magaphoto

Maybe it was haunted? I had a '90 Geo Prizm bought with 36,000 miles that I am convinced had a ghost. There has to be some otherworldly malevolence involved for a car to behave as badly as that one did.

JayP71

I was young and in college at the time and therefore, was very finacially strapped at the time to where what repairs were made were done with me and dad doing them to save money. Plus, I only had one chance at college and I sacrificed my social life (I did not go out after work nor partyed with fellow co-workers or classmates, I went straight home to my textbooks) to ensure no distractions got in the way towards getting my degree (it was that or spend a life at a mass-production factory making widgets).

Plus I saw what happened with my sister partying and flunking out of college and how she worked retail and restaurants for years before getting a chance to go to junior college and getting her associates and doing well for herself. Plus, she bought a used Mustang (dad being a die-hard GM guy) and when it broke down constantly, was told 'the Ford dealer'. She 'learned the lesson' and quickly got a used GM to where when it broke down, 'I'll be right there with the tow chain and the lead pipe'. You learn to adapt and survive until you get out on your own.

Thinking back at that car, I forgot to mention that I had the car for about two months when the car started grosly oversteering to the right to the point of having to drive at 25 mph and hazard lights on to the alignment shop. They looked at the alignment caster/camber and the rear alignment found it to be in spec and then started marking the tires with chalk for each wheel. They ran the tires on the balancer and discovered that the right front tire was grossly off balance and they could not get the tire to balance with additional weights. They swapped the tire to another rim and the tire did the same thing on the other rim. They had an x-ray machine and x-rayed the tire and discovered that the tire had broken one of the steel belts that made it a steel belted radial. New tires (for safety), I had no warranty recourse to go back on the manufacturer since the previous owner bought the tires.

While we were there, they discovered that the left front shock absorber was red and the right front shock absorber was black (GM factory) and questioned why wasn't both shock absorbers replaced at the same time. I didn't know since I had the car only 2 months. Replaced the shock absorbers and the ride improved even more.

The worse dealing with the car was in early 1990, I was out of college and had a steady job, the auto manufacturers started offering the 2.9% interest (and finding out from friends who went this route that you paid sticker price non-negotiable and some dealers started 'second-stickering' with 200.00 detail jobs, 100.00 pinstripes, etc. The local Chevy dealer were tacking on 500.00 second sticker on Monte Carlo SS, Corvettes, and Camaro Z28's calling it 'Limited Availability' as if they had to search long and hard for the car and people were dumb enough to pay second sticker price just to get low interest.) Jeep had ran a commercial on Cherokees announcing 0% interest if you did a 24 month payment plan. So I went and test drove a Cherokee (no second stickers) knowing about sticker price non-negotiability and figuring that I could dump-trade the car. The Jeep dealer came back with the paperwork with a 700.00 'dealer prep fee' and a 250.00 'warranty processing fee' (for something that was mine by entitlement) and then told me that after reviewing the car, they did not want the car. I walked out and months later bought the used Grand Prix LE from the Pontiac dealer and sold the MC outright.

A friend of mine who is a mechanic saw it at the repair shop where he worked in the summer of 1990 and had told me that the water pump was replaced that February and that when the air conditioner was on and the accelerator petal was pressed, the engine would cut off and they can't figure out what is causing it..... (I silently laughed...)

I never figured out what was the 'jinx' of that car. It was not a rebuilt wreck nor a buy-back-lemon (my state will designate this on the title). I do remember finding paperwork where the elderly lady (who had the car before dad's best friend's neighbor car dealer bought it from her probate/estate sale) had bought the car from the Plymouth dealer. I believe that it was problem-plagued from the factory and the first owner dumped it without pursuing the lemon law.

avlight

RalphieDC

god that thing fell apart..
bought for $500 with 140,000km/s on it
Alternator died about a month later
Kept overheating in traffic .. found out the 'electric fan wasnt coming on at all.. ended up having to wire a switch onto the dash to turn it on manually...
went through about 3 starters
Sunroof leaked horribly.. few times i got in to discover a big puddle in the back seat
Exhaust fell off ( almost all of it from the midpipe back )
Alignment was all wrong.. it would wear out the front tires in about 15k, but only on 1 side.

and then after a while it just wouldnt run right at all, except when cold.... constantly stalling once hot

Then my grandpa handed me down his 91 POntiac sunbird le ( 3.1l v6 ftw) which is another story altogether.. wasn't anywhere near as bad as the buick but still a really shitty car..

