Keep it or trade it?

[JH]

I have a 91 Taurus LX with 126K miles. It appears that the clutch is
slipping in the automatic trans. The engine burns no oil and it runs fine
other than that.

The eternal question is do i repair the tranny say for $1500 (is that about
right?) and (which was rebuilt 45K miles ago) and keep it or trade it?
Will I get another 50K of mileage out of it?

Do I cut my losses? I can afford a car payment and or the tranny rebuild.

Thanks.

Jim Halley

[Alan Quan]

If the car looks like crap (that is, paint is fading, interior is cracking,
etc.), get rid of it.

On the other hand, if the car still looks great, and you haven't had any major
mechanical troubles with the vehicle other than the transmission, and you hope
to keep it for awhiles longer, keep the car, but have the transmission rebuilt
by someone who knows about the problems that the early 90s Taurus transmissions
have, since chances are, that person could make the necessary modifications to
the transmission to let it last longer than 50k miles.

[ameijers]

Facing much the same problem myself. 92 taurus LX, had the tranny redone
18 months ago, never has been right. Been trying to sell it, but getting
no takers at a price I can live with. Trades are out of the question for
me, since dealers pay bottom dollar for the trade, and jack the price of
the new(er) car. I guess hi-mile Tauruses have such a bad rep nobody
wants to pay much for them. So the question is do I write off the 2-3
grand I figure this heap owes me (price+major repairs, minus probable
selling price, divided by years owned is still over my $1000/yr
tolerance factor), or just keep it as a light-duty, drive-it-gently
backup car, and try to get another 18-24 months out of it?

I keep telling myself, if money can solve it, it's not really a problem,
just a pain in the ass...

aem sends....