How old is your rig?

[Mortblanc]

One of the problems in trying to find a good used vehicle over here is the extreme mileage most vehicles endure. Most vehicles will have 100k on them by their fifth year and a 10 year old rig with less than 175k is unusual.

In this environment we find out what vehicles have the longer life spans with the least major repairs at any given age.

If you wait for a couple of years to buy a vehicle and allow the depreciation to be your friend the vehicle will likely have 80k miles and be just in time for all its major service cycles to kick in. Belt replacements, timing belts, ignition sensors, spark plug replacements at $100 per plug. By the ed of a year you will have paid out the difference between new and used in maintenance.

So we look for the 7-10 year old rigs, still in good shape but sporting 95-100k miles and all the replacement parts already cycled through. That will give us another 5-7 years of good use with only occasional repairs.

I had been driving the Ford for 4 years/30k miles and had spent less than $1000 in repairs.

The Jeep is on its double cycle. 175k miles, so everything that should go out at 70-80k that was replaced back in the day is going out again, plus all the things that were over engineered to last a lifetime have lasted their lifetime and are now breaking.

I always claimed that I was going to run the Jeep until the wheels fell off, but I am now having difficulty keeping up with the repairs. On the way home from buying one repair part another part goes out!