Stuff you wouldnt normally expect to break would break.. Like the ignition cylinder broke and I couldn't switch the car off ... or take my key out... THis on a car with just over 160,000k

Cars seem to be more reliable now that I don't deliver pizza anymore. I just picked up a 1985 Peugeot 505 turbo with 190,000 MILES on the clock for $500..Its pretty sweet except the smoke clouds that come out when you start it

HOT TIP - go to craigslist, search ' turbo' ;)

donkeyassman

Tell me you got some tail in that thing.

Bumblebee

No man, wasn't sniping at anyone. I just assume that anytime I buy an older vehicle that I'm going to have some surprises. When I buy a used car I shop so that I have about $500-800 left over for repairs. I've been burned a couple of times and I learned.

JayP71

When on the test drive, listen for tapping comming from the engine. If the engine has more than 110,000 miles on it and you hear tapping, it need's it's timing chain guides replaced. The timing chain has two plastic guides which eventually break. The one on the driver's side goes first, and when it does the steel timing chain will start slapping against the aluminum timing chain cover housing (making the tapping noise). If not fixed in time it will wear through the aluminum housing right into the water pump. Then your coolant system dumps into your oil pan.

JoeWoodsprite

(1): First of all, used parts at the auto parts store were nearly impossible to find because most auto parts stores had listing for the 3.8L Buick (distributor in front) but no listings for the 3.8L Chevrolet (distributor in rear). In fact, to get engine Parts, we had to tell auto parts stores that this was for a 1982 Pontiac Grand Prix because they had the chevrolet 3.8L V6.

Bought the car in 1987 from a car dealer who was a neighbor of my dad's best friend who picked the car up from a probate/estate sale. immaculately clean, garaged kept with 39,000 miles. In the three years I had it.

Starter died - replaced

exhaust rusted, replaced tailpipe, muffler, and muffler pipe from the catalytic converter.

windshield washer motor died - replaced

Radiator seal on top hose cracked, resoldered with plummers bar solder and benz-o-matic propane torch

air injector reactor tube rusted out (they were on the exhaust manifold back then) which caused the computer to flash trouble codes relating to emissions and would not pass state inspection because of exhaust leaks. Dealer knew of widespread problem and wanted extortionary amount of 150.00 for the part. Dad, who used to work in the propane industry made a makeshift one out of copper tubing with the old threads from the old A.I.R. until he found one in a junkyard a hundred miles away for 35.00 off a totalled 1984 MC that appeared to have been a recently replaced part on that car.

Spark plugs were a pain and the best way to change them was to jack the car up to where the wheels hung down naturally and drill holes in the plastic wheelwells to put socket and extensions through

Car would not start in parking lot of college. Towed the car home and found the spark plugs so flooded with Gas. Discovered computer controlled carburaetor had bad castings at the bottom of the die-cast injection holes with thin aluminum casting that expanded with heat to the point of breaking the aluminum creating gaps that leaked gas (before it went to the jets) into manifold. (known documented problem). Rebuilt with rebuild kit, repaired the aluminum castings with JB Weld and changed the plugs.

EGR valve 'stuck' and froze - replaced

Discovered that the computer had a mind of it's own and could recompensate any calibration/adjustment you made to get more horsepower. I had placed 'homemade hot plugs' in the car and the computer somehow knew this and re-adjusted itself and started 'shaking'. The regular plugs went back in.

I could drive the car with the vents on. However when the air conditioner was cut on at idle and then the accelerator pedal was pushed coming off at a stoplight, the car would shut off. Never figured that one out and limped the car with vents until winter when I graduated college, had a stable job, and sold it with 63,000 miles to a private citizen and bought a 1989 Grand Prix LE that was mechanically and interior wise trouble free until 100,000 but had to be repainted twice under GM's paint warranty.

avlight

DoneBlowedUp

Mad_Science

crimsontiger6

Frost Face

They run forever if they're taken care of, but if they're neglected, they're pretty pricey to bring back up to snuff. (see above) I'd say look for something that's been driven and not sitting and stay away from anything that's "just got XX wrong."

