Clean bill. I thought it was 120,000 miles. Actually it’s 130,000.
I also checked out the head gasket problem…a nice spendy item that was an issue in models prior to 2004, and we are a 2004. Yay!. The 2004’s and ‘5’s have a catalytic converter issue that can flare up, cost about 500.00 — not nice, but not catastrophic. We did talk to our old dealer, who is still there. He showed us the 2014 Crosstrek, and that will be the one that goes hybrid. Alas, it’s got a cramped back end, no room for the kittehs AND our luggage and a roof pod costs 400.00 and would cut down the gas savings. So I think the Crosstrek, hybrid or not, is off our list, and with it probably goes the Prius, which is built very similarly.
OK, now I’ve revised my math to reality. The 2004 Foresters get about 21 miles to the gallon, averaged, based on 60% city driving, 40% highway. The Forester 2014 gets 27 at the same ratios, without being hybrid. That means, if we put 10,000 miles on in a year, at 4.00 a gallon, we are paying $450 a year more in gas running the 2004 than we would pay for a newer car that won’t surprise us with mechanical issues. That slowly adds up: we’ve had this car nearly 10 years. So over a decade, that’s 4,500 dollars we could have saved if the 2014 model had existed. In other terms, if we COULD have bought the 2014 engine instead of the 2004 one hundred thirty thousand miles ago, we would have saved nearly 5000.00.
On the other hand—we HAVE saved money over this ten years by not driving a Hummer, eh?
We at least have something to think about—and we know that the 2004 owes us nothing, now: we joke that if it dies on the road, somewhere west of Idaho, hey, it’s had a good life, and we could go to an Idaho dealer no worse off than we are…and we don’t think it will fail us on a trip. I looked up the stats on the 2013—actually only 200 per annum off from the 2004 in gas savings. But the 2014 is twice that, at 450. So it’s worth thinking about.
It doesn’t make sense to buy early in the year, either, but one more year trading in the 2004 is one more year off the trade-in they’ll give us. We’re not totally hung up on color—Subaru colors are always a matter of choosing the least awful—so buying the tail-end-of-the-model year choices is not a bad thing. The only thing we’re really set on is our heated seats and cloth, not leather, seats. So it’s probably worth considering, depending on the balance between the diminishing trade-in and the considerably better gas mileage.
Not trying to be a “party-pooper”* but have you priced the insurance rates for a new one as compared to this old one? 😉 You’ll be out on the streets with a considerably more valuable asset. If something happened to this one and you walked away, the asset value you lose by totalling it isn’t so much. But it would be a “big hit” with the new one you’d likely still be making payments on. 🙁 You’d certainly want it fully insured! 🙂
*But it seems to be a consequence of having a bit of Aspergers.
Well, we’re hoping not to do that. The insurance is higher, but so are the repair bills as it’s out of warranty; and because we don’t buy really expensive or sporty or high-theft-target cars, the rates aren’t too bad. We always carry insurance, though.
Apropos of nothing… It seems to me that pragmatism and courage are closely akin; one does what one must. What do you folks think?
I don’t think so, as I tend to be pragmatic about ordinary life things, but I’m not courageous when I’ve got the feeling that something is dangerous: I tend to freeze, both physically and mentally.
I do think that in a difficult situation, clearheadedness to see what the problem is, pragmatism to come to the right conclusion about what needs to be done, and courage to see the decision through if there is danger involved, are all needed.
Apologies to Kipling, but, “If you can keep your head when those all around you are losing theirs, you probably don’t understand the situation.” And apologies to Heinlein, “Never attribute to
malicecourage that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”Walt, I think you’re correct in some ways but not completely. Senseless ‘heroics’ that make things worse are stupid: you need the sense to see what really needs to be done.
And someone can stupidly blunder into something dangerous and have it turn out well, but that would more likely be a very lucky accident rather than the norm.
Training and experience make a difference – my neighbour who’s a policeman can assess a situation and react appropriately while I freeze up.
But separate from training, I do think some people are more courageous (more comfortable with taking risks?) and some are more easily scared.
