Exactly. Electronics can be much more reliable than there once were but the operative word being CAN. Furnaces are typical of this. Control boards die way before you’d expect. Some are plagued by this. I fixed my FIL furnace control board rather than buy a new one. It had two issues; cheap relays and a poorly designed flame rectification circuit. I bought a 10 year old house that had a $10k+ Viking “stove”. The igniters fail regularly. I dug one apart and the reason was obvious, they cheaped out on the power electronics.
I bought the wife the biggest, baddest mixer out there. Supposed to be commercial grade. It failed after a year of light use. Why? Plastic gears… I fixed it by making some replacements out of metal.
I’m like you, when it works why buy a new one? The neighbor sold his 12 year old house. It was beautiful and he had done a bunch of work to upgrade over the years. The new couple immediately tore everything out and started over. When I asked, he said it was dated. In a dozen years? They even chiseled up all the tile work, tore out the bathrooms and kitchen, everything, it was gutted…hey, it’s your money but it looked fine to me…
@TwinTurbo. When there is a real improvement in technology, I will go with the change. I don’t want a vacuum tube CRT television set. In fact, I gave away a console Zenith CRT that had replaced the vacuum tubes with solid state circuitry for a flat screen TV. Three years ago, I rewired 30 4 fluorescent tube light fixtures to accept LED tubes at the church I attend. The power company gave us $6 for each florescent 4’ bulb with an LED. I bought the LED tubes for $6.95 apiece. I have not had to change an LED tube in the three years of service. Before that, at least once a month I was having to not only replace the florescent tubes but often the ballast coil.
I appreciate true improvements in technology. I bought a used battery powered mower from a friend who could no longer mow her yard. For me, it was an improvement over my ancient gasoline push mower. Unfortunately, the $65 dollar batteries only lasted two seasons, and I can buy a lot of gasoline for my lawnmower for $65. When I bought a set of new batteries a year ago, the control board went out and a replacement is no longer available. I went back to the gasoline mower. If I have to replace the gasoline mower, I may try a battery mower that uses lithium ion batteries as opposed to lead acid batteries.
There was a company in Indiana that made gas ranges both for commercial and domestic use. It was the Chambers company. A domestic Chambers gas range was so well built it would last practically forever. However, these weren’t stylish and the company is gone. I guess consumers wanted style over durability.
When I remodeled the kitchen, the existing cabinets were ugly, but still functional. The layout was good, and even though the cabinets were “builder grade” and original to the house (50 years old) they were physically in good shape. Rather than change them, I had a company come in and reface them. They got new doors and drawers, it all took one day, and was minimally disruptive.
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It wasn’t truly theirs until the spent a hundred grand on “upgrades”.
We are updating our house. It’s 21 and we replaced the carpeting and tile floors on the main level and in the upstairs hallway with red oak flooring. We had the stairs and railing refinished to match the new floors too. I expect that floor to last long after we sell the house in 10 to 15 years.
All the reno shows love ‘open concept’, so down go all the walls. In 5 years, I wonder what the fad will be, and how many homes will have new walls to replace those that got torn out…
Major upgrades are worth it if you can live in the place for an extended time.
Our neighbors bought the house from a previous owner who was not rich enough to do major renovations.
AS a result they went over the whole house, spent $100,000 plus their own labor to get it as good as they could.
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Unfortunately the wife’s mother, 200 miles away, developed Alzheimer’s and as the only child she felt compelled to move out there. She had her own business which also employed her husband, and did not have to shut that down as well.
Of the 100 grand spent they recouped only 60,000 dollars after only 2 years of living in the house.
On the other side of the coin, a colleague whose wife passed away, decided to sell his 2 story, double garage home located on a large lot in a choice neighborhood.
I advised him to get rid of the orange and avocado shag carpet, put in a new front door, upgrade the kitchen counters and give the interior a fresh coat of paint. The total came to about $7000 but the house sold quickly for well over $700,000
My Amana washer and dryer commercial grade I bought used 30 years ago, used, sure I have done some repairs, sure they sound like Chitty Chitty Bang bang, no operational issues, Working and fixing computers I am scared of the new cars, so yeah I did extended warranty, as previously stated, My furnace is 70s era, I maintain it, so many people I have known have had 8 to 1200 dollar repairs or furnaces that are toast after 10 years. Sure I could probably save money on natural gas, but my gas bill including stove and dryer was $100 for the last month in WI, and we like being warm instead of sick to save money, and dryer and stove usually tun about $30 per month. No offence @Triedaq but my post is getting long in the tooth, like yours. I have little confidence in my ability to do much of anything on new cars, so 8 years no repair cost to me for 1400 sounds ok 4 me, of course brakes and tires ie wear items not covered.