Just say no to overheating or exhaust leaks (iron head + Al block + heat = problems).

Mad_Science

Do lawyers really have time to spam?

Frost Face

HoubaHouba!

You must open your claim within the first 24,000 miles or 24 months, whichever occurs first. If you do not meet this deadline, then other consumer laws can help.

My office handles lemon law related cases statewide in Texas. You can go to my website for more information [www.texaslemon.com]

texaslemon

Slip yokes be damned - it's called a "ball & trunnion"!

That was the only other thing aside from the P/S pump to fail on my '64 in the time that I had it.

(Press the "reverse" button - LOUD METALLIC CLUNK! - Press "drive" - LOUD METALLIC CLUNK!)

Luckily there is a great drive shaft shop here on LI that was able to rebuild mine.

JohnnyWagon

It ran great when I first saw it and then ran like shit as soon as I got it home. I got it from a younger kid who didn't drive it, but worked on it - didn't even have his permit yet.

The timing was WAY off and the harmonic balancer was shot. With $50 for the balancer and a tune-up I did myself she was golden. Since I just check the oil and water. Time for new brakes, though.

skaz

SRekauqh

It was amazing how after the first time I called this kid he would just start telling me about all of the terrible things that he did to that car... and there was no recourse for me to take. Of course all of this slipped his mind and the car was "just perfect" until a minute after I handed his father the cash. The last conversation I had with him ended with a conversation about how "These turbo cars are so unreliable, thats why I went and got a Ford mustang V6. Lots of power, and very reliable". A perfectly unreliable car thats "good as new" eh?

@JayP71: I hope that wasn't a comment for me. I would have loved that 3kgt, but man what a pain in the ass to work on. I went back to get a second DSM instead (this was supposed to be my DD) and I couldn't have been happier, but I still loved the look and feel of that car.

Frost Face

SRekauqh

My own lemon was a 96 Saab 900S I bought a few years ago for $5K with only 66K miles on it. I drove it for just 20K miles before dumping it off to some other poor sap.

-clutch - if you get a pre-98 900, get an automatic, because the clutch *will* fail. When the cable starts sticking, even if you shift beautiful, it destroys the flywheel necessitating an expensive clutch job. That's after replacing the cable a few times...it helps to be a shade-tree mechanic.

-starter
-battery (twice, somehow the starter failure killed it)
-serpentine belt (tension pulley failed twice)
-power antenna
-CV joints
-radio
-bunch of other small stuff

Doesn't sound like much, but I owned a 95 Elantra that stranded me once in 100K miles. The Saab stranded me 5(!) times in 18 months despite $4K in repairs.

brandegee

I've bought 2 cars and a motorcycle on ebay and had great experiences each time. In fact, on the bike, it needed some sort of electrical part for about $150 right after I got it (for about $1750 if I remember correctly). The seller wrote me an email about a week after I got it asking how it was doing, and I told him "great" and told him about the part - he drove over to my place and gave me $150 in cash. Crazy! He wouldn't take no for a answer either when I told him I expected to have repairs on a cheap bike.

rb1971

Yes, I've had a few amazingly durable cheap cars. We had a Ford Aerostar for years. We bought it for $1900. Drove that thing everywhere, used it as a kid hauler, and twice as a moving truck. The only non-routine repairs I did were to replace the waterpump and starter. Had the van for 4 and a half years. Traded it this last march with 215K on it and it still ran okay.

JayP71

My new lemon was a 2002 Nissan Frontier. Bought with 16 miles on the odometer. Got it for a good price and traded my Dodge Moneypit, er I mean Dakota.

CONSTANT computer and electrical problems out of this truck. I had the thing in the shop about 8 times for assorted problems. I talking to a lawyer and initiating lemon law procedings. Then one evening at work a Waste Management truck backed into the loading dock, not noticing the little Frontier parked there... Yup, accordianed it. He was so shocked that I wasn't pissed at him. It got the truck out of my hair and I thought it was SOOOOO appropriate that it had been run over by a garbage truck.

JayP71

He blew the lower radiator hose and thought he could make it home on the xpresway. Wound up locking the engine up. And a engine with 280,000+ miles does not react well to being seized. When I got it freed, I couldn't keep straight 40wt oil in it.