People in rescue services take deliberate risks to save others, because they do see the dangers that inexperienced swimmers/surfers/sailors, or climbers or whatever, didn’t or can’t see. They do keep their heads when others around them don’t; they minimize the risks as best they can, but they know the risks remaining and still take the lifeboats out to sea in a storm, and go into burning buildings to rescue people.
They know that people in their profession run a risk of getting killed or badly hurt, and still they choose that job. I do think that that’s not only pragmatism, knowing that the job needs doing, but it’s also courage, knowing (or at least expecting/demanding of themself) that they can do the job without freezing up or panicking.
Not everyone who’s pragmatic can do that, not in every situation.
And I have quite a strong sense that although people can be capable of quite amazingly courageous acts in unexpected circumstances, not everyone will be able to ‘rise to the occasion’ in the same way in every dangerous situation, even if they see what needs to be done. Some people seem more clearheaded in general, some are generally more courageous, and some are more fraidy-cats like me. I might still be able to keep my head if the danger comes from gradual flooding, but I’d panic and freeze if it came from an aggressive person, and I think I’d probably panic and run if it was fire – even though we’ve had fire drills and escape plans etc. – I just hope the practice will prevent me from freezing. I couldn’t even make myself hop off a 6 foot wall I was sitting on; instead I froze (that was one of the things that clued me in to having a fear of heights; I’d not realised that about myself before) – so I’m fairly sure I’d never be able to run toward a fire, even to save someone.
Maybe I’m an exceptional coward, but I tend to think I’m a fairly ordinary person; though I know lots of people are braver than me (and I can admire them for that) – that’s why I think that courage is a separate thing, not directly related to pragmatism or clearheadedness (insight into the situation and the people concerned, as well as logical thinking), though you need them all for tackling dangerous problems.
***
The courage you need to handle a slow or chronic threat, like cancer, starvation or an occupation army, feels different to me than the courage needed for a sudden danger like a fire or a mugger.
The slow kind may be more closely related to pragmatism – you do all you can, and for the rest you endure, the best you can, trying to stay positive.
I’ve not been tested that way, but it feels like the kind of courage I might be able to raise.
Yes, Tommie, if that’s the kind of courage you meant, then I can see the link.
They seem such different strengths, now I think about it – are there different words for them? The only one that comes to mind is endurance, for the slow kind.
Well: glibness over detailed explanations, A? Clearly, some courage cannot be adequately explained by mere rashness, and I by no means wish to devalue true courage. Still. it is not by accident armies try to enlist the youngest adults, Audie Murphy, frex.
Some times, in my rash teenage years, I was faced with situations which my very pragmatic mind informed me were not winning positions. Still, my gut reaction was, “If I don’t stand my ground, I’m a victim–at least to those people–forever.” (“There are no victims only volunteers,”–Dr. Phil–an oversimplification, I believe.) A couple times I had friends with me. One was uncertain; one was scared as a rabbit, though he was bigger then me and I’m well over six feet.
My less glib, more reasoned analysis is that this is a mixed strategy, largely genetic, to prevent one (pre-)paleo-lithic tribe from rolling over another. Think about Vikings: “Oh, we don’t want to attack Vikings because they have those scary berserkers!”
So, not faced with firearms (which I hope would have induced pragmatism rather than courage), I stood up to these various superior forces. (One guy, who was much stronger than me, became a friend rather than a mere face.) However, I tend to credit psychological genetics rather than personal fortitude or culture or upbringing.
The dying of the rash allows the escape of their tribe members with the same genetic heritage. Of course, this is implemented imperfectly, so a scammer may convince a rash person to protect the scammer’s genetic heritage at the cost of his own.
Yes, I have strange attitudes: blame (my personal interpretation of) The Naked Ape by Desmond Morris.
Ack: Than, than, than! …bigger than me…
Proofread, proofread, proofread; then find the error!
I think I agree with you, but you might surprize yourself, says the guy who walking home from the market one evening found himself staring down the barrel of a .38. 😉 When it really comes down to a real crisis situation, even if thinking rev’s up, one doesn’t have time to consider the pragmatic option.
