! It's probably got at least 200,000 miles on it, maybe over 300,000. It's also ugly as all get out! The paint just sorta came off and at one point my husband had to weld a new floor pan on because it was splashing slush up on the driver so badly!

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~ Carol

Great post. A good friend is an independent mechanic that works for a really sharp repair place. He works on anything from every common brand on the road to antique Rolls-Royces and Landrovers to newer BMWs and Lexuses. His company has tens of thousands spent on diagnostic equipment and spends over a grand a month on updates for different tech. services. He will only buy old Hondas from the mid-nineties as personal cars. He pays $2K for a car with less than 200K miles and claims that it is often more reliable than customer's cars with 1/4 of that mileage. He is convinced that the luxury car makers are leading the charge to destroy the used car market. They are building astoundingly complicated products, (you can now buy a BMW that runs fiber optics instead of wiring. This is necessary because the eighty computers on board overwhelm old fashion copper wire while transferring data.) selling them with years of total maintenance and repairs included, and then trying to get you into a new one before your current one is getting to the point that there are issues. The used vehicles hitting the market as a result of this marketing are complicated, trouble prone, unreliable and cost a fortune to fix. With the advent of sealed transmissions (no dipstick, no maintenance schedule), 10,000 mile oil changes, and components that can only be serviced with dealer controlled software, the days of cheap, reliable cars that go 300K miles, may be numbered. IMHO, manufacturers are not happy that the average age of vehicles on the road is currently nine years. By building cars that are expensive and unreliable as they age, they win, we lose.

I too have always had high mileage vehicles. They require some work but even new vehicles have repairs. Doing the math I come out that the older vehicles are a LOT cheaper by about a factor of ten.

Cheers

-Walter
Sugar Mountain Farm
Pastured Pigs, Sheep & Kids
in the mountains of Vermont
Read about our on-farm butcher shop project:
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/butchershop
http://SugarMtnFarm.com/csa

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SugarMtnFarm.com -- Pastured Pigs, Poultry, Sheep, Dogs and Kids

bright side is if u buy cheap used car and something major goes out - scrap metal prices are currently high lol. no kidding my dad just recently got rid of two 80's models vehicles this way and got almost $400 each for them

I wouldn't hesitate to buy an older farm truck with lots of miles on it. Neighbor of mine has trucks as old as 1960's models that are still running fine after being used on the ranch towing cattle, carrying feed, running down wild bulls, etc..

Our Ford Focus wagon has about 225,000 miles on it now and I fully expect to get at least another 50k miles out of it. Other than tires and regular oil and air filter changes, we've had very little in the way of maintenance costs with it. I'd gladly pick up another high mileage Focus if the previous owner changed the oil regularly.

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"Perhaps I'll have them string a clothesline from the hearse I am in, with my underwear waving in the breeze, as we drive to the cemetary. People worry about the dumbest things!"
by Wendy

I need to get me a used vehicle where the mileage goes down instead of up

Well two of my favorite engines were made up until 2001 and 2006. The little 3 cylinders found in Geo Metros are real easy to work on. They had throttle body injection until Geo production stopped in 2001. I can take one out without an engine hoist too The 4.0 six in Jeeps was based on the 199 six that AMC came out with in 1964. My friend and I swapped in a 4.0 out of a 95 Jeep Grand Cherokee into an 84 AMC Eagle. Everything bolts right up like it was made for it.


I don't think there is a single motor made today that is shade tree mechanic friendly. There is a reason why I keep buying vehicles that are 30 plus years old. They are easy to keep running with what ever stuff I have handy to rig in. So long as I have computer cases and angle iron laying around I'll be able to keep my old rolling wrecks on the road longer than anything being built today.

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http://www.xanga.com/shackman A blog about whatever

I have two jeeps, a Jeep grand cherokee and a Jeep cherokee. Grand is a 2001 and the regular is a 1991. The 1991 has about 230,000 miles on it. I bout it with 175,000 miles on it. So far I had to replace a couple of seals and a starter. It doesnt burn any oil. The grand has about 125,000 miles on it and runs great. Personally for the price I don't think you can go wrong with a Jeep Cherokee. Look for a 1991 or newer with an automatic transmission. The 4.0L straight 6 is very reliable and should go 300,000 miles easily with the usual maint. stuff. When you check them out open the doors and look at the hinge to body area. If the rig has been run hard you will notice cracks there. This is due to the uniframe design. Pass on it if you find cracks.

The great thing about these rigs is that there were gobs of them made. That makes used parts easy and affordable to find. You will also be hard pressed to find a better 4wd system, if that is important to you.

Another Honda person here.

1995 with 380,000 and the only thing I have had to do is replace an AC Fan. I will drive this thing until I can't.

Plus to it, parts are easy to find and are not expensive.