I junked it and purchased the '87 Fifth avanue, which was another used, but nearly industructable tank.

PolishDon

I'm not saying that the 'thousand dollar car' doesn't have it's place, but to expect any kind of reliability at that price point is idiotic.

However, I'm sure we'll be hearing from some guy who bought a Fiero for $50.00 and is whining that he only got 20k miles out of it before it caught afire and melted on I80.

powermatic

Bought a '64 Chrysler New Yorker (for $2,500) sight unseen on the 'Bay and had it shipped from CA to NY. It turned out to be an awesome car that needed very little...I ended up selling it for a profit not too long ago and driving it up to RI for the buyer.

But like Slushbox said - Caveat Emptor. It really does depends on the seller though. Feedback is your friend.

However I'm sure that for every good experience, there must be a few bad ones.

JohnnyWagon

In the 10 years we had it (~110,000 miles)

Rebuilt engine twice

It would eat keys - they would get so worn that you would have to have another one made. Eventually keys would fall out while you were driving.

Starter went bad

Batteries would just die at least every 2 to 3 years with no warning.

Park/Neutral safety switch went bad and it would only start in neutral unless you really slammed it into park.

Air Conditioning compressor died in 103 degree Texas heat. $700 to fix and they wanted another $200 plus to replace the medium fan speed switch which we didn't replace.

The car still looked like new when we sold it but smoked like crazy.

John_W_KCMO

Hyman Decent

~25,000 miles - One of the glove box door hinges broke. Never bothered to fix, still works fine on just one side.

~42,000 miles - Entire engine (short block) replaced under warranty by VW North America. (Water pump also replaced when engine was replaced.) Engine killed when a valve stem holder broke, allowing engine to ingest valve, which destroyed head, piston & possibly block. Timing belt had been changed just a few thousand miles before this, but the mechanics at the VW Dealer (not the dealer at which the timing belt had been done) found that the timing was still correct, even after the catastrophic engine failure. Repair took approximately 1 week. Rental car paid for by extended warranty.

~44,000 miles - Broke down and left me stranded when a fuel filter connection slipped loose & engine tried to run on a 100% air-air mixture.

~Somewhere in the mid 40's. Massive oil leak from turbo oil supply line leads to another trip on the friendly back of Farmington Motor Sports flat bed to VW dealer.

~50,000 miles - Glow plug harness failed, replaced under extended warranty.

~63,000 MAF Sensor (Mass Air Flow Sensor, if you know TDI's, you've heard of this) replaced - paid for by extended warranty.

~68,000 miles Radiator return hose replaced after sudden failure dumped all the engine coolant. Left me stranded.

~72,000 miles Front brake rotors & pads replaced. The fact that I got 72,000 miles out of the original pads/rotors suggests how good this car could have been.

~74,000 miles - Brake booster & brake master cylinder replaced - paid for by extended warranty.

~79,000 miles alternator replaced - paid for by extended warranty.

Thank god I had purchased a $0 deductible 6/100 extended warranty on that car. I sold it with six months and 15K miles to go left on the warranty. Between the cost of the repairs and the added value of being able to sell a 5.5 year old car with a full warranty in effect I think I may be the one person ever for whom an extended warranty was a good use of money.

BTW- I sold the Jetta with all of this disclosed in the text of the auction, and even emailed people a 30+ page .pdf on request if they wanted to see the scans of all the repair records. This was a car that only ever saw the dealer, and it still had massive problems.

comedian

Electrical - It would burn up either the alternator or starter at least once per year, without warning. Usually managed to happen at least 100 miles from home, after sunset.

Exhaust - crumbled to dust, and eventually consisted of little more than exhaust wrap and clothes hangers.

Body - I think it was actually pre-oxidized before it was painted.

Cooling system - good god.

Transmission - perpetually leaked, was never tracked down.

Interior - the seatback recliner which crapped out, which made for fun when the seat would suddenly collapse rearward from time to time.

Oh, and I will never forget the sunroof. Leaked like crazy from new. My sister will never forget when she did me a favor and drove it through an automatic car wash. She said the sheet of water pouring in from the front edge was rather beautiful, except it was pouring all over her.

