bangernomics, where do you draw the line?

[barefoot]

OK difficult question for some:

 

Keep it / flog it / scrap it ?

 

What makes more/most financial sense?

 

Is it really worth keeping a vehicle beyond / long beyond its 'sell by/use by' date ?

Are cars really designed to last just 7 years - 'Honest/wanker John' s theory

or do you go with Charles Ware & think that a car is a car for life?

Or am I talking complete bollocks & a car should be binned at the first sign of expense.

 

If you are all thinking short term, what about the 6 monthly MOT thing?

Check it half yearly and if things (advisory or not) are looking a little worrying

flog it on with 6 months ticket...

 

and is that honestt?

 

I am slightly biased in that of the 4 cars I own, I've had 3 of them for 15 years or more

and am happy to pay far in excess of what they're worth to get them through their MOT's

 

In the long run, am I financially ahead of the folk on here that buy something

they fancy a bit but quickly find is shiter than they thought & sell it on or scrap it

to just about break even?

[garethj]

I don't follow the true Bangernomics path because if I like a car enough to research about it, hunt for a good one and spend hours of my week driving it then I probably like it too much to get rid as soon as it needs some brake pads.

 

I usually keep a car until something I like better comes up, then part of my brain tricks me into thinking it's the answer to my automotive prayers and I buy it. Or sometimes I change cars because my circumstances change; the V8 Land Rover was fine when my commute was 4 miles a day but wouldn't be good now my commute is 80 miles a day.

[nigel bickle]

With a (very) few exceptions,I keep them forever.

 

But then -I'm very sad.

[Cavcraft]

I think the thing is with your cars Nigel is that you have some really cool/rare stuff that perhaps you'd be unlikely to find again in a hurry. I don't mean that in a derogatory way, quite the reverse actually, but I find if you own borderline shit/e cars it's less of a tug at the heart strings to offload them if you haven't had them long.

 

Bangernomics does work, I reckon it's just a case of knowing when something's too far gone to be worth keeping or you get bored of it. For example Bangernomics wouldn't work if your £400 car needed two grands worth of work to get it back on the road and you had no 'real' attachment to it.

Smoking round in old knackers is good fun and if you can squeeze a few months/years out of something that is costing you virtually nothing then it's perfect motoring imho. Probably everyone of us on here is an antidote to the 'you'll have to buy a new/ish car or you'll be sorry' brigade as we all seem to get good service out of old knackers and we get the most fun out of it compared to the suckers who think any car over 18 months old is an evil money sucking killer. Modern cars are great and I'd have a brand new one if I could afford it, but for financial reasons I choose not to and I don't actually 'need' a barnd new car anyhow.

 

I shall almost certainly run my Audi into the ground: not deliberately like, and I will try and coax it through MOT's etc but if the big bill ever comes then I'll just offload it unless I find another cheap diesel that takes my fancy a bit more.

[Shep Shepherd]

Bangernomics is a GR11 philosophy, but it doesn't work for me, as I get far too attached to my cars to throw them away when they need extensive/expensive repairs

[Guest]

my case of banger nomics fits the bill much better .

 

my current project . l reg 1.8 cavalier paid £260 cash pound notes for it , ran it around for over 6 months, when the tax ran out the £120 for 6 months rent along with its thirst for petrol and a 30 mile comute to work every didnt justify me re-taxing it .

now she sits under a tarp on my garden stripped of all the interior gubbins awaiting a final blast round the oval befor she goes over the weigh bridge .

 

 

the replacement for the old girl is an equaly shit l reg micra 1.3 whos fate will be very much the same

[Wilko220]

My theory has always been that if you've had a car for a long time (and you like it) then it's worth spending more than its value on keeping it going because you know its history and know it has been looked after, serviced, etc.

 

The alternative (unless you can afford a brand new car every three years), is to get rid and buy another, slightly newer second hand motor which might on the face of it be better, but beneath the surface may have been ragged around town in second gear all its life and not had an oil change for three years.

