Posted on 02/26/2013 2:31:01 AM PST by Kaslin
I’ve been through that. I have not changed my own oil in about 20 years. I do my own brake jobs, however. I consider the cost to have it done vs how long it takes me to do it. It’s very cost effective. Anything that is easy to do, but costly to have done, I do myself.
I seem to know more about fixing cars than any of the people I know who don’t do it as their day job.
I’m about to have my brakes done. With the Prius, you don’t have to do this often, since the motor/generator does a lot of the stopping for you.
But I’m at 8 years and 140,000 on the one car, and I’ve worn them pretty good — to the point where I think they’ll recommend replacing the rotors (or maybe just turning them).
I don’t expect to drive the car past 250,000 miles, so I think this will be my only brake job. So it will cost me a bundle, and I’ll be done with it.
I did my own brakes in my older cars, and would buy rotors in a local junk yard where they would turn them for like $10.
I replace the rotors when I have brakes done now. They are not that expensive. I do my own brake jobs because it usually takes me about 15 minutes per wheel. I use dust free pads that don’t really cost all that much.
Oh, and I just did the first job on my Scion xB. It had 115k miles on it. When you commute 122 miles a day on open highway you get a lot of miles out of your brakes. :-)
Yes, I can see that. My daily commute is 3 miles one way. A lot of stop and go. Obviously, most of the miles on the car are not my commute, but family vacations, where I pretty much ignore the existence of a brake.
In Seattle, my commute was 8 miles one way, but I rode my bike. ;-)
Meanwhile my wife’s 300m needed new brakes every 30k miles. The first time I bought new rotors. Then, after I did the brakes, I had the old rotors turned and stored them in the garage. The next brake job, I swapped them out and repeated. I just did a brake job at 170k. I threw the old rotors away this time.
buy more
Interestingly, that is the same advice for the question "So if gold goes up, what then?" Also "So, if gold hits a new record, what then?"
In this fashion, gold is a lot like Global warming. No matter what the temperature or weather does, it's because of global warming.
The real fear is this -- the day when the world wakes up, rubs their eyes, and collectively states "What do we need Gold for? It is pretty much a useless metal that isn't even all that shiny, has a supply that far outstrips the known actual needs in manufacturing, and was only popular because in ancient times, it was the easiest metal to use to make things pretty."
Maybe that will never happen. But supply and demand can be a harsh mistress, and right now the biggest demand for gold is people who want to take it and bury it in their back yards -- kind of like recycling, returning it to the ground from whence it came. When people decide it would be easier to just leave it in the ground to start with, gold will end.
The Bible of course says that will happen in the end times, when a piece of bread would buy a bag of gold.
I'll say this for Beanie Babies -- at least you could play with them.
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Relevant story via drudge today:
“New Cars Increasingly Out of Reach for Many Americans”
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/cars-increasingly-reach-many-americans-145957880.html
Dave Ramsey ping
Dave Ramsey Ping list. Kaslin has been busy!
What the hell IS this thread? ‘Car Talk with Click and Clack?’ LOL!
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