I sold it for $75. The last GM my family bought for 20 years.

danhar2

In my case, I bought an '86 Cutlass Calais 5-spd for $500.00 to get me through a winter in high school, so I didn't have to drive my '66 GTO (this was in the late '90s). It lasted through the winter, and then I delivered pizzas in it for a year with no problems. I then sold it to my friend for the same amount I bought it for. He drove it for a year, then sold it to another mutual friend, who somehow ended up ramming the rear shocks into the trunk.

ZeGerman

I don't know much about the ebay warranty/insurance policy, but I would imagine that like most 3rd party warranties it isn't worth the paper it's written on.

no_slushbox

m98cox

Bo Darville

Ford Super-Duper with the soda can in the drive shaft wins it for me.

ZeGerman

Yeah, my cousin bought a '96 Impreza off ebay. He paid a decent price and got an okay car for the price he paid. Only issue was the cam seals blowing oil, but we changed em when we did the 20 foot long timing belt.

He got what he paid for. I personally wouldnt commit to an ebay purchase without a good look tho.

danio3834

Anyone have a good eBay experience that can assuage my fears?

SwatLax

Long story short, I hate the seller, but I hate ebay's lame insurance even more. After they pay out to you it is there job to get the money from the seller. AKA: not gonna happen, they are just there to stamp deny after they give you the runaround. I will never buy a car on ebay again!

Frost Face

Frost Face

One big upside: the privacy panel that drops down over the luggage space when you shut the hatch, is easy to separate from its lifting points. Lowered, with the hatch up, it's a very convenient height and size to change diapers on, with all your baby gear in the trunk right there at your knees, and the raised hatch keeping you out of the rain.

Elhigh

Yeah, no kidding.

VW tried to charge my buddy for a new clutch after 10,000kms cause they replaced the transmission under warranty. They said they wouldnt warranty the transmission unless he paid for a new clutch. It clearly wasn't worn, so after some argument they put a new one in as "goodwill".

However, Ford didn't say a thing to my Focus driving friend when they did his trans, and he beat his up badly.

danio3834

Some cars are just plain difficult. the Car in question was a 2002 Volvo S60. It was a nice car, 50,000miles on it. The darn thing would intermittantly go into 'limp' mode but not throw any codes. The car came to our shop because the Volvo dealer had it for 3 weeks and couldnt fix it.

It was my job to drive the car with scanner in hand and try and reproduce the concern. When it finally came back, 2 weeks at the shop, we found the voltage on the remote throttle actuator was out of whack. Even after replacing that, the issue still came back. The guy ended up so frustrated with the car, he went and traded it in.

danio3834

With all the severe problems, the most "lemony" issue was fairly minor. I parked the car, and pulled up on the parking break, and tore it completely out of its fixture. Made me feel like the Hulk.

SonOfSlam

1.If you're buying a car from somebody who put white out on the title. Walk away.

2.If you want a VW / Audi, don't ever go to a Jim Ellis dealership. Unless of course you enjoy 6 months of pain, and then another few weeks dealing with VWOA.

bigusfickes

Thing is, the '77 wasn't a beater. It was probably one of the cleanest '77 Mercs that I could find in Michigan! (This happened back around 1985). It only had 76K on the odometer and looked great. It even fooled a mechanic friend who test drove the car. He actually put the engine and trans AT COST because the car was falling apart so bad.

I don't drive "beaters". All of the cars I own or have owned are nice cars, but I put a crap load of mileage on it (my current '96 Town Car is currently getting about 1,000 miles A WEEK on it.) It's at 155K miles and climbing fast.

PolishDon

2nd story (this one's me):
Somehow I got it into my 20year old head that my 91 Wrangler with 70k miles and like 12kmi on a new engine (that's a different story) wasn't going to be reliable enough, and wasn't build "hardcore" enough for all the offroading that I was doing.

...so for $8k I bought an 85 4Runner with 186k miles, but $50k on a "rebuilt" engine. It had been sitting a bunch (the driver's seat was broken and there was a black widow in the front suspension), but those 22REs are supposed to run forever.

Also, it had an exhaust leak. Said exhaust leak would never quite seal up. Also, the oil seal on the front of the crank blew, and I had to put in a quart of oil every 50 miles driving from San Diego to San Jose.

