My car has negative value! O_O

General Discussion
41

You are a jerk, and I don’t care what you have to say.

42

Sorry for not rereading, but are you going to give him $85 to take the car? I think he could deal with that :wink:

43

I’ve been thinking about this business of negative worth. Last week our 23 year old washing machine developed a bad vibration and scooted all over the floor. Now, a machine that old doesn’t have any value. I did call a repairman who came the next morning. He diagnosed the problem as a bad bearing. Estimated cost of repair: $275. Now a couple of things played into the decision I made:

  1. If we replace the machine, I have to read up on washing machines.
  2. My wife hates to go shopping, particularly for big ticket items.
  3. We don’t want a front loader as seem to be the popular washing machine sold these days.
  4. My wife hates laundromats which is where we would have to go until the machine was replaced.
    5.We had a week full of obligations–both my wife and me.
  5. The repairman had the parts on his truck–I had called his shop with the make and model of the machine as well as the symptoms.
  6. The machine could be repaired in our home in 2 hours.

I elected to repair the machine. Now I know the machine has little value–certainly less than what I spent on the repair. However, I was in the middle of writing a grant for a musical organization and coming up to a deadline for submission. In.my case, my time was more valuable writing the grant than researching and shopping for a new clothes washer.
I can see where a person might have financial or time restraints making it worthwhile to repair a vehicle of negative value.

3 Likes
44

Like my car I repair my washer whenever possible, new brass seal shortly after purchase 25 years ago probably damaged during transportation, maybe $40, New brakes to stop the spin cycle maybe 10 years ago. New belt as washing machine sounded like a derailed train, last year or so sounding like chitty chitty bang bang, turn up the radio, but will look into it one of these days, seems to be a bad spring tensioner I think, Not anything major, Wife hated it and wanted a front loader $1200 machine for a while till a friend of hers bought one, bad back also and said she wished she never got a front loader because it kills her back. Commercial washer and dryer, the kind they used in laundromats, Still runs good.

Wish I had kept my 71 nova, but traded it in 90 due to long commute and oil leakage. Kept it running all those years, and I would have thought more about keeping it except worth nothing at the time and needed a dependable 90 mile commute vehicle

45

Sheesh…some people just can’t take a compliment…

;-]

1 Like
46

@Triedaq; Past weekend came home after a 14 hr shift to find the hinge on the double oven was broken. Now this is one of the built in units and as much as I think I am handy, after playing with it for an hour, I figured it is a two man job. I called the guy who fixed our dryer last year and he came and checked it out, two broken hinges, parts and labor close to $400; ouch. I still asked him to order the part because a new unit is $2500 and I know my wife would want a stainless steel one, which means then we will have to change all the other appliances, then we would think while at it, lets change the old cabinets and the floor tiles too. I could see this snowballing in a 40 grand project very fast. So I am not going to complain much about the $400.

3 Likes
47

@galant Some years back, my wife was in the hospital. I was doing laundry and the latch mechanism broke on the clothes dryer. The dryer was old–it was in our previous house when I bought it. I lived there 12 years before we moved to our present house. I could operate the dryer by pushing a chair up against the door. It was a Sears dryer and the parts didn’t seem to be available. However, I did one of my typical repairs–I spent a dollar on a barrel bolt lock and affixed it to the dryer door with sheet metal screws. When my wife came home, I thought she would buy a new dryer but her comment was:. It works. Why do we need a new one?

4 Likes
48

…a true sign of a keeper!

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49

Mrs. Triedaq is probably one woman in 1,000,000 who does not like to go shopping. She buys most things online. I think the only store she likes is PetSmart where she can look at the cats that are up for adoption.

50

You could have just stopped right there…

51

Dunno if OP is still reading responses, but you should download the Chrome extension called BehindTheOverlay. This will remove those annoying overlays that are just like good old pop ups. It will allow you to bypass the lockout that KBB has on you too.

1 Like
52

Forget salvaging it. Sell it. You can get 1k to 1500 bux easy for it. It’s one of the least expensive cars to repair. A great first car for any young person. There are also honda enthusiasts that will drop a grand on it easy just because they can put 500 into it easy and turn it into a little race car.
I had a 98 civic and sold it for just under 1k, it had 230k miles on it. All I did was give it a oil change and replace the alternator my self. See if there is a garage sale posting for your city on facebook.

1 Like
53

Been there. I have owned several cars for which the retail value of the car went up and down with the gas gauge. If someone ran into me and broke a tail light lens, the car would be “totaled”.

2 Likes