I have a 97 Pontiac Sunfire at 68km, besides a power steering the car has given me zero problems in the last year. With that said I went away for holidays and had my brother pick me up from the airport in my car and told him that he may need to top up the power steering fluid! month later it is diagnosed that my brake fluid has been contaminated with power steering stop leak as he put it in the wrong spot… I know it will be a fix of a couple thousand and was just wondering if their is any hope of me selling this car or if it is just best to cut my loses to the wreckers? is this a fix that is popular among small mechanics as a fix up and sell type deal?? thoughts ?
With a car that old, I would say goodbye! A proper fix that will be lasting will be quite expensive, and exceed the current book value.
Sell it “as is” to a mechnic who can work on it on his own time.
That’s really too bad. That low mileage, it could be somewhat useful. @Doc is right. You didn’t have insurance with an incompetent brother clause in it ?
Hard to justify the cost in labor and parts to replace the brake system components on a car this old. If it is in otherwise good shape, little to no rust, I suppose. But since you are asking, you must have some doubt, so you are not madly in love with the car. I think if you spend the dollars to fix this now, you may end up later feeling it was a waste of money.
Putting power steering stop leak in the brake reservoir is bad but not a couple thousand dollars bad. Have the reservoir sucked clean of the bad stuff. Add clean fluid. Have the brake system flushed with a power bleeder (a big “ball” with brake fluid in it backed by air pressure) to push all the fluid through the system and replaced with clean fluid. Drive the car around and check for function and leaks. Stomp the brakes to exercise the ABS a number of times to flush that system. Power flush it again. If you got to it soon enough, it should fix it for a couple hundred rather than about a thousand to put on 2 calipers, two wheel cylinders and a master cylinder, and maybe an ABS unit.
If you were asking how to cover up this mistake so you could dump it on some unsuspecting buyer, shame on you. Don’t ask for that kind of help here in the future.