Should I junk this car?

I agree that it shouldn’t take a whole lot of knowledge to be able to maintain a car properly, but this forum is filled with questions from people whose automotive woes very frequently stem from not maintaining their cars properly.

Why don’t they maintain their cars properly?
There could well be additional explanations, but I think that the most obvious ones include:

Failure to open the glove compartment, take out the booklet containing the mfr’s maintenance schedule, and then actually read that information.

Failure to comprehend the information in that maintenance schedule. When the info states something along the lines of “every 5k miles or six months, whichever comes first”, they seem to be able to comprehend the odometer mileage detail, but seem to be unable to comprehend the elapsed time factor, or–more importantly–the “whichever comes first” detail. I guess that this failure has to be the result of poor reading comprehension, but that is just a guess.

Taking advice from friends who claim to know “all about cars”, but who give very bad advice, filled with misinformation. In other words, the automotive version of “fake news”.

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We can discuss this lack of maintenance issue all day (and we do!), but the reality is that people buy cars like they buy appliances like refrigerators and washing machines. They pay, they get them going doing whatever they expected, and they do absolutely nothing to keep them functioning. Our consumer economy thrives on that neglect, and I suspect a large percentage of these complicated machines are junked every year because of failed maintenance or possibly because they are no longer a fashionable color.

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[quote=“ok4450, post:11, topic:104622, full:true”]As for those “few mechanically minded people” I would suggest not ever listening to them about any future automotive issues.

“They said to call them out anyway since I was able to drive it there, but not home”.

I don’t normally get into name calling so I will just say politely that they are severely misguided. Very severely…
[/quote]You are being a lot more charitable than what came to my mind.

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False. OP wants to know if it’s worth to put more $$ into his car or to junk it.

My first thought was “effin’ card carrying morons” but that seemed a bit low brow to post even if true.

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Every car comes to it’s end of life at some point. Unless you are mechanically inclined, replacing the engine in most cars is not practical. After finding out one cyl had low compression spending $80 on a new battery was not smart. Time to call the salvage yard and have them tow it away.