The numbers may be outside of reality for you…but not for me. I consider myself an elite and very astute shopper. And that’s because I am willing to put in the required research and hard work to get the absolute best price value on anything I shop for; this means not just cheapest…but more…value for the money also. Perhaps you did not understand when I said that theses are assemblers, and not mechanics. This means that they are paid on a much lower scale than certified mechanics. This is all they do all day…same engines and same transmissions go in similar matched cars all day. Repetition is their only experience. I am sure the shop itself has a mechanic on hand in case of any difficulty, but only one perhaps. The rest of the workers are minimum or low pay scale workers/assemblers. They move out tons of work like this all day…just installing engines and transmission; with such volume they are able to turn a good profit. And yes, labor was included in my price of $900 for engine and trans in a 2002 Nissan Sentra DX automatic out the door. I may have to search deep in my records to dig up my receipt of total cost, shop name, and location. However short of doing so, I managed to do a little shopping of my own (which you could have easily done yourself with a little effort) and came up with a similar place like my shop…and similar prices. The link is below for all the information you may need. The name is SOKEN. You will note that you can easily get engine and trans together for under $1000…and for more expensive cars than my Sentra. As said, labor at my place of installment was included in total price. $1000 for a mechanic? Learn to be a more resourceful shopper.
Website: www.sknengines.com
SOKEN 12055 Sherman Way, N. Hollywood, CA 91605
[(800) 598-3535](tel:(800) 598-3535) Text (818) 219-3134
Most of the engines from SKN are $900 to $1300 without labor, fluids, etc, unless you need an engine for a car that is 25 years old, which is somewhat obsolete.
You need to read more alertly to know all of what I am saying. I will repeat…I found this particular shop in a matter of minutes of looking for something comparable to the deal I got. Therefore, I did not take the time I might have…if looking to seriously get work done there. I happen to find a place that one could find used foreign engines/transmissions at much cheaper prices than I think you and one other poster were submitting when in disbelief of the ones I was claiming. The prices you guys were submitting for the same cars as being the rock bottom price for those cars were not so rock bottom. I just wanted to prove that point. I am not sure that they just have cars that old, for it goes by the mileage accrued…when these car parts are exported to the U.S. or elsewhere. This means those engines and trans can come from fairly new cars that have been driven a lot to meet the mileage quota. Again, please read with alertness. I said that I did not purchase my equipment form the shop given…but a similar one…but my deal at my place of purchase was labor included. And most importantly, my purchased parts came from a fairly new vehicle…no where near 25 years old. BTW, I was on that website I gave out for only a few minutes. But there were quite a few car engines around $550 near or better. Where do you get starting out at $900?
A plain jane Camry 4 banger was $900 and shipping was around $400. There’s your $1300.
Buy an engine and we’ll throw in a free transmission! Act before midnight tonight and receive a special gift. Free installation!! It slices, dices, chops and grates…
Those engines are too old to be considered practical for a late model vehicle discussion, few people care to repair and keep a vehicle that old.
I viewed each engine that they offered, the prices are in line with the prices that we pay for engines. Most of the engine that they have are 10 to 20 years old and priced the same as we get them locally.
The fact that you don’t know you need a qualified mechanic to remove and install the engine you buy - tells me you have no idea what you’re talking about. Labor alone is going to cost you several hundred dollars.
As I said - you haven’t a clue
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poor @cdaquila, keep it civil please, make her life easier!
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I have recieved several replies like yours, with negative comments on my information submitted. And from that and the way you try to disclaim my claims, I am beginning to get suspicious about who they and you are…and who they and you work for. I did manage to ascertain that one such disclaimer worked for a used car dealership, so perhaps did not take too kindly to me telling all concerned where they might get eng./trans at low cost prices. My aim is to help people on this site with helpful information. What is your aim…as spoiler maybe? You quoted a Camry engine for $900 plus $400 ship. That’s not how these shops operate. They ship these parts by the bulk (and I do believe either ship included or no ship cost; and that’s because it is a bulk transaction. Again and again and again, they go by the mileage accrued on these cars for the parts…not how old they are. So it is, that you can buy this particular part on a 2,3,4 or any year of car that has reached the limit of mileage that qualifies it for export. And again and again…low wage assemblers do the installing…not mechanics. Any one can install these parts, if they do it on a daily basis after a while…I mean come on. Someone mentioned that extras like fluids and oil come extra. That’s true in my case. Also extra was whatever gaskets were needed. I did expect that. After all, why should they pay for that if the installment was crucial for those extras. Besides my cost for all of that was less than $30. Do you think I should quibble on that? I don’t think so. And neither should someone else in their right mind, considering the deal they would be getting for the major part.
Do you know at all what you’re talking about? Assembler is NOT going to remove and replace the engine in your car. That’s going to require a qualified mechanic. If you’ve ever done that type of work you’d know the technical expertise it requires to do that job. I’ve had several relatives over the years who worked at automotive manufacturing plants assembling transfer cases and transmissions. None of them had a clue on how to remove and install a transfer-case or transmission.
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A second to the motion that Rick does not know what he is talking about.
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Will 2nd the motion need a 3rd to put it up to vote.
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Having installers perform the remove and install work is common in the transmission repair industry, they are paid $10 less per hour than technicians, the shop still needs to charge $100 and up per hour.
Minimum wage in California is $12 per hour, the lube rack workers are paid $15/hour, I doubt that you can hire an installer to replace engines for minimum wage. No shop is going to charge minimum wage to install an engine or transmission which is generally 15 to 20 hours of labor.
If you can - I surely wouldn’t trust that vehicle.
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