Then, the head gasket blew. I didn't have the skills/tools/space to do it myself, so I took it to a really good shop to basically rebuild the whole top end. Every time they took off more parts, they found more and more evidence that the previous "rebuild" was done by a bunch of squirrels carrying tools. A borrowed $2600 later, and it was ready to run, with a 12 month warranty on all the work.

It got stolen 6 weeks later, never to be heard from again.

Mad_Science

no_slushbox

Len wanted a new car, he had a 91 Acura (don't remember the name, same as the Accord of that year) that was plagued with transmission problems. Apparently they put the computer under the seat, which was always wet because the sunroof leaked.

He got a line on a 96 BMW 328ci. It was being sold by "Some Russian Dude in Delaware." It had some rear quarter damage that had been fixed up but the paint on the bumper had spiderwebbed a little bit here and there. The car had a Maryland Salvage Title (which apparently are given out like candy there) so he had to go through a big process to get it reconstructed and re-tagged in PA. He finally gets the thing home, and the fun starts. It overheats and cuts off all the time but nobody can figure out why. The sensors and thermostats are all working right and there are no leaks anywhere. Then the radio cuts on and off, so he replaces it with the one from his Acura. In the trunk he put in a big bass bin with one of those 1/2 Farad Capacitors. It blows up. the ABS light keeps coming on because stuff keeps getting caught in the brakes because there's too much travel in the caliper. Why? Who knows. It still overheats and the lights still come on but he just ignores them now.

DeeJayQueue

danio3834

In 1 year of ownership, he probably threw 40 trouble lights. The tire pressure sensor light kept coming on, so the dealer would replace the sensor, but the indicator would come back again (there were like 8 rounds of this). Eventually, they had to replace the whole traction control system computer (like a $5500 part), which worked for a little while, until they had to replaced the whole ECU, along with the traction control computer again. Also in this time span something in the interior quit...I believe it was the door locks or door handles.

The thing that really sucked was that the dealer insisted on doing the same unsuccessful repair like 5 times before trying something else. This of course meant 5 separate trips to the dealer. Also, as all of his jobs were "1 day" jobs, the dealer wouldn't give out a loaner. When the job inevitably ran over to day 2, then he had the option of (somehow) coming down to get a loaner before they closed at like 5.

Funny part was, once they finally fixed everything, he sold it. Never will understand that.

Mad_Science

Case in point:
2005- traded in my FoMoCo lease because tuition is outrageous and bought a 1992 FoMoCo Tauras for $500. Drove it for 6 months and the tranny blew. With family connections (parts manager at a Ford dealer) it would have cost me $1000 to fix so I junked it (got a hundy for it) and bought a 1994 Escort wagon for $700. That one lasted almost a whole year until the engine blew up on I-94 during afternoon rush, again about $1000 to fix so I junked that one too (same yard gave me 200 for it). Now I'm into the sweetness that is my 1995 Aspire that cost me 800, it gets 34MPG and runs like a champ ( I just need it to last about a year.)
My point is if you're going to buy a POS be ready to buy another one cause you never know how long they're going to run. Especially if it's a Ford.

TheMadAdder

His fix whenever this happened while driving? Throw the car into neutral, and reset the ignition in order to reset the status of the ECU. It was hilarious to watch him basically turn his car on and off while driving.

respawn

The selling dealer and the warranty company paid for most of it, but it was just too many problems to deal with. When I sold it, it still had the unknown suspension problem and one of the turbo oil lines smoked when you accelerated hard.

HankScorpio

StuPidaso

three years later i gave it away

~BC

bobcostas

The first 40-series, both the S and V, are why I will never buy from you again. And yes, I am an idiot for giving the V40 a try after the crap with the S40, but I got two dogs.

In any case. One month after getting the S40, glass chips begin to rain off the sunroof onto my head. Into the shop for a week and all I get is, "We're not repairing it under warranty, you must have stepped on the roof." And, of course, they removed the sunroof while we were arguing over this, so the car sat at the dealer for two more weeks until a factory rep could inspect it and say, "Oh yeah, the factory installed the glass wrong, we'll fix it."

