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Old 01-24-2018, 11:23 AM   #6 (permalink)
Ecky
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Quote:
Originally Posted by redpoint5 View Post
Thanks for looking.

The tricky part is estimating the various costs with any accuracy. You might need to spend $400 on tires, but how do you need new tires? If it's once every 4 years, then you would divide $400 by 4 years and increase the maintenance category by $100.

I don't know if it's easier to estimate maintenance and repairs as a yearly cost, or to estimate it for the duration of ownership and just extrapolate out the yearly cost from that. What do you think?
A lot of maintenance items have a randomness to them.

Just using my car as an example, the Insight has no real major maintenance items. The transmission fluid is "lifetime", the timing chain is "lifetime". It calls for 7500 mile oil changes, which come to around $20, and would be twice per year at 15k miles. Coolant flush is the price of a bottle of antifreeze and half an hour outside, if you do your own work.

Most develop a downshift grind from 3rd to 2nd gear, which has no impact on driving if you double clutch. ISB will probably go sometime between 200k and 400k miles. Hybrid batteries eventually die but can last 20+ years in a cool climate with regular but infrequent grid charges - mine is 9 years old and behaves like a new battery, but that wouldn't be the case if I lived in the Southwest.

My car is from the south and it had its battery replaced in 2009 under warranty by Honda (no cost). I replaced a leaking master cylinder with a Rock Auto piece for ~$70 at 200k miles. Otherwise, the records I have show that since it was new, it's had oil changes, 3 sets of tires, and a 12v battery every 5-7 years. Aside from oil, these are maintenance items shared by all cars.

So, maintenance costs would be... zero? $70 over 18 years = $4 per year?
But how to project that into the future?
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