I think like the old Romans (cf, the Tower, in Sunfall) that how you live your life prepares you so that it’s less courage than logic of the situation. You’re either a person who moves toward a situation or away from it; you either think you can help or are sure you can’t—and you care or you don’t. The fifty years you’ve lived before prepare you to make the two-second judgement when a crisis comes. And if you’ve lived right, you’re always stronger than you think you are, when you find yourself in a situation.
Y’know, they say it’s not courage if you’re not scared… When the boy came from the back of the house with what I thought was a rifle and pointed it at me from just out of arm’s reach, all I could think to do was look at him and say, “Harold Glen, if you shoot me, I’ll die”, and turn back to my cup of coffee. It worked. He went and put it away. I found out later that it was an air rifle. As a friend said at the time, “They’s little ones, and they’s big ones, but when they’s pointed at you, they’s all cannon”! Was I brave? I don’t think so. I think I was just stumped…
That fellow who was going to run out of a warehouse which had been crashed into by a passenger plane was plenty scared. On hearing people calling for help, he turned and saved, as I recall, dozens of lives. He said later that he could not have done otherwise. I don’t know if it is upbringing and experience, or something inborn and instinctive, but I find it courageous.
I agree with CJ and my mother: live like you are the person you want to be…
Tommie, are you OK? Are you safe now?
That’s very scary, I think you were very brave and wise to be able to stay calm, and say something that confronted him with the results of his actions, without antagonising him.
Is the boy being treated for whatever made him do that? It doesn’t sound as if it was a planned robbery by a hardened young criminal, more like an impulsive act from schizophrenia, or drugs, or depression and drinking too much, or whatever; but it doesn’t sound like something to shrug off as a joke, either!
I don’t quite see how living one’s ordinary life like the good person you want to be, could ever prepare yourself for this sort of extraordinary situation… maybe if you’re usually a person who reacts calmly and reasonably to minor mishaps that helped you to stay calm in this instance?
I too am in CJ’s Roman camp on this. I’m suspicious of how reliably one can hypothesize about how one would react in crisis. It’s entirely different when one is in a crisis. One sees something that must be done and does it.
Locally this year a couple of teenage girls lifted a tractor off their father. More evidence recently might be the way ordinary people engaged at the Boston Marathon bombing. This is not to say that some people won’t be overwhelmed, but my money is on fewer than might think they would be.
Good that you have a 2004. They improved the head gasket. I have the improved head gasket as well as a new short block and a lighter wallet but I’m keeping the car forever so it’s OK.
Or as Walt might have said, “If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs, you’re probably a 2005 model.” [Grin, Dduck, & Run]
Subarus typically are inexpensive for insurance. Our 2006 Forester at 75000 acquired a cracked head gasket (while on vacation! Rats!), so we bit the bullet and did the whole ‘replace all those belty things while you are changing the gasket’ thing (and by the way, check out the brakes too…). A cool $1500 later and we are good to go another 100K or so. We get about 17 mpg city and 27 hwy, which is very decent for all wheel drive seating for five, and space. Sounds like a hefty bill but this is the FIRST major repair we’ve needed on this vehicle in seven years, which must count for something.
I wouldn’t get too hung up on trade in value, though. At this point, one more year isn’t going to make a lot of difference. You could probably sell it to a private buyer for actual cash, too, for more than the trade in value.
I basically concur with everyone else: your 2004 has a lot of miles left on it. I would wait for something your 2004 just can’t do, like drive itself. You may get dinged for a couple thousand dollar repair bill now and then, or even $5000 for a new engine, but this is far less than the $20,000 for a new car.
You might think about putting what the payment would have been in a special account (at least mentally), and once you get over the engine replacement cost, it’s a vacation fund. Get to $7000, and spend a couple thousand to go to Rome or on a Mediterranean cruise. (I believe since you’re both authors, you can deduct this as research.)
