I'm Driving! I'm a Driver!

[Mongrel]

There are cold deserts too.

>:3

(yeah yeah, Flagstaff gets an average of 20" of rain per year and that's double the amount to be considered a desert)

[Grath]

It's probably too much trouble, but selling a used car with no AC seems like such a horrible losing proposition in AZ. I wonder if when you sell it off (assuming you don't do a trade-in), that you wouldn't almost be better off trying to sell it out-of-state.

(Belatedly: standard reminder that Arizona is not actually just a giant desert, and I could be in Prescott or Payson in two hours, and Flagstaff in three. I wonder if the heater still works; prospective buyers will want to know that before it starts snowing up there in a month or two.)

But I thought Arizona is a blasted hellscape.

[Brantly B.]

Much of Hell is ice.

And still manages to catch on fire constantly.

[nosimpleway]

You didn't shoot it with your crossbow first?

I had a lot of quarrels with that van but not that specific kind.

[Silversong]

I had a lot of quarrels with that van but not that specific kind.

I love you, R^2.

[Thad]

Noticed a small crack in the corner of my windshield on Friday night.

By this morning, it has become a LARGE crack.

So I get to deal with that now.

[Mothra]

Guess who got a hundoooooooooooooooooooooo dollar ticket for parking 5 feet away from a fire hydrant (and not 10 feet)

Wooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Having compressor problems in my Accord as well. AC works, but it rattles the front unit and drags on the engine. Really hoping all I'll need to do is open it up and check the amount gas in there.

Fixed this by lowering the amount of gas in the compressor to -10 what it was supposed to be. Works just dandy now.

[Thad]

Scheduled windshield replacement for Saturday. (Happy birthday!) Annoyed to learn that current car insurance has $100 deductible for this; it was free on my previous insurance (once per year). Still going to do it, on the expectation that if I don't it'll take more than $100 off the value of the car. (I also figure I'll get it cleaned and detailed before I sell it, but won't put any more money or effort into fixing it up than that. Scratches, dents, etc. will stay and let the chips fall where they may.)

Slapped some Scotch tape over the crack so it doesn't get any bigger; figure that should be enough to make it to Saturday. The various advice online is pretty much something I have no control over -- park in a garage, keep out of extremely hot temperatures, don't let it get wet, etc. I DON'T CONTROL THE WEATHER, INTERNET. Also I don't have a garage.

[nosimpleway]

Another thing you can't control: Don't drive over rough or uneven roads, a pothole turned a little chip in our windshield into a crack that went across 75% of it.

[Büge]

I'm afraid you're also going to need to refrain from playing anything with a lot of bass on the radio. No more Outkast!

[Mothra]

No can do cap

[Silversong]

I've only ever driven / had 4-door sedans, but tomorrow I'm going to go test drive a MINI Cooper. It might be fun, having a little car? No one ever sits in my back seat anyway. And it looks like it's pretty safe and drives reasonably well in snow and ice.

[Friday]

Little cars are dope as heck. Can confirm. They even have good legroom nowadays for xbox huge people like me.

[Mongrel]

I've only ever driven / had 4-door sedans, but tomorrow I'm going to go test drive a MINI Cooper. It might be fun, having a little car? No one ever sits in my back seat anyway. And it looks like it's pretty safe and drives reasonably well in snow and ice.

FYI, the one thing to be aware of with coopers is that the transmission basically falls out of them after 5-6 years and it costs ten grand or more to replace it - way more than the value of the car by then. My sister-in-law had that exact problem and apparently it's a very common critical failure and has been for many years.

There's actually a class-action suit that applies to the older models, but not newer ones (which still have design issues - the transmissions on coopers are just really shittily designed), but even the remedial provisions on the older ones has expired (I don't know if you're test driving a used mini or a new one).

If you do get one, apparently changing the transmission fluid super-regularly (like, annually) helps a fair bit (the manuals all claim you never need to change the transmission fluid, or only change it at very long intervals, ahaha no). It's not a perfect cure but it notably reduces the risk and wear.

In general minis seems to benefit from being really aggressive about fluid changes and staying on top of fluid and oil levels. The oil flow system has lots of tiny passages which are vulnerable to sludge in even semi-older oil blocking them, and the power steering can leak or have problems.