Then, the rotors warped after 5000 miles. The brake pads had to be replaced at 8000 miles. And 15000. And 22000. There was a very loud rattle in the rear from a "broken headliner clip." It was fixed. It broke again. It was fixed. It broke again. The headlight bulbs had to be replaced four times in 25000. The gaskets on the turbo leaked. They were replaced. Fell apart again. Replaced. Fell apart again.

Then we got the V40 for the two dogs. The entire fuel system had to be replaced after two months of ownership. The brake pads had to be replaced at 9000, 17000 and 26000 miles. The immobilizer malfunctioned and shut the car down. Fixed four times, malfunctioned four times. The rotors had to be replaced twice in 35000 miles. The spark plugs built up so much carbon over the course of 5000 miles the engine would shut down if I didn't pull them and clean them.

I wanted to love you Volvo. But I hate you so bad. Even that little C30 can't tempt me back.

b.borrman

I have a friend who recently (2 months ago) got rear-ended. He was in his factory certified used Honda Civic, like a 2004 model or something. Took it to the repair shop to get it assessed, and surprise! It's been totaled before. The repair was some hack job, too, which explained why some of the panels never lined up like we thought they should. That Honda dealer was in a whole heap of trouble.

Just what did their certified techs look at, if they didn't find the repaired frame damage, I wonder?

Jon

However, during those 3 years and 10,000 miles, I had to replace:

-Engine
-Transmission (TWICE)
-Motor Mounts (countless times!!)
-Radiator (twice)
-4 bbl Carb (two or three times)
-Both cylinder heads
-All four coil springs
-REAR AXLE !!
-Countless electrical shorts and problems
-Tires (repair or replace about every 3 months)
-A/C Twice
-Battery (twice or three times)
-Gas Tank (Local kids damaged, but hey...)
-Muffler (about one every two to three months) I would explode them due to a backfire.

Joke was: "Flip a coin, heads I won't make it there, tails I won't make it back"

I finally sold it for $600 three years and about $6,000 poorer. Every time I got fed up enough to sell it, I thought that I must have gotten the last bug out of the car.

And before you think I was rough on the car, I actually purchased a used 1984 Olds Delta 88 since the Mercury was laid up with a blown motor for 6 months. I put on over 200,000 miles in about 5 years on that car with no major issues. It died around 280,000 to 320,000 miles. I never knew for sure since the odometer gave out a year before the car did !

The car after that, a 1987 Fifth Avenue went over 200,000 without an issue either....

PolishDon

Bought 2002 M3 at a dealer auction through a "friend" of my brother's. He sneaked me on the lot to take a look at the car.

After my cursory inspection and my dependance on this "friend" for his input from countless auctions and owning a BMW 330ci, I figured, well if he can get it around the wholesale price, great. He did get it at wholesale, but now the fun starts.

A week later, I notice oil dripping. Take it to the family mechanic who goes to put some dye in the oil to look for leaks, only to find that there was already dye in the oil and when he flashed the UV on the engine it just looked like the sun.

Mistake 1 - letting the family mechanic take a stab at it as he said it wouldn't be a problem and 10 years of going to him for my dad's 928, the ill fated jaguar and never having a problem, I let him have at it.

6 weeks and 7000 dollars later (these idiots didn't know what they were doing and by the time I figured it out (2 weeks in) they had the cylinder head off and made it a pain in the ass to get somewhere else. They wound up sending it to a BMW person on a flat bed to have them finish.

After that fun times, I got about 8 months before I'd be driving along, the power would stutter and the EML light would come on. Took it to a BMW (non dealer) place here in burbank who ran a diagnosis and after much befuddlement determined that it was the throttle potentiometers and the fuel filter.

Changed those out, the problem is still going. I take it back and they are as confused as ever. Fuck it, I went to the dealer and had them connect it to the GT-1.

Turns out the first guys only replaced one potentiometer so that one had 4 faults and the other had 286. I believe that repair was 1500 dollars, but there was also a short in the wiring that made my radio turn off when I slid open the vanity mirror. That cost another whatever amount.

Long story short, this deal from the "friend" wound up costing me more than what I would have paid just going factory certified, which I will do if I EVER buy a used car again.

