Gawdlmighty! The 90,000-mile service on my aging Toyota Sienna is gunna cost $1,200!
It’s enough to make a strong woman faint. Well, luckily I knew about this and set the money aside. But that doesn’t make me any happier about having to sink 12 C-notes into a nine-year-old vehicle.
For the money, Chuck the Mechanic Par Excellence proposes to do the regular 90,000-mile service, change the timing belt, and replace the water pump, it being an opportune moment to do that—while the front end of the motor is off, anyway. I happen to know, too, that he’ll lubricate the squeaking steering wheel, probably for not much, and that he’ll check the brake pads, rotate the tires, and change all the hoses.
Suspecting that Chuck’s estimate was a little high, I called a couple of Toyota dealers. One proposed to charge me $350 for the basic 90,000 service; another wanted $300 for the same thing, claiming it was a “special” markdown from the usual price of $360. Uh huh. Then it’s another $300 for the water pump plus another $300 for three seals that may or may not need to be changed plus $65 for “outside belts.” Plus $335 for the timing belt. If I’m not mistaken, that would be $1,300 to $1,350, depending on which stalwart Toyota dealer one chooses to do business with.
Makes Chuck’s fee look like a bargain. And I know he’s not going to cheat me. Past experience suggests that is not always a given with automobile dealerships.
{sigh} So I made an appointment for a week from Friday.
Well, it’s a heckuva lot cheaper than buying a new car. Normally, I’d trade in a vehicle at ten years. But now that I’m about to be canned, with no hope (or desire…) of getting another job, this car is going to have to run until it falls apart. Chuck thinks it will easily get 150,000 miles, which should carry it another six years. And it could, in theory, run to 180,000 miles, or another nine years. Barring an accident, of course.
A crash that results in the insurance company totaling it (which right now would probably be a fender-bender) will leave me up the creek, since I do not and will not ever have enough cash to buy another car. Nor will I ever again have enough cash flow to make car payments. Every penny in savings, including the $18,000 I had set aside for the next vehicle, now will have to be rolled into the funds intended to support me in my dotage. If I can get this car to run ten more years, it will be the last car I’ll ever own.
Really, in ten years I’ll only be 74, and so I may still be competent to drive. What’s $18,000 now will likely be $36,000 then…hmmm… With no steady job, I’d have to set aside $3,600 a year to collect enough extra money to buy a car in 2019. {snark!} Now there’s a realistic goal!
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Oh well. Thirty-six hundred bucks would buy 180 twenty-dollar cab rides. That’s a trip to the grocery store about every two days.
Too bad we don’t have decent public transportation here. Thirty-six hundred bucks—just one year of car savings—would buy 2,057 all-day bus or train tickets. That would be unlimited rides every single day for 5 years and 7 months! Alas, in these parts a single trip to the grocery store and home on the buses would consume a whole day. I could fill the entire remainder of my life with waiting at bus stops and then waiting for buses to get where I want to go.
Image: 2007-2009 Toyota Sienna, public domain
Hi – according to my mechanic, the old school thinking that timing belts need to be changed at 90k has changed. Evidently, the timing belt can be changed anywhere from 90k to 110k depending upon the manufacturer’s recommendations. I would make sure the timing belt absolutely has to be done now. My little Honda doesn’t need a new one until 105k. This will only defer payment of the repair – but, it will lower the cost for now.
Good luck!
So they say. And I have heard that’s true of newer products. However, given the vehicle’s age, I don’t think I want to take a chance on wrecking the engine. A few hundred bucks to ensure that the car will keep on running — especially since I’m going to have to hang onto the van for another ten years — is probably a good investment.
We sold our last Toyota at age 14. Our current one is 11 and still fine.
If you move to the little house your son is occupying, are you closer to public transport?
@ frugalscholar: Yeah…In theory you could walk (about 1/2 mile) to the nearest train stop. But it’s not the best neighborhood — probably even more iffy than mine. When I was at the hair stylist a half-block from his house, the stylist’s son-in-law was going on with one of the customers about the corpse that had been found a few hundred feet to the south on 7th Avenue. And of course, even a half-mile walk in 115-degree (plus) heat is none too desirable.
The train goes on a fixed path. It doesn’t take you to the vet, the doctor, the dentist, the drugstore, the Costco, the Walmart, the Target, and all those sorts of waypoints. To get to those places, you’d have to ride the buses, which are uncomfortable, slow, and indirect, or else hire taxicabs.
On the buses, you rarely go to from Point A to Point B. You usually wander from Point A to Point C to Point D to Point B, often getting off to transfer at one of the intervening, irrelevant points. Because of the city’s sprawl and the way it’s laid out, there really isn’t any rational way to get around on buses. Most of the riders, with the exception of a few conscientious environmentalists, are people who are too disabled or elderly to drive, who are too poor to own a car, or who have had their driver’s licenses confiscated…that is, folks who have no other choice.
Maintenance costs suck, but it is better than a new car payment. Plus that toyota has a lot of life left in her, take care of it and it will get you around for years to come. When I get older I want to move to a walkable neighborhood, somewhere I feel safe and can walk to the grocery and such. Our old neighborhood was like that, we’d walk to trader joes rather than brave the crazy parking lot.
My Nissan Pathfinder is at 294,000 miles. I hear Toyota’s are workhorses, too, so your girl might last another ten years since you take such good care of her. Ah, come on, Phoenix Transit isn’t that bad. I have ridden it on and off all my life, and once didn’t have a car for three years. You just have to get to know the routes and you’re good as gold. So what if it takes 90 minutes to get 1.5 miles around the corner? 😉 Most of the time I could walk there faster than waiting for the bus. But really the best thing about the bus is you can do other things while someone else is worrying about the traffic, my favorite thing about taking the bus. http://www.repairpal.com is a good place to go to get an idea of what your repairs will cost in your local area.
@ Mrs. Accountability– Sure hope you’re right! Was listening to Click & Clack yesterday…they thought 150,000 miles on another Japanese-brand car was pushing it.
The train is fine, except it won’t take a credit card (their bank-card function NEVER works!) and the last time I tried to ride it wouldn’t even take quarters!!! Bills have to be almost brand-new–a wrinkle or two or a dirty bill, and it’s rejected. I don’t carry cash with me, and because I don’t use a debit card, it’s a hassle for me to get cash. So I quit trying.
Don’t know how fast the bus would be for local hops, but to ride from my house to Tempe took me 2 hours and 10 minutes; the ride back took 2 hours and 20 minutes, during which I was panhandled several times and hit up for a cigarette by a lady who at least was a good conversationalist. Since the drive takes all of 20 or 30 minutes and lets me off 10 minutes from the office (the bus stop is on Mill, a hefty hike away), the bus not a sane way to commute.
I suspect it’s not much use for grocery shopping, either. The only stores that are a straight shot from my house are in scary neighborhoods: a new El Rancho in the middle of the war zone at 19th and Dunlap, the infamous Albertson’s at 19th and Northern, the unholy Fry’s in the shopping center where the restaurant manager was murdered at 19th and Glendale…doooon’t think I’ll be shopping there in my dotage.To get to a store where I’d feel safe doddering around with a deliciously tempting purse over my arm, I’d have to walk to 7th Avenue (about 3/4 of a mile…remember, it gets to be 115+ here), take a bus to Glendale, get off and sit around and wait some more, then take the eastbound bus to 7th Street, cross a dangerous intersection, and dodder another piece across hot asphalt inhabited by berserk drivers to get into the store. Then I’d have to haul all my goods in the opposite direction to retrace the route home.
Just. Not. Practical.