Avery'sMama
CPST Instructor
We have a 2004 Ford Freestar Limited. The van is a piece of junk and we have spent over $5k in repairs THIS year!! It's fine for car seats, loaded with safety features, has a flat ford third row, leather, etc. but it's costing us an arm and a leg and all the safety features in the world are useless when it's dead by the side of the road, AGAIN. According to our repair guy (whose been doing DH's family's cars for 20 years) the things that tend to break on the Freestar are the transmission (we're on our second replacement), the A/C compressor (did that in April) and the computer (not broken yet). We've done many other things, like fuel hoses, stabilizing rods, a control arm, the radiator and the second new tranny (under warrenty from the repair in July) is the repair du jour.
The question is, when do we cut our losses and run like the wind? We still owe about $5k, what we could have put down on a new van has been spent on repair this one. I don't think we could swing more than about $10k on a new van. Which means trading one van with 100K for another with what, 100K if we get a Honda or Toyota?
We've got about 18 months still to pay it off, we owe $5k which is the Blue Book Trade in for "Clean" condition, I'm not sure we could get that, on trade in, and ordinarily we would sell it private party but I feel AWFUL selling the stupid thing to someone. It's such a heap!!
I'm voting for keeping it and saving towards a down payment on a nicer, newer van (Toyota or Honda). DH is voting for trading it in, taking our loss and buying another cheaper used van (Kia most likely). The other note in this is that DH drives an 2003 Vibe with 125K miles that will need replacing eventually, we planned on replacing his next, but the van is clearly the more unreliable one.
Thoughts??
The question is, when do we cut our losses and run like the wind? We still owe about $5k, what we could have put down on a new van has been spent on repair this one. I don't think we could swing more than about $10k on a new van. Which means trading one van with 100K for another with what, 100K if we get a Honda or Toyota?
We've got about 18 months still to pay it off, we owe $5k which is the Blue Book Trade in for "Clean" condition, I'm not sure we could get that, on trade in, and ordinarily we would sell it private party but I feel AWFUL selling the stupid thing to someone. It's such a heap!!
I'm voting for keeping it and saving towards a down payment on a nicer, newer van (Toyota or Honda). DH is voting for trading it in, taking our loss and buying another cheaper used van (Kia most likely). The other note in this is that DH drives an 2003 Vibe with 125K miles that will need replacing eventually, we planned on replacing his next, but the van is clearly the more unreliable one.
Thoughts??