DokterDitka

-starter died (the day after I bought it)
-split the belt in the right front tire
-snapped 4 of 5 lug studs on the left rear wheel
-two distributor housings cracked, letting water in, causing it to...
-...randomly fail to start, or massively misfire
-reverse only worked first thing in the morning, eventually it would hunt frantically between the top two gears on backroads
-rear air suspension height sensor failed, so car would constantly try and pump up rear shocks.
-gears stripped in trunklid pulldown, so motor would whine endlessly
-ABS sensor failed
-warped front rotors.

That's off the top of my head, and I know there was more. I spent more trying to keep it running then I'd spent buying it. I eventually sold it for $1000 & a 350 Chevy V8, and bought a $500 '78 Nova that was acres more reliable.

Pixel

I just bought the car from an old man who had receipts for tons of work he'd just had done on the car - engine was overhauled, new brakes, new suspension (almost everything), new interior bits including fixing the sunroof. I got it for less than $1000 and the paint was perfect, as was the interior. It was a dream car, really.

Within the first week the sunroof broke again. I rigged it up to work, but it looked bad. I didn't bother fixing it because I saw what the guy before got charged for it.

Within 3 months the radiator had given out and the engine had overheated. It now putted white smoke when I first started her up.

Both rear brake cylinders went out in the first 6 months and after I replaced them they had to be replaced every 3 months thereafter.

Adding insult to (financial) injury a cat climbed into my open window one 120 degree summer day in Arizona and peed in my dash vents. The car now always had a nice strong whiff of urine whenever it was in motion or the AC was one (which only gradually failed.)

Soon after the brakes issue the alternator went out. Most expensive alternator I had and have purchased, can't remember exactly what it cost but it was upward of $200. I had to borrow the money to buy it from my girlfriend's dad because I'd just quit my ice cream delivery job (which involved a lot of driving and is probably what killed the BMW.) I actually put off fixing this for a couple months, I just picked high ground to park on and push-started the thing. I had a job that I drove all day, so sometimes finding a good parking spot meant parking 1/2 away from where I needed to be.

By the end of 12 months of ownership I'd realized that I'd developed a head gasket issue, so I poured waterglass in the radiator. That actually did fix it, but I'm guessing it gummed up the radiator a bit because the car now ran 20-30 degrees hotter.

All went well for a while, I just had to keep adding water (because it spilled over any time I turned off the car,) change the brake cylinders & check the oil frequently.

Then one day I was sitting in traffic, they were doing construction and I got bored. I stopped paying attention to my temp gauge and before I knew it steam was pouring from under hood. I gently rolled it into a gas station and killed the engine. I'm out of water and my oil looks like milk. Fuck. End of beemer.

I actually still have the car and I consider fixing it every once in a while, since my dad wants to fix it, too. He'd frequently come over to my house, borrow the car (sneak into my house at 3 AM and steal my keys) for a drive to the casino. He broke my e-brake and smashed one of my sideview mirrors, so I won't blame the car for that.

It was a fun car, the most fun I've had in a vehicle, actually, but she sure was a lemon. An old lemon at that. But she only had 30k (real mileage) on the odo when I got 'er.

skaz

Some guy bought a new super duty pick-up, and from day one it had a mysterious rattle that no one could find.

Well, it had been in and out of our shop many times, and we couldnt figure it out. Finally they put it up on the lift, and started it up, put it in drive to see if they could pin-point the rattle.

Turns out some monkey at the factory put an soda can INSIDE the driveshaft before it was welded on the other end, and it was clanking around inside...quality is job one!

Speedie

-radiator
-turbo
-flywheel
-throwout bearing (got really really noisy)

The transmission was a whole separate ordeal. They replaced most of the internal parts, since it ate itself somehow. I wasn't abusive to it, I drove it like a normal person.

I won't call it a lemon, though. The dealership was always helpful with getting the work done, and they always gave me a free shop loaner or a rental car. I traded it in a long time ago, but I'd still buy another Subaru.

jeremyc

Theozoa

That about sums it up.

Ray Wert Jr

WRONG

In the 22 months I owned it it was in the shop 17 times for problems ranging from the AC quitting during a north Texas summer to a massive coolant leak when the water pump gave up the ghost.

I ended up filing a lemon law complaint and Audi bought it back from me. Several years later I was researching a car on CarFax and decided to look for it. There it was, sold somewhere in the northeast as a used car. Nowhere did it note that Audi had bought it back under the lemon law.

frank williams