 

Every car I've had has cost me more in maintenance than it originally cost me to buy - but in several years of motoring I can count on one hand the number of times I have broken down and been left stranded. So whether or not it makes absolute sense financially, I have enjoyed reliable motoring and peace of mind for a fraction of the cost of buying new.

[dollywobbler]

I never usually go in for the true spirit of bangernomics either. I buy a lot of cheap cars, but in the case of my previous BX, I spent far more than it was worth on maintenance. That was fine as it very rarely let me down, delivered stupendously good mpg and did everything I asked of it, including helping me move house. I think I did the bills after six months of ownership and found that I'd spent about a grand, including purchase and fuel - which included a 3000 mile hike around France. That's cheap motoring really.

 

Where it becomes a problem is when you don't keep a car for long. I put new tyres, a brake caliper and an exhaust section on the 'autoshite bike' Saab 900i while I owned it. Poor value for money when I sold it after such a short time. The CX on the other hand I totally abused. I did fix an induction leak but otherwise I did absolutely nothing to it. No servicing other than checking fluid levels. It still cost me, because I paid too much for it, but that was the spirit of bangernomics. So was the Range Rover really. Bought it, fixed a few small issues, ignored several others and had a lot of fun in it. Then sold it so I wouldn't have to tackle some of the other jobs. If I'd started to throw money at it, I could have ended up very skint but with a Range Rover still worth sod all. I think the trick is knowing when to throw in the towel. Accept that any car needs maintenance at some point but try to keep the car longer than a few months if you're splashing the cash!

[Father Ted]

A few years ago I was working on the District and spent all day trolling about the Fylde coast, some days racking up a couple of hundred "business" miles at 53p/mile.

 

At the time I used to buy a car for a few hundred pounds and run it to within a few weeks of its MOT then sell it on and get another. Quite often I had more than made back the purchase cost of the car through the allowance I was paid.

 

My colleagues all used to laugh at me as I drove round in old (mostly) French knackers, running them on a variety of oil based liquid, spending nothing servicing them and rarely washing them. On the other hand, i had no qualms about chucking my car in the car park at Laycock Gate tower block, or Grange park and knowing that it would still be there at the end of the day or bothering too much when another new dent appeared. My colleagues on the other hand had lease hire cars and were dry bum raped by the lease company when they came to give the car back because of said scrapes and dents.

 

I spent my spare cash on beer, fags and women.

 

2 Years ago I had a bit of a mad moment and spent £1200 on a low milage Micra.

 

Reliable

Dependable

and lots of other words ending in "able"

 

But boring as fuck. Its 14 years old now and fine. I'll probably keep it till it crumbles into dust.

[baldrickthecunning]

I've bought a few cheap cars, some I was very fond of, others I knew were only short term. The MK3 Golf 1.4 I bought off a friends brother for £100 was amazingly much better than i thought, so i shoved it through an MOT, and when the water pump failed i made the conscious decision to fix it as CHEAPLY as possible - which involved a scrapyard pump, auxhillary belt, tensioner and whacking the same cambelt back on! (Total cost under £10) It was right as rain after that, it ploughed through all of the snow and ice with no problems and then i sold it with 4 months MOT for £425.

 

I've owned 2 Peugeot 205 XS's and both had no MOT, and cost £120 each! Both went back on the road for a similar MOT bill of about £170 and both were great fun!

 

When I bought an old 1.8i Peugeot 405 I made the biggest mistake ever! Bills kept mounting up and the car never did run right. Lost money, but still not as much as the depreciation on a new car.

 

The slightly dull Bora that I drive now gets everything repaired properly, and mostly with new parts as its served very well and taken myself and others all around the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Holland and Luxembourg as well as doing a daily commute (until recently) of 52 miles across country roads.

 

If you are prepared to deal with a bit of hassle, get work done and take a gamble - buying cars with no MOT for bridge money can actually be quite rewarding.

