Last Thursday Bird arrived home after work with her car spewing steam from under the hood and a pink liquid dripping steadily all over the driveway. She said her coolant light came on during her commute home. No kidding, I thought.
Her sister took her to work on Friday and then we borrowed one of my parent’s vehicles for the long weekend. We had a wedding to attend on Friday night so I couldn’t take the car in until Saturday morning. By then, all the antifreeze was completely drained out of the car, so I went to get some more for the drive to the shop…that cost me about $10.
The shop was super busy on Saturday, but the guy told me they would do a cooling system test for $40 and then they would go from there depending on the test results. On Tuesday, they called to say the test showed we had some leaking coolant hoses (duh!). All they had to do was replace the hoses and fill ‘er back up wth antifreeze and we’d be good to go.
$289.56 later and Bird has her car back.
We both have older cars (’99 and ’01 – both paid off) so we understand that these things happen…but it’s still not very fun to pay for. Thankfully, we have a car fund (savings for a future car) that we put $200 a month in to and we’ll use funds from that to pay for the repair.
Here’s a total breakdown of the repair:
- Cooling System Test – $39.95
- Hazardous Waste Fee – $2.50
- Hose 1 – $29.95
- Hose 2 – $29.95
- Labor to install hoses – $141.30
- Antifreeze – $16
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{ 1 comment… read it below or add one }
As you noted, repairs are definitely the reality of driving older cars. At least it wasn’t the radiator itself – that would have cost you about double. But I would guess the cost of repairs is pretty much balanced by the money you’re saving on your auto insurance and maybe on your registration fees (do you have a usage tax in MN?), depending on how much you factor in for the annoyance/anxiety costs that comes with having a creaky car. We have six cars in the family motor pool right now, and the two newer ones almost cost more to insure and register than the other four combined.