What to do with my lemon of a car - advice welcome

[jonnM]

You need to take revenge on your sister-in-law.....shag her husband or something!

[backwoodsman]

jonnM said:

You need to take revenge on your sister-in-law.....shag her husband or something!

Thanks, beer just shot down my nose.

[morgrp]

Worth a look

http://bit.ly/1aS2mTl

If not for the repair, for off loading the car

[Antonia]

jonnM said:

You need to take revenge on your sister-in-law.....shag her husband or something!

You do realise the husband of a sister-in-law could be my own brother?! But in this case she is my husband's sister and unmarried. I have to take responsibility for my own stupidity in this whole saga, so revenge would not be fair.

I've had a pow-wow with my brother, the dealer have kindly offered to push the car back to his driveway, if they have enough staff tomorrow. He is then going to try a few tips from the Ford user forums to try and get it going. Then it is going on Ebay with an honest description and the whole sorry saga can be closed.

If we had the time, I think we would go ahead and convert it to a manual gearbox because the rest of the car is reasonable. It needs a respray to improve the paint job the first "careful lady owner" had done. But brakes, steering etc are all pretty sound. After the advice here I have confidence it should get a positive response on ebay.

Thank you for all the wisdom

[Antonia]

kapiteinlangzaam said:

My Granddad had the same g'box in his 2004 Fusion (what a POS).
Owned from new, 40k miles @ 4yrs old and g'box went pop driving over the Rhynose Pass in The Lakes.
Traded it in at the supplying dealer (for an absurdly low sum) against another new bland box. Dealers must have been pissing themselves

Oh dear, Grandparent's should be protected from this kind of rubbish technology. I can empathise with you Grandad.

The fiesta's gearbox went pop on the forecourt of garage my brother had been hoping to get a trade in from. Not so picturesque as the Lakes.

[Faxo]

Put 'spares repairs' in eBay title - guaranteed to make on average £10 less than a perfectly fine working example, even with the massive looming repair costs

[lord trumpton]

cut it loose, get what you can for it and move on

[robsa]

Have it towed onto your in-laws drive, douse it liberally with petrol and ignite it. Then have your husband tested to see if he really is genetically related.

[Superhoop]

If it's only the shift motors that are knackered £900 is way over the top - you can get them rebuilt for under £150, and it's 30 minutes tops to remove them.

http://www.ecutesting.com/catalogue/ford_eculist.h...

Then just find someone to refit the rebuilt motors and who can run through the shift learning procedure - once done, it'll be a running driving car, and worth much more than a non runner

[HustleRussell]

Four thousand eight hundred Great British Pounds!

[aw51 121565]

Antonia said:

Don't judge me (or try and sell me anything I am an easy target).

Looking back at the emails I paid 4.8K, it was 4 years old with two previous "careful" lady owners and I think 20k on the clock.

I hang my head in shame.

I wouldn't hang my head in shame if I was you . £4,800 over 4 years is £1,200 p.a. - if you'd bought a new car and kept it 4 years then sold it, you'd have lost a LOT more - assuming that the fester doesn't return any cash to you when disposed of . Worst Case Scenario, obviously!

The car is worth something - it's either a case of selling and cutting your losses (reduced to maybe £1,000 p.a. on average over the 4 years?) or paying to repair the thing and having a (say) ten year average annual financial loss of a couple of hundred quid a year when you weigh the thing in when the 'box packs up again (in a debatable 6 years' time)?

Your call - but even if you bail out now you've done pretty well in minimising depreciation while driving a reasonably new car .

[Antonia]

I paid probably 1k more than the car was actually worth due to the pestering from the S-I-L. Those calculations make me feel a little better but my biggest mistake was buying the stupid thing in the first place. You live and learn

Thanks for the tip Superhoop!

[JimmyConwayNW]

What area are you in and do you have a figure in mind to get shut of the car. I ask as I have a blue 56 fiesta that I am attempting to sell but needs an entire interior and a few other bits and bobs. I may be interested in purchasing the car and then scrap what's left?

Those gearbox really are a heap of crap aren't they.

[Antonia]

JimmyConwayNW said:

What area are you in and do you have a figure in mind to get shut of the car. I ask as I have a blue 56 fiesta that I am attempting to sell but needs an entire interior and a few other bits and bobs. I may be interested in purchasing the car and then scrap what's left?

Those gearbox really are a heap of crap aren't they.

I'll bear this offer in mind - thanks.

But.......

Kama seems to be on our side (I hope)
The garage called today. The gearbox repair company want to try and repair the gearbox (as a learning exercise?). If we don't mind being without the car they will collect it, work on it and then hopefully return it to us drivable for less than 200 pounds. We have taken this gamble and see what happens.

Then it is going on Ebay - end of!

[OldSkoolRS]

Antonia said:

I am bit naive here, but would someone really buy it given it won't move? I must admit I hadn't thought of ebay. Thanks!

We managed to sell our eldest's broken Mini (low compression on one cylinder and high repair costs meant that we wouldn't recoup the costs if we sold it after repairs). Admittedly it was a mechanic friend who bought it from her, but at least we got back a little more than she owed on it at the time.

So there are people around who might get some use out of the parts such as the engine, bodywork, trim to perhaps rebuild another example.

[22Rgt]

The car is easy to convert to a manual box. A scrapyard would charge around £80 for a box and maybe another £50 for the linkage and mounts ect flywheel and clutch. A cheapish workshop would charge no more than £250 to do the conversion which is straightforward. Worth considering rather than give it away on ebay.