Good enough price and I'd buy most used vehicles if they check out.

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Commerce with all nations, alliance with none, should be our motto- - Jefferson

I had an 86 Buick that had 160,000 on it when I bought it, and sold it to a friend at 240,000. He resold the car to some kids who were driving it up until a few years ago.

Tonight, I purchased a 2001 Chevy Silverado 4x4 extended cab, with 177k miles. Looks and drives like new. Not even close to a new car price. We'll see.

Thanks for everyone's input.

My 178,000+ mile 2005 Silverado is great. I hate my 55,000 mile 2003 Jeep. It's the most unreliable vehicle I've owned in 30 years. I wish I could have the six year older, 100,000 more mile SUV I drove before the Jeep back.

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Robin

My honda is a 2001 civic with 260,000 on it. still runs like a top. I also have a handy DH and an honest mechanic. Makes all the difference.

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I'd rather have one Chewbacca than an entire clone army.

I've had great luck with really cheap cars. In 2003 I bought a 1993 Ford Festiva for $200. It had 115,000 miles and had been sitting for two years. The guy wanted it out of his yard. I put a battery in it and drove it in for an oil change. Found out that it was leaking oil, about a quart every 420 miles. Decided that a $200 car was not worth changing the oil when I was replacing it every three tanks of gas anyway. So I drove it for three years. I sold it for $300 with 220,000 miles. I put new front brake pads on it once, and a set of new tires. While I had it a guy told me he had one in the back yard that I could have. Drove it home and sold it for $100. A nurse saw me pull into the doctors office and we talked about our love of the Festiva. A year later she called me and asked if I wanted hers, she was buying a newer car. She drove it to my house, My son ended up delivering pizzas with that car for a full year.

I got rid of the Festiva when I found a 1995 Mazda 323 for $400. I drove the Mazda for a year before giving it to my son as a delivery vehicle. I got a case of stupid and bought a 2006 Ford truck. It has been good to me but I still have another two years to pay on it.

Dh is a mechanic (ok, he was in another life, but he kept all his tools).

In 31 years (and counting) our best luck has been with brand new vehicles that we keep until they won't run anymore. I don't mean most cost effective, but the least amount of maintenance and problems - but that is because DH keeps on top of things so there are almost no surprises or on road breakdowns.

Next best (and most cost effective) is buying vehicles with higher mileage (around 100,000) with something serious wrong with them. Head gaskets are the best if they didn't do more damage by overheating them. But DH is qualified to asses the condition. We've bought several that needed a head gasket (about $200 worth of parts and 10 hours of labor- so very expensive if you have a shop do the work). These ones usualy sell for under $2,000 and with another few hundered in parts (He'll replace other things while he's got the engine opened) we've usually put at least another 100,000 before we've sold them.

The ones we've been burned on have been the middle range milage - 30,000 to 50,0000 miles. Usually all sorts of things start going wrong around the 80,000 mile mark because the first owner neglected or beat the snot out of them during the early miles. I'm not sure what it would take, maybe starting them and not letting them warm before hitting 55 out of the driveway, or adding funny stuff to the oil/fuel that wasn't needed, or letting the overheat slightly - or run low on oil.

I think if you find a car with 150,000+, it proves it's been taken care of or it would have bit the dust before then. So with more care, it will keep going.

We've current got a Saturn SL with 290,000 and a Saturn Ion with 180,000 (and a VW Jetta with 6,000) and both those Saturns have little body damage and are still running fine. We were going to sell the SL for $500, but people didn't like the high mileage so we decided to keep it as a beater car as DH thinks the Ion is still too nice to haul dirty stuff (sometimes that includes him). The two Saturns were bought new so we know exactly what has happened to them, and that is why we have no problem taking them on longer road trips.

I have a Saturn SL2 that I have had for 3 years and paid nothing for....274,000 miles and is the most reliable car I have ever owned, looks great also.

I drive 100 miles round trip every day. I had a 2003 Dodge Ram 1500 4 WD Quad Cab. It had 204,000 miles on it when we traded for a new 2011 Subaru Outback all wheel drive, 4 cylinder engine. I went from 14 mpg (on a good day) to 33 mpg. Lots of cool electronics including Satilitte radio and Bluetooth for the cell phones. Rides like a dream, very quite and I can drive all week on one tank of gas. Used to have to fill the Dodge up on Wednesday. My only drawback is deer. The Dodge had a very strong brush guard and I hit two deer without a scratch. Won't be so lucky in the Sube.

My husband has hit 3 deer with his 2001 Subaru. About $2000 worth of damage each time, but could have been worse. The only other issue has been replacing head gaskets at 100,000 but that was a problem with 01 and earlier Subarus. We have over 150,000 on it now and it does great. We'll probably buy Subarus again.