When do you decide to move on and sell?

I have a 2010 GTI that I've put 150k miles on that I purchased new. Aside from the expected rock chips the car is in excellent condition; paint is still nice and glossy with no dings or dents, interior is very nearly "as new" with the only noticeable wear being the vinyl shift boot and some slight loss of color on the driver's seat, and maintenance is 100% up to date. Chassis is tight with fresh bushings in key spots, not fresh but still good Koni Yellows, and most wearable items (tie rods, ball joints, wheel bearings) refreshed. I even had a new timing chain assembly installed and a major reseal job completed within the last 15k miles. The last major maintenance item it needs is a coolant system refresh.

Handling is just how I like it for a dual purpose street/track car, sports car sharp with balance just on the safe side of neutral. Very stable when set in a corner but still responsive to line adjustments via the throttle. 

So that's all the good. I've had it for a long time, it's set up how I like it, I enjoy driving it, but... month after month this year it's been one thing after another. Coolant leaks I've had to track down and plug, high pressure fuel pump failure requiring a tow, relatively new swaybar end links clunking, failed fuel injectors (have to pull intake manifold to get to them)...

So at this point what do you do? Do you stick with it and maybe just use it as a track car? Replace it with something with fewer miles?

Replacing it in the current market is going to cost you a pretty penny. 

That being said, sunk cost fallacy is a really bad way of rationalizing keeping a decade old VW product. Personally, I'd track it 'til it blows up.

calteg said:

Replacing it in the current market is going to cost you a pretty penny. 

That being said, sunk cost fallacy is a really bad way of rationalizing keeping a decade old VW product. Personally, I'd track it 'til it blows up.

That's a fair point on the current market. My hope has been that when the new GR-86 and BRZ are released prices on used, current ones come down. That might be wishful thinking though.

As long as I can keep all the stuff bolted onto the outside of the engine functional the internals can handle a lot of abuse and are probably the strongest point of the car. Because I'm not trying to buy an expensive big brake kit to deal with the extra horsepower I'll never push the engine hard enough to really stress it.

Here's how I've handled "unreliable" old sports car as a DD ownership... I do maintenance in big chunks and replace everything associated at once upgrading what makes sense at the same time. 

This way I rarely if ever get "surprised" and I don't have the nickel and dime feeling. 

At some point you run out of "ol reliable" in any car you have to decide to make the investment to make it right, replace it, or accept a lot of late night AutoZone runs and being on a first name basis with tow truck drivers. 

In reply to MrFancypants :

Are you doing all of this wrenching yourself or hiring it out?

You can pay for a lot of parts or mechanic work for the cost of upgrading in today's market.

In the current market you don't replace it until you can no longer weld the rust together.

Constant reliability issues does not make for a good track car. If you're going to go through the effort of making it reliable, might as well keep driving it if you like it. Otherwise sell it and buy a more reasonable track car. As kind of referenced, you can probably get a decent amount of money for it, but anything you want to replace it with will be expensive as well. If you don't have a specific need for that vehicle, you could always sell it now and hope the market calms down over the winter.

Fewer miles one will just end up where this one is. Just fix stuff and deal with it.

 I do most of the work myself, although I do take it somewhere for certain things I don't like doing.  I paid someone to do the timing chain, for example.  Pretty much everything else I do myself

 dps214 said:

Constant reliability issues does not make for a good track car.

When I start to lean towards just turning it into a track car this is the thought that pops into my head.  If it were a Miata or a B/K series Honda the decision would be pretty easy as those are well designed, easy engines to deal with.  Even though I'll have done most of the work to make it reliable the basic fact that it's a high mile turbo means that there's simply more points of failure to deal with and more ways the car can surprise me.  If I replace the cooling system (pump, radiator + all hoses) I can't imagine there's much that could go that would ruin a track event as at this point all of the typical failure points have been addressed.

Still the more I think about this it does sound like it'd be a lot of fun to just turn it into a track car and spend my pennies on something I can use to tow it with.  I think my family truckster (Honda Odyssey) can actually pull it around if I install a tow hitch.

The last time I decided to sell something and move on, this forum instead talked me into doing an engine swap and installing a supercharger on top of that.

So the combo of harder on track use and logging miles as a daily driver is just compounding the number of failures AND it making it so that resolution of them needs to be addressed sooner rather than later, of not asap. Tracking a daily is burning both end of the wick on it. 

What you need is a second vehicle, a vanilla, boring but dead nuts reliable and easy to work on if something does go wrong daily. I recommend any number of the 2nd generation Prius threads on here, or a panther platform of you don't have a long commute. But an appliance is the answer. 

Then in addition to keeping significant miles off of the VW, you'll be able to keep it in service position longer and not be rushed when fixing things that come up with it. 

In reply to MrFancypants :

My approach would be to sell the VW and use the money to buy a simple dedicated track car you can race for peanuts. Formula 500 ? Formula Ford,  V, Spec racer etc.  tow it with your Honda on a lite 2 wheel trailer, 

      Then finance a new maintenance free transportation module.  Interest rates are as low as they will ever get and when you add in inflation effectively cost you zero interest.  My experience  has me doing zero maintenance  during the payments other than normal   oil changes.  ( check and see if the dealer offers a deal on those too)   EV's would have you avoiding even those. If you figure the cost of fuel, an EV is actually cheaper than ICE car.  
  So far all my neighbors with EV's tell me they don't have to bring the car in ever. I guess most of the  maintenance happens while they are charging etc.   Tesla,  Chevy Bolt,  seem to be very reliable.  The Nissan Leaf is the only one that disappoints. 
  You will need a transportation module the rest of your life. I got 20 years and 396,000 miles out of my last one. And rarely ever worked on it  except to change oil.  If you only get 1/2 of that think of where you'll be cost wise.  

