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In reply to the discussion: I felt sad this evening [View all]brewens
(13,538 posts)mechanic. I drive an old (but in fairly good condition) '81 GMC pickup, the kind of rig he likes working on. He told me to not ever "upgrade" to a newer truck and showed me what he was working on. This newer pickup had spark plugs that were a nightmare for even a guy like him to get to. He had a ridiculous amount of time into changing those out. A buddy sent me pics of him changing out the fuel pump on his truck. It's up on top of the gas tank. It's actually easier to pull the truck bed and jack that up to get to then to drop the fuel tank. Total bullshit!
At my income level, I'm scared to go out and get anything reasonably knew. They have that stuff designed so your average guy can't touch it and it racks up shop hours if you let the pros do it. A woman I work with recently had to pay two grand to get her SUV fixed. I could go out and find another old "runner" like I have for that. It's another way they are killing us.
My strategy is that I should really just be paying minimum insurance and gas for transportation, plus the odd repair bill. That shouldn't be much more than a couple thousand per year. That's mostly just getting to work and back every day, along with trips to the store after all. I wonder how people that don't make even what I do, or not much more, think that they can afford payments on new cars and full coverage insurance? I have no idea how some of them do it.