[Kayma]

I used to drive a Town Car and a Deville, which were like driving a couch strapped to a tank down the road. You had to drop anchor when you parked and I loved them.

I drive a Civic now, because that's what people who aren't crazy do...

[malikial]

You won't usually find me agreeing with Mongrel but when the man's right he's right. The new Mini Coopers have never scored higher than 3(out of 5) from Car and Driver and they get top marks for customization and mobility. They just have absolutely SHIT reliability. They aren't even in the top 10, for their class of car, overall and they are in the lowest you can possibly go on reliability alone. They're neat, sporty looking and agile... But they just break. Not even from hard use. In the MotorTrend review the guy said one of the door handles broke off the second time he opened the door. Of the review car... The one the makers had sent him specifically kitted out to be reviewed.

[Silversong]

Wow. Okay, thanks for the input guys, I had not found that info just googling around. I am definitely looking for something that's primarily reliable, and preferably somewhat smaller than my Pontiac Grand Prix. Do you have any suggestions for those criteria (also <$10k used)? There are a lot of cars. Like, even more than there are yogurts at the grocery, and that tends to paralyze me for about 15 minutes.

Fun note: I did test drive the MINI, and it was interesting, but when I looked up a car report later on turns out the car had been written off as totaled by the insurance company a couple years ago. D:

[Mongrel]

Well, my gut says that the simplest, most basic generalization from thirty years ago is still pretty true today: Buy something Japanese.

For something more precise (and objective) Consumer Reports annual used car report (which includes sections like "Best car under $10k") comes out early each year (around March, but sometimes April). If you can hang on that long, might be worth seeing what they have to say this year.

Here's last year's top ten and most of them are smaller than a Grand Prix.

You'll note there's not a single American or European car in there. Hondas and Toyotas are usually an especially good bet since unassuming and economical long-term reliability is sort of their "thing". Plus the days of Japanese cars being "imports" with higher parts prices are pretty much long gone. Upkeep is typically just as cheap as any American car (if not cheaper because it's breaking down less).

You have to be a subscriber to get full detailed rankings and lists of all major cars which are kept up to date. Starr's dad has a subscription, not sure if we can access it somehow, I but I can ask Starr.

Good on you for getting the individual car report. Even if a particular make or model are recommended, you never know what's happened to a given individual car. Most everything they say about used car salesmen is still true (I used to know one - he couldn't live with himself while he had that job and gave it up), but these days reporting and internet tools help us regular folks out A LOT if you know to use them.

OH, speaking of my old buddy, that reminds me of the one tip he gave me long ago that's useful for any of you guys looking at used cars: If you want to really get a deal on a used car, find a green one. Nobody likes green cars so they are hard as hell for a used car salesman to move, meaning you can usually force a lower price than you would for an identical car in a more desirable colour. That's if you don't mind green, of course.

[Mazian]

I can't speak much to reliability of used cars, unless you want to hear all about my Volvo that is probably older than some of our posters. But I do get to drive a wide variety of smallish rental cars, and based on that experience alone I'd probably get either a Ford Focus or a Mazda 3 if I needed a new/lightly-used car in a hurry. One caveat: some of the recent years of Focuses had clunky transmissions that were almost certainly going to become expensive problems, and I would want to identify and avoid those. The ones I got were worst in seriously cold weather (one particular visit to Alberta in December comes to mind), better in the summer, mostly at low speeds.

[Joxam]

The problem you're going to have with a 10 grand used car is that is only about 7 grand more than what you can get just selling a car for parts (thats why almost anywhere will give you 2000 dollars for basically any trade in(push pull or drive!!!!)), and in the game of cars, thats just not a lot of money.

Also totalling a car does not necessarily mean the car was completely fucked. All 'totalling a car' means is that the amount to fix it is worth more than the car's current value which is not necessarily the same as what a car dealer can get for it if they fix it. So with late model cars that could literally be body work. My car's rear bumper alone cost 2 thousand dollars when I got rear ended but the car was only six months old and had less than five thousand miles on it so the insurance had no problem with fixing it.