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

Bangernomics only works if you are either very lucky, or are blessed with common sense and know a bit about cars. Really, £1000 is all you need to own a clean, respectable modern car - not modern with arsewipe-assist, bluetooth and wank-nav, but the stuff that matters. Vectra C, early E46 318i, 1.8 'Deo (Nu-Shape), Toyota Avensis, Saab 9-3 etc, all decent cars which can be kept going ad infinitum. Okay, so you might have to spend £500 every year on repairs but fuck me, you're still so far ahead it's laughable. I wouldn't advocate buying utter shit to drive around in - mega mileage Vectra B, fucked, rattly old Mark 3 Golf or a Micra with underseal up to the door handles etc. Decent older cars are too cheap to bother with rubbish that looks crap, drives crap and pisses oil, coolant and misery from every pore

 

I don\t sell cars either, I keep them. I find the selling process too painful tbh. I've got a ton of spares for mine to keep it going - and engine and gearbox, struts, shocks, calipers, various panels, lights etc. I'd hope to still have it in 5 years.

[dollywobbler]

I'd say £1000 is more than you have to spend. My Saab 9000i cost £595 and I sold it for £450. Other than one service, I didn't have to spend a penny on it. Still simple enough to work on without a degree it computerology and the engine is nice and accessible too. Reliability seemed to peak around 20 years ago too. Engines last forever and there aren't built in failure points like OMG DMF etc. They're also a lot lighter, so I found 34mpg perfectly achievable even with a 2.3-litre petrol engine.

 

You do have to avoid buying a dog, but that's as true at a grand as it is at half that. I could have nabbed a nice Volvo 740 for similar money and I doubt I'd've had to spend much on that either. For my money, cars around 20 years old are absolutely perfect for cheap motoring. You want one that's been in long ownership really (the Saab and Volvo were both one owner from new) and that hasn't already been used as a banger. You do need to turn off your morals though. I found I was unwilling to drive the Saab through the winter as really, it was far too good! I felt bad leaving it parked up outside...

[Lankytim]

Like most on here I buy bangers and spend far too much on them to keep them on the road. Basically defeats the whole object if you end up paying more to keep an old knacker on the road than it would cost to buy a 3-4 yr old Mondeo or Vectra. I just feel sorry for them and end up splashing the cash. "Yeah, it needs new tyres and shocks but the rest of the car is sound so i'll just fork out £500 to get them done"

 

The true bangernomics student would buy a car like a T reg astra or similar for £750 and motor it round until it needed more than say £400 for an MOT and just drive it to the scrap yard and buy another, but that's just not the Autoshite way..

[HMC]

+1

True Bangernomics requires you to be pretty detached and treat the vehicle like an appliance, I always tend to find that If I like the car for whatever reason I put time and money its way that often isnt really justified. Hey ho

[The Reverend Bluejeans]

 

The true bangernomics student would buy a car like a T reg astra or similar for £750 and motor it round until it needed more than say £400 for an MOT and just drive it to the scrap yard and buy another, but that's just not the Autoshite way..

 

But that's stupidity. Say you've got a T reg Astra that's as clean as a whistle and it needs two tyres, two shocks, a back box and a couple of brake pipes for the MOT. That's about £400 all in. Anyone with sense would spend the 400 sovs and run the car for another year. If it was a tatty heap of shit with 167'000 miles, various oil leaks and a rank interior.....then why did they buy it in the first place? True bangernomics is buying something fairly late, nicer and low mileage, maintaining it well and running it for 5+ years.

 

A mate bought a 2002 Avensis 2.0 petroleum for £890 at the sales not long back. Clean as a dry fart and the aircon would freeze your nuts off. About 80'000 miles so about 1/4 of the way through it's useful life before becoming a Leicester taxi. An utterly bland but quite superb vehicle.

[jonathan_dyane]

The 190D I am driving now is the most expensive car I have ever bought; £400. When I bought it I was skint, so I weighed in some crap I had lying around, and stuck some crappy old moped I had on ebay which did quite well so resultantly by the time I'd flogged my 205 I was actually up on the deal. If you know what to look for and have some basic mechanical knowledge I really don't see why you would need to pay any more for a motorcar. It's not like I don't do many miles either; I've done about 6000 since I bought it in August (should really change the oil again soon...)

