WWGRMD: Replace 4L60E now, or wait until it dies?

ValourUnbound said:

Brett_Murphy said:

93gsxturbo said:

Unless the rest of this 203k mile Failblazer was 100% perfect and flawless I would have a hard time putting anything into it but a For Sale sign. The cost of the trans is at least what the vehicle is worth, maybe more. 

A running, driving vehicle you own is generally cheaper than buying another vehicle, even if it requires a fairly hefty repair. Unless you're in a position where you car has to be newer, I don't get this line of thinking. 

I've done some thinking about this recently and come to this incomplete conclusion:

[annualized purchase cost] + [new car insurance] < [maintenance] + [current car insurance]

If, on an annualized basis, the above becomes true, replace the car. However, that check does not account for capability, safety, downtime, stress, etc. If you don't need your car to get to work, the above works. If this is your only car, if the failure modes put you in unsafe situations, if you need more seats for your 4th child, the check changes. You also need to consider the fact that the devil you know is better than the devil you don't if you are considering buying a used car.

I do not have a complete answer. The problem is more complicated then it seems.

There are times when a new vehicle is the logical solution. It was for most of my working life.  As A Sales rep I covered 65,000 - 80,000 miles a year. 
That cost was part of my compensation. It just made sense when cars were shot at 100,000 miles  to replace the old with a new. I would hand my old car off to my wife, and  a year or so later she'd get another.  
My Income kept the car in near perfect shape, Since they were road miles the car while not worth much was a great deal for my wife, and later my children. 
by the late 90's cars / trucks were actually solid values  for hundreds of thousands of miles. Especially road miles.  
 

That's when I really capitalized on The new. My 1997 truck was paid for by one company, paid for again by a second company, and paid for a third time by the third company. Many months the reimbursement on the car was greater than my salary, and sometimes even greater than my commission. 
 

With. the recession of 2008 that truck really paid me back.  It had been paid for since 2001  yet worked flawlessly through 2016 when rust made it unsafe.  

Curtis said:

Some people are long-term vehicle owners.  I'm not.  

Based on your threads over the last few years, this statement sure doesn't surprise me.

93gsxturbo said:

BoostedBrandon said:

So my TrailBlazer has 203k on the clock

Unless the rest of this 203k mile Failblazer was 100% perfect and flawless I would have a hard time putting anything into it but a For Sale sign. The cost of the trans is at least what the vehicle is worth, maybe more.  If it still runs and drives, run it till some expensive repair sidelines it and send it to the big car lot in the sky.

Save the aggravation and the money for another vehicle and run this till it dies.  Maybe do a scan and throw a transgo kit in it with fresh fluid and filter but that would be as far as I would be willing to go.

This. Why put a trans worth 2x the rest of the vehicle unless you're going to preserve your truck for 30 years to sell to the one person who wants a mint copy? Good money after bad.

Called the transmission shop yesterday. Guy said that they charge between $1900 and $2200 (which concerned me, really. That's too much of a gap IMO) and they drop the trans, give it an overhaul and reinstall it. Takes about 2 or 3 days.

I've thought a lot about getting rid of it. Now, keep in mind, this is all preventive thinking. It drives and shifts really well. Given I've recently taken to driving like an old man, I don't give the transmission that much of a workout.

The biggest thing to me, is that if I can get 5 or 6 more years out of it, I can then hand it down to my stepson. He'll be driving in a few years and by that point I might be driving something else.

I've never been one to dig too deep into cost of repair vs. value because at the end of the day, this thing is a tool. It's not my baby, it's not particularly attractive or fun to drive, but it gets the job done, and it's paid for.

If I drop $2k on a trans, and get another bunch of years out of it, I'll most likely be money ahead. Assuming I get another used car, and my payment is approximately $250 a month, five years of that totals out to $15,000. In eight months, with that payment, a transmission rebuild pays for itself.

Time to start saving, and hoping it doesn't E36 M3 the bed in the next few months until I can get it there.

In reply to BoostedBrandon :

If you can get another 5-6 years out of it, it'll be totally spent and you'll be passing down an even bigger turd  imo

That range is nothing.  It could be $1900 to 5000.

The $1900 covers the labor and the "soft parts."  That is to say, a rebuild kit with seals, rings, clutches, steels, and a TC.  If they get in there and discover a bad sprag, valve body, input shell, solenoids, and planet set, you're hosed.

I think a lot of people don't understand that part.  Doing a "rebuild" on a transmission is no different than putting new brake pads on.  That part is cheap, but if they get in there and realize you need rotors, bearings, calipers, and hoses, the price changes a lot.