If you go ahead, I suggest you try the Costco car buying service. I bought my last car through them in 2001 (and it’s doing just fine). I was miffed during the process that the premium for lower trim cars was $1000 while the high trim I wanted was $5000 (over invoice, if that has any meaning at all). However, I took the price Costco and the not-so-local dealer gave me and took it to my local dealer. Despite the advantage of hooking me for service, they refused saying it wasn’t worth the paperwork to make so little; they didn’t even counter-offer with a slightly higher bid. After that, I felt better. You’re not obligated to use the Costco dealer if you don’t want to.
I’m going to disagree with nearly everyone else, then. Just to be contrary. How long do you keep a car? In my opinion, when the cost of maintaining it outweighs the cost you would incur in monthly payments for a new car. If, like most people, you keep full coverage on your current car, then you are pretty much throwing money away. There are those who would say, but if you have a major accident…..you get replacement value for that car. If you had a new car and it got smashed by a fool on the road, then again, replacement value for that car, which is considerably more than for a 2004 Forester. If you’re getting lower mileage out of the 2004, why keep throwing money away by having to refill more often? I’d suggest getting the new Forester if that’s what makes the strings zing, and if you feel you can afford it. (Besides, I didn’t read anywhere in your blog where you were asking us whether you should buy a new car or keep the old one.) It boils down to what do YOU want, and if you feel a new Forester is the way to go, it’s far from me to make a critical analysis. Seems to me you’ve done a pretty good job through the years of making critical analyses, weighing the data, and making pretty darn good decisions. When you consider that a new engine for a car can run you upwards of $4,000, or that parts are getting harder to find for that particular model/year, or the price of those parts goes up every year at a rate higher than the parts for a later model/year, I’d be really tempted to say, buy the new one. But it’s not my decision.
Eri-Guy has 2000 Forester – no headgasket issues and it’s at 120k miles; mine is a 2002 Outback, and I had a pricey headgasket replacement at only 50k miles. Ouch :(. But it’s done and won’t be an issue again. I do love our Subarus, just wish they had more towing power. It’s chancy each time we take the popup camper out.
On the other hand, they make cars so much better than they did in the 70s and 80s, and I hate car payments. I just passed 77777 on the odometer, so there’s a lot of life left in her.
Well, we’re just dabbling toes in the water to see the temperature. It’s a swinging balance between a sinking tradein value, a rising gas price, -the cost of a Subaru has stayed nearly the same for 10 years–the cost of repairs if any but the certainty that they’re going to increase as the car ages (we’ve had NO repair bills but the timing chain, so it’s all original equipment. 😉 ) We’ve got a car fund—have been saving for years—but is it time to use it? The fact we trade before our older car has bottomed out in value and before (thus far) we have major repair issues—has been sheer luck. I think, bottom line, I start listening to the car ‘talk’ to me, and the last several months I’m noting a little thump in the transmission—the only issue I can really point to; and Subarus do this as they age. But I’m keeping my ears to the motor and to the working-sounds, antennae up, so to speak. When the wrong-sounds start increasing—time to move on, perhaps, unless the items are silly-minor. Sounds don’t worry me. Transmissions in an AWD do make me go—how much would that be? 2000-5000 for a transmission is not minor…it equals the tradein value of the car, which means you’d be paying 5000 instead of getting 5000, in my weird math—not that it’s awful to do if then you get to drive a good car with a good transmission for another 100,000 miles, but you’re then doing 100,000 miles in 2004 car that gets an average 21 mpg, versus the one you could have bought that gets 27 mpg…which means spending 19,047.00 on gas (at 4.00 per gallon) and maybe MORE repair bills that aren’t under warranty versus spending 14,814.00 during that 100,000 miles, which means you save 4232.00 worth of gas, and have your repair bills all covered.
I tell you, when I hit this period of indecision about something that’s a huge committment, it is crazy-making.
First thought is, have you checked the U-joints? They can thump.
Second thought is, since you’re out in the west where we don’t “salt” the roads and the body is likely to be in good shape, importing from Japan a used engine from a wrecked car is a cost-effective remedy. An old buddy of mine did that with his Soob.