 

Expenditure so far:

car £400

oil filter £6

oil £15

fuel filters £7

handbrake button £3

wiper blade £5

s/h diff £50

wheel bearing £20

mb-tex seats £36

pair tyres £55

TOTAL £590 amazing how it adds up!

 

Projected expenditure is minimal (although annoyingly I am going to have to pay someone to do the wheel bearing) and it's a fairly pleasant old bus to gadabout in.

 

Someone at work asked why I didn't consider one of the NHS lease cars; oh how I laughed!

[Justin Case]

In my opinion, Bangernomics is motoring with the sole aim of making it as cost-effective as possible, taking into account your needs and your ability to fix things, but Autoshite is taking on old, interesting and unloved cars and lavishing more care and attention on them than you could ever justify. Of course the two overlap, but you can have one that isn't the other.

 

True bangernomics is buying something fairly late, nicer and low mileage, maintaining it well and running it for 5+ years.

Spot on. It isn't difficult to find something 3-5 years old with a history rather than a past. I have found over the years that the secret is to buy something recently obsolete, unfashionable and Japanese. This needn't necessarily be an unpleasant experience and you can get some cracking bargains that way.

[Cavcraft]

Unfashionable is defo the way to go but age/mileage don't matter too much. Well, not as much as doing your homework and biding your time!

[Lord Sterling]

I've never intended to follow true Bangernomics, but it helps when I get the usual 'lol, you've got an old Rover, why dont you buy something newer?' type comments.

 

Being as my car is over 20 years old, its eligable for classic insurance. Tax is about the same as any other pre-2001 1.6 car. Parts can be hard to find but I try and take every opportunity I can to collect what I can (My cupboard at home is bursting at the seams and one of my garages is almost at full capacity full of parts) however, I am also very lucky to have a very good friend who'll help me out whatever parts I need if he has them.

 

The true reason I have my cars are, I like them, I enjoy them, I feel very lucky to own them, they put a smile on my face almost everytime I drive them, and that to me is priceless.

 

So far I've spent probably about £400 this year getting it back on road. When I worked at another mates garage, I remember post-2001 cars coming in for £500+ worth of work, most of this was down to what the part suppliers charged us.

[eddyramrod]

my cars ... put a smile on my face ... priceless.

 

Yep, that's the ticket! Bangernomics describes almost all of my motoring history really, as I've nearly always bought a car for buttons at the end of its life, and given it a few more weeks or months of use before it went over the bridge. The ones I've paid more for, I've usually kept longer, such as my 1987 Volvo: cost me 450 on ebay, but I had it over three years! Granted, in that time I did spend money on it, but nowhere near what my son-in-law spent on scheduled servicing for his bought-new X3. And he has the cheek to lecture me about finances...

 

I seem to be surrounded by in-laws who can see a lot of sense in buying a brand-new car, but none at all in buying a depreciation-proof barge that will do every job I can ever ask of it. I made the mistake the other night of telling s-i-l that modern cars have no soul, to which he said "cars don't have souls at all." Either he was deliberately misunderstanding me or we are further apart than I thought. Given that he bought a brand new X3 (in black, and after another new BMW, also black) I think the second must be true: he can't possibly have enough intelligence for the first.

[scooters]

toys and tools rule -

 

tools are subject to bangernomics

 

toys are not -

 

the tricky bit is when a car is morphing from a tool to a toy - ie like the BX....were loads around 5 years back but don't bangerrnomic them as if you do you'll not find another...

 

306's however, bangernomics par excellance

[HBR]

My last two fit the bill ok, a V reg Clio bought for £140, 6 months MOT, no tax & a non-runner. It had just failed to start one day & the owner got the offer of a Rover 25* from someone they knew for little money & the Clio sat for a month or more till I bought it. Fixed some bad connections in the fusebox & it ran fine. Needed a pair of driveshafts & a water pump shortly after but other than being caught out with the bonnet flying up & smashing the screen it needed nothing to get through the next MOT & I sold it for £600.