There is nothing in this world more useless than an unreliable car; be it track or street.

I don't know water cooled VWs at all but was it reliable until now? If so do what needs doing to get it back up to being reliable. For example if part X known to fail at X miles and your 2000 miles from that then replace it. 

The only thing you don't like about the car is it breaking down................why start over?

150K is about the age when cars start to need a bunch of stuff at once. I went through it with my last DD, a 2012 Mazda 3. Around that time, it needed the following:

-Front suspension bits (LCA's, struts, etc)
-Rear Shocks
-Radiator and A/C Condenser
-Trans Mount
-Exhaust midpipe
-Brakes
-Tires
-An Emissions Purge Valve Thing

And I did it all, because I liked the car a lot. Car was solid after that for a while.

Then, the transmission started making bad noises. What did it in was not being able to find a transmission for it without spending $4k. If I was able to find a good, used transmission, I'd still have the car today.

If you know what it needs, and you like the car, just fix it and keep going until something big (like a transmission made of unobtanium) goes.

At a certain mileage point, things start to happen in bunches. As someone else said, if you can bundle some work together into a mini project and then move forward.

Last year I purchased a 2017 Odyssey with 193k on it (it was used for a car service). I took the better part of last year to deal with the major items that I wanted  to replace in order to feel comfortable with it. Things like the timing belt, metal ATF lines, t-stat, coolant hoses, radiator, expansion tank, etc were all replaced in a flurry. I replaced the ATF filter and added an ATF cooler, and changed out all fluids (a few times in the case of the ATF). I fixed a bunch of leaks (valve cover gasket, VTEC spool valve, drive axle seal), and refreshed the rear suspension (new shocks and spring seats, along with AirLift 1000 springs).

It was a long year, but I'm at a point now where I can just drive it. My punch list is pretty small, and I can tackle an item or two at a time now, without the stress of the mini projects. It sounds like you've probably covered most of the major items already, but you could make a punch list and then start a mini project to tackle them in one fell swoop so you can be confident in the car again.

My deal breaker is usually significant rust, especially structural rust.

In reply to frenchyd :

That seems a little implausible that all you did was oil changes for 400k miles...  Things definitely wear out in far less mileage than that...

All of my daily cars are well north of 200k and my wife's daily is a Suburban with almost 350k on it. It's cheaper to keep them running than it is to replace them.  

As stated above, don't do piecemeal maintenance. If the radiator leaks, replace everything in the cooling system. If a wheel bearing growls, replace all of them. AC problems, rebuild the entire system. That frequently takes care of the nickel/dime stuff before it becomes a separate problem. For instance, I had to do a heater core on my XJ. While the dash was out I replaced the AC evap core and the blower motor. They weren't bad, but they had 240k on them and it would be a 4 hour job to change them at a later date. When the radiator failed, it got all new hoses and a water pump. As an add, don't buy cheap parts. Get quality stuff so you don't have to replace an alternator 3 times to get one that works. 

That said, most of my vehicles are US manufactured and parts are pretty cheap. A Suburban transmission is a $1400 fix, a VW might be a different story. Also, a spare vehicle makes life a lot easier because repairs aren't always an emergency. 

Most cars newer than 2000 are disposable, once they get to ~120k it's a matter of whether to start replacing stuff and get a few more years out of it, or to sell it before it's too obviously broken and get something else.  And I agree on doing the whole job anytime you touch anything, and not using cheap parts.  Using cheap aftermarket parts is basically installing an "unreliable beater" conversion kit lol.

If I purchase a car on payments, and the monthly (maintenance) spend repeatedly exceeds the payments once the car is paid off.. it's time to think hard about letting somebody else keep up with it. 
 

edit: this was my exact experience with a used 1986 VW GTI

For us it's rust or chassis is done. The Elantra was still running great but the front frame horn had catastrophic rust. Wifes 250k mile accent the chassis was just done. Every panel had damage (hail, road debris, flying trash cans etc), the AC compressor was on it's last legs, rear windows were seized etc. The Forte was to make room for a new car. Her Rio rust was creeping into the subframes. The tiburon on jack stands yu couldn't open or shut the doors. 

I agree that sunk costs shouldnt dictate future decisions but in this case you seem to have done most of the big scary stuff. If you get a lower mileage car you are just counting down the time until you have to do similar repairs youve already done. I give up on a car when I dont enjoy driving it anymore or its beyond saveable which doesnt seem to be the case here.

I would continue to repair and, as recommended, do maintenance/repairs in chunks. When I have a bunch of miles I start to do repairs preventatively (this thing will probably fail soon, so instead of waiting for it to strand me Im going to replace it) and replace/upgrade other components on the same system at the same time.

I usually decide to move on and sell right after I've done all the crappy work and the car is actually starting to get pretty nice and driving well. 

I fixed basically all the stuff on my GX470, then sold it.  I was tired of constantly working on it and the steering rack was starting to weep.  Arguably I should've kept it and fixed the rack when I really had to as it probably was all set for another 100k miles after the work I'd done...

In reply to docwyte :

That's the myth we all tell ourselves. The reality is always different. If  it's feeling kind it will last at least long enough so we aren't constantly repairing it.  But cars like that are rare. 

My simple rule is:  When I think about maybe selling a vehicle, it is probably time to sell the vehicle. I have not regretted a sale using this method.