One more consideration is how likely it will be that the dealer runs out of your favored model before you are ready to trade in the old Forester. It’s almost like poker.
Have you ever thought of selling the old car privately, rather than using it as a dealer trade-in? Is the aggravation of selling it, probably for more than you would get on a trade-in, worth it?
It sounds like you have run the math, at this point it boils down to what satisfies you. If it is time for a new car, it is time for a new car.
I’d probably wait to get the ’13 until the ’14s come in, but then, I don’t much care what color or what gizmos an auto has (except seat warmers, which I love and can live without). I just want drivebility and economy. I’m just not much of a girly girl in that respect!
THanks for the u-joint suggestion. Alarming as it sounds, coupled with the notation that Subaru prefers to replace the entire drive train, that’s not nearly as spendy as a head gasket.
It’s just that the head gasket alone is never alone, but all those other gaskets – and the oil, and everything else – have to be replaced TOO – and the timing belt because hey, why NOT….as long as you are in there anyway – might as well…
But it is entirely a matter of preference, really – good arguments can be made to keep the old, paid for vehicle as can be made to buy another new(er) one.
What I actually WANT, but can’t afford (or can’t justify) is a really cool custom paint job, with maybe flames and flying dragons or something….something totally NOT Subaru boring paint colors…never happening, but fun to think about. And so totally NOT ‘me’ – it would astonish all my friends (but make it easier to find my ride in parking lots!)
A U-joint problem ought to thump when you change from speeding up to slowing down, and vice versa. That is, when the stress changes from the engine pushing the wheels to the engine pulling on the wheels. Random thumps may be mere thermal “ticking”–cars used to do this a lot more, ticking as they warmed or cooled. And a great many innocent thumps are possible: a loose hose bumping the washer fluid container (or whatever), some loose part from Lowes migrating under the seats, even washer fluid sloshing etc. If you can characterize when it happens, that may point to what’s happening.
Even though you just had it in for service, it won’t hurt to check the oil and transmission fluids. Mechanics do make mistakes.
Will do that, thanks! I normally hear it only when accelerating—I think. I’ll have to pay attention. Transmission would not be good news—those are 4000-5000, totalling out the car.
Also note if it seems to happen more when turning. 😉 Actually I believe what you have is CV, constant velocity, rather than U-joints, and that’s why they want to replace more stuff. (I don’t suppose you could get [a high-school boy in auto-shop to get] under it and see if the boots around the joints are cracked?)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constant_velocity_joint
But hey, good news! 🙂 The cost of parts has been going down as PM Abe has been stimulating the Japanese economy and coincidentally letting the yen fall. 😉 Getting the parts dealer to pass on the price reductions is left as an exercise for the interested reader. 😉
I think you’re right since I expect the Forester has four wheel independent suspension.
I remember going through CV joints like candy with my Subarus living in VA where we do salt the roads.
@Agricola, Have you considered getting a “skin” for your vehicle. You’ve probably seen vehicles with advertisement all over their vehicle. These are sometimes plastic thin films that are printed out on industrial printers and then applied in much the same way as aftermarket windshield coatings. It costs considerably less than a high quality re-spray, does not require as much prep as a re-spray, can be printed using your own graphics, and provides some protection from stone chips and minor door dings in the parking lot (although there is no protection from fools who throw their doors open).
There is never protection for that sort of thing. Interesting – we are in year 7 of paying for college for three kids (two down and one to go!) so our ‘play money’ (on those occasions when we have some) is generally directed towards less frivolous targets than a paint job – or a skin! I will check into it though. Maybe it will move a bit further up my existing ‘want to do this’ list. But not ahead of redoing the kitchen!
One can sympathize even more thoroughly with CJ and Jane — after taking my venerable Taurus to have the tires rotated and balanced, the mechanic informed me that the tie rods were going. Not a major repair, but considering the advanced age of the car, I am inclined to commit new car before the end of the year. I hope I can find one as reliable as this one has been.