The current one is a Mk4 Golf, bought for £100, it'd sat for 18months with the head gasket gone. Fixed & MOT'd for around £200-250, put on the road when I sold the Clio in Febuary & had nothing but fuel since. Took 3 mates to a concert last month, near 300 mile round trip for less than £50 on fuel, the train tickets for the 4 of us to do the same journey would've cost double the initial purchace cost of the car!

 

Both these cars are fairly clean & tidy but nothing special, they drive well & do nothing that you have to make excuses for. I'll run the Golf until it either it spits the dummy in some manner or I chance upon something I fancy more, or I actually get one of my projects on the road!

 

 

 

 

*the Rover suffered the dreaded K series kettle syndrome shortly after & got stuffed in the local car auction!

[trigger]

I fail at bangernomics, I went out and spend £5800 on a Mondeo i didn't really need and suspect I've already lost £1000 on it in the 8 months I've owned it.

 

I IZ FAIL, but I'm also a good example of your typical car buyer these days, I have learned my lesson.

[Magnificent Rustbucket]

I'm not capable of bangernomics either, I get too emotionally attached to cars. I'm lucky though since most of my "dream cars" are really cheap!

[simmo]

Bangernomics works for me, all down to vehicle selection and as said earlier not getting attached. There are plenty of usable vehicles out there with a year or to left in them that the normals give up on, or even better the holy grail of the misdiagnosed easy fix fault. My best example being a seven year Xantia (rough), free from a lad at work who was told he needed a new clutch £500+ and it was just the cable link thingy under the dash (I offered to give it back fixed but he declined). I got two years out of it with no additional expense other than MOTs, tax and insurance, although I did have to bodge up the O/S/F electric window. I was getting 40p a mile using it for work so easy paid for its self

[eddyramrod]

That looks like a potential winning score, Simmo! Good shot sir!

[Albert Ross]

My last bangernomics style car was my Disastra Estate. I paid £50 for it. Ran it at least 2 years, kept it fettled, upgraded brakes and suspension, fitted larger wheels to cope, replaced the interior, added colour coded bumpers, a NEW alternator, and a few other things. I sold it on here for £200 to greenvanman, and he ran it a year or so. It NEVER let me down, even when the alternator set on fire. I blew it out, disconnected the belt, and drove on with no Servo. That's a banger. Not a 5 year old car... scrappage has killed most of the affordable bangers.

[worldofceri]

My wife has bangernomics (or a variation of it) down to a tee, albeit unwittingly.

 

Although she can lay claim to putting in half the initial capital for our Volvo, it's left to me to tax, insure and maintain it and, for much of the time, to put petrol in.

 

Meanwhile she enjoys essential car user allowance on top of her salary, plus mileage when on work errands, whilst I cycle to work on a bicycle I bought her!

[Cavcraft]

Actually that reminds me the Audi has only really cost me fuel money, plus a towbar (which can't be counted as I wanted that and it's not a service/repair item) and rear brake pads and that's in a three/four thousand or so miles of motoring.

Haven't even serviced it or had to blow a tyre up, just lobbed fuel in it and drove it. Except the two occasions when it conked out (and both times it eventually restarted) it's been top of the bangernomics class.

[Guest]

My wheels since March.

L plate Peugeot 405 STDT estate.

Top spec, wood and cow interior.

Factory towbar.

145k on clock, 75k on engine and box with new belt and water pump.

No MOT.

Dodgy ABS and a wobble turning left!

£150

+£0.05p for a fuse to sort the ABS= MOT.

+£35 for ebay drive shaft, intermediate bearing was dead.

+£40 for a set of engine mounts - killed by above making engine jump about.

+£15 for Opel GT front panel for the vents now cut into bonnet so the intercooler cools rather than being a heat sink!

Grand Total= Winnah!!!

 

700 miles before Reserve light came on while on a jolly in France. 60 litre tank @ about £80 a tank.

Used at the Spa 6 Hour as pit bitch/tow car/minibus/photography platform/accomodation

Paid a man £80 to strip his write off = spare starter, alternator, switches,trim, lights, genuine load liner etc

 

Best seats evvah, electric and heated.

South Coast to Manchester and back in a day? No worries.

Roof bars have carried sheds home, not erected!

 

Full of winnage.