Hey everyone, I’ve always driven used cars, and my current ride, a 2014 Ford Focus, just landed me with a $5,000 repair estimate for a clutch failure in the manual transmission along with some other issues. I’ve always thought as long as repair costs stay under what I paid for the car, I’d keep fixing it.
Bought it in 2020 for around $10k, and with this latest repair, I’ll have put about $7k into it. I’m starting to wonder if I should keep putting money into it or just move on. I’m leaning toward fixing it and trying to get a couple more years out of it, but I was in a tough spot when I bought this car and knew about the 2014 Focus issues but didn’t have much choice.
Is this way of thinking right? At what point do you all give up on a car?
Wait a minute… $5,000 for a clutch and some other stuff? Is this a real manual, like ‘I push the pedal and shift gears’ kind of manual?
What else is wrong with it? Because if that’s a regular clutch job, I’d expect around $1,000, not $5,000. What’s the other ‘stuff’ they’re charging for? Unless you have the automatic dual-clutch setup, then yeah, that gets expensive.
For me, it depends on how much you love the car. If you really want to keep it and can afford the repair, go for it… but $5k sounds insane. You could probably find a used transmission and clutch for much cheaper, especially from a good shop that sources parts.
Or maybe it’s time to take that $5k and put it down on another used Focus, maybe one with a warranty. If you’ve got decent credit, you could get a newer model with low payments and some peace of mind.
I’ve got the repair estimate here, but I’m at work and can’t really dig into it now. I’ll share the details later, but yeah, the $5k repair cost is stressing me out!
Fife said:
I’ve got the repair estimate here, but I’m at work and can’t really dig into it now. I’ll share the details later, but yeah, the $5k repair cost is stressing me out!
Harper said:
$5k for a new clutch is insane. I’m pretty sure a 2014 Focus is worth less than the repair itself. How many miles are on it?
It’s at around 133k miles. The estimate broke down to $2,200 for parts and $2,600 for labor. They said they need to disassemble the whole transmission to replace what’s needed, then reassemble it. It’s crazy, but it’s still less than buying a new car, I guess.
