Thursday, August 11, 2005

Car Talk

It is amazing the amount of stuff that can accumulate in just a few months in van that carts around 3 children on a daily basis.






The good news is I found a number of shoe 'matches'

Now, why would a normally sane and heat-avoiding female be out emptying and detailing in 97 degree temperatures? Hubby has decided that we should buy a new car before we sink anymore money into the van we have now. I am ambivalent about this purchase. The car is only a few months shy of being paid off, and I was going to pay it off early this month. But he would rather use that money for a down payment.

He has a point that the car it is really starting to act flaky on us, and during the course of our life with it we have had problems, which we thought we had solved. The serpentine belt broke on us twice, we had to have a new transmission put in and the van eats brakes. Recently it has developed a water leak, so that the floorboard becomes wet when it rains hard and some strange intermittent electrical problems (lights, windows).

As the person who has been elected to make sure our bank account remains out of the red each month, I was just looking forward to no car payment for awhile. The only thing that I ask is that the new payment is not anymore than what we pay now. We can pay what we have now, we cannot afford to go any higher.

So we have been on a search to find a relatively decent used car that we believe is worth the price and one we do not mind making payments on. My *wish* car is an Odyssey, but in researching those we realized that the only ones we could afford would be as old as the car we have now, with just as many miles and only if they would let us finance for 5 yrs.

It has narrowed back down to a Dodge Grand Caravan (what we have now). We have actually found a basic, used 2005 that we can afford. But with the problems we have had with the old Dodge I am worried. I have heard that they "fixed" the transmission issues (that they said they never had), and consumer reports has started to rank them higher these last couple of years. Has anyone out there had any experiences with the Grand Caravans, say 2002 and newer?

I'll let ya'll know what happens.

Peace

Amy

1 comment:

J-Lynn said...

*sigh* our van was *just* paid off and it's all but dead now. The windows don't roll up (not a good thing with a flakey a/c and 100 weather), it doesn't start hte first time around, amongst other things. It's murphys law ya know. ;-)

BTW, we had just as much junk in ours. on the plus side, I found all the missing socks! ;-) On the downside, I found some MIA chicken nuggets as well - gross!

A family of six living and learning. You might catch us outside in the mud or working on crafts. We always seem to be on the go, come on and join us.