HEY DUNC

[Duncan]

[nature boy]

actually, if it's all mechanical problems a decent engine swap could solve all that and can be had sub-5k. the 1.8t (my old engine and brendan's engine) has been reliable as heck and seeing as the tranny was almost the same the swap would be pretty straight forward. you could spend another grand to get a crate engine, and then you should be worry free for another 120k km or so.

usually when you're looking at one problem, it snowballs into a million problems. that's what happened with my old vr6 that i'd fix one thing just to find that something else needs fixing.

[Duncan]

i'm hoping it doesn't snowball but yea, like you said it's a very real possibility. If that's the case then i'll just cut the fixes at some point and run it to the ground. If we need to buy a new car, then so be it. Hopefully we'll just be held back from buying a house for another year or so.

But as a cautionary measure, who wants to buy an 01 Jetta 2.0? $4k

[nature boy]

haha, i would just post up ads on craigslist and see if you get any hits. even if someone is interested, you don't have to sell it to them if you don't want to (or even reply to their email).

that's what i did with the golf for like a year. then finally when it came time to sell i knew what to ask for and it sold within a week of me really deciding on it.

[Duncan]

i don't think i'd sell it anyway. I think that there's more value in driving it to the ground than selling it. Selling that hunka junk would probably give me 3-4k max and that doesn't get me much. I'd sooner tune it up a bit and make sure it'll last another 5 years (hopefully). At this point, having a car that gets me from point a to b that may or may not die is of more value than a nice car that gets me from point a to b. If the problems come they'll come and i'll fix it if need be, if not, i'll just buy a new car then. 3k doesn't really help all that much imo if i'm buying a car. I think even if/when i buy a new car, i'll still keep the jetta as a secondary car.

but of course, that's just me. I'm just prioritising a new house higher than a new car. seeing as even though the skeptics out there are predicting a crash in the real estate market, Gordon's condo still increased in value by almost 50k in 2 years. it's like the longer i wait to buy a place, the more a property becomes unaffordable.

[nature boy]

yeah, it'll always go up. i think even in a "crash", it'll just plateau and not increase as fast as people think it should.

just for the record, i wasn't trying to convince you to buy another car or anything, i was just stating some options in case you didn't think about them, mostly because you keep talking about how much you hate the jetta. i personally can't last long driving a car that i hate. which is why i needed to get my current golf, the mazda just doesn't do it for me.

[Duncan]

haha, yea i can't last long driving a car that i hate either, but i guess my need to move out trumps my hate for the car. For the most part, if i can get the problems fixed, i'll be ok with it for now.

And i know you weren't trying to convince me of anything. I'm sure you and i know that i'm too focused on moving out to buy a car. There may be a possibility of both moving out and buying a car though, but like i said, it really depends on how much longer i can live in that house w/o going insane...

[nature boy]

if only we can win the lottery. i'd probably just go buy another car. or 5. and maybe a garage to store them all.

[Duncan]

starting to think i'll never win the lotto... and here i thought i had a chance...

[nature boy]

i may win. but i just have to buy tickets.