A "rebuild" quote surprisingly only costs about $200 worth of parts for a 4L60E.  Where it gets nuts is if you have to replace hard parts.  Heck, I had a guy bring me a 47RE from a Cummins during one of our $699 bench build specials.  When I tore it apart there was absolutely nothing salvageable.  Something exploded (sun shell maybe?) and shredded everything.  The only thing I could have salvaged was the case, the output shaft, the valve body, and the pan.  Of course, he declined the repair and got a used unit, but to repair his transmission would have cost around $7000 because I would have had to purchase every single component

Not trying to spook you, but there is zero way of knowing what is wrong until you tear it apart.  I say that to give you a heads up.  The shop isn't trying to be wishy washy, they're covering their butt.  They likely gave you that range because you said it slipped once and they are hoping it's just a solenoid and soft parts. The downside is, once it's apart, you can't just come collect your parts and drive off.  You're in the deep end at that point.

At my shop, I always kept in mind the cost of a used transmission for whatever car I was fixing.  If it got to be too expensive I would just let the customer pick... do you want me to repair this one for $3500, order a Jasper for $5000, or do you want a used one installed with no warranty for $1800?

BoostedBrandon said:

If I drop $2k on a trans, and get another bunch of years out of it, I'll most likely be money ahead. Assuming I get another used car, and my payment is approximately $250 a month, five years of that totals out to $15,000. In eight months, with that payment, a transmission rebuild pays for itself.

Time to start saving, and hoping it doesn't E36 M3 the bed in the next few months until I can get it there.

Not to be a jerk, but do you really think you'll get another 5-6 years out of a 200k-mile GM?  At the very least, how much will you have to put into other repairs over those years?

Your math also isn't really valid here.  If you're paying $250/mo to buy a car, you're buying the car.  You will have an asset with value.  Putting $2000 into a $2000 vehicle leaves you with.... a $2000 vehicle that might need a head gasket, differential rebuild, or spin a bearing next month.

If you aren't in a position to buy, that's totally a different story, but my suggestion is to take the $2k you would have spent on the trans, sell the truck for $2k (or whatever), and now you have $4000 which buys any one of a thousand, low-mileage, reliable buggies.  My Fordzda Branger was $4000 with 89k on the clock.

Dirtydog said:

With 203K on the transmission, you're playing with house money.  Diagnose or replace.  One thing for sure, check your trans cooler lines.  They like to rust, and get pinholes, deviously leaking fluid. My money is on rebuilt replacement.  I had a 2005 Buick Rainier, and the lines wiped out my transmission.

edit: The pinholes broke through on a long distance drive.  Didn't know until the thing started smoking.

So thanks to this post, I think I caught a leak in the trans cooler lines on my 95 C1500 yesterday. I'd noticed something starting to leak pretty badly the last 2-3 times I'd driven the truck, and assumed it to be oil coming from the dipstick tube (which I had to manhandle a bit during the header install) but while I was under there doing an oil change yesterday, I realized it was trans fluid. Thinking of this post, I looked immediately to the cooler lines and sure enough that looks to be the source. Only down to about halfway between the low and high marks on the dipstick, so I caught it in time.

The trans has 174k on it and is getting a little tired, but it still shifts ok and I haven't detected any major slippage or anything. I'll do a fluid and filter change when I do the lines, and may think about a Transgo kit and separater plate too just to maximize what life this thing has left. 

In reply to Furious_E :

Well, you are most certainly welcome. Glad my pos thread helped someone out.

I am always fascinated by these types of scenarios... fix it or sell it sort of thing. 

My philosophy was based on a indepedent mechanic who said it's almost always cheaper to fix it.

I have my own conundrum that I'll make a post about, but it's interesting to read what people think.

My question: Can you really get 2k for a Trailblazer with a bad trans? Will you not disclose it to the buyer?

In reply to CyberEric :

That's the thing, the trans isn't "bad" per se, I'm trying to fix a problem before it happens. It might give me another year, who knows.

Which should point to the sell stuff of things, since it's running and driving pretty well at this point.

Does your $3700 shop quote include removal and installation labor? If so, then that quote seems to be within reason imo. A typical 4L60E transmission removal, rebuild, and installation is said to be $2K - $4K (depending on the vehicle). Your Corvette would likely push that est. towards the higher end. As for rebuild or reman, I'd go with a rebuild due in part, to minor or major differences in various internal parts (especially electronics). Another factor is that the vehicle will retain matching numbers.

Edit: the above should have been posted to another thread entirely. Not sure why it ended up in this thread...