I wanted to get opinions on what I should do about my wife's 2002 Accent. Here's the laundry list of what needs to be done:



The car needs -

Rear Brakes including new wheel cylinders

New Belts - including timing belt

New Front Wheel Bearings

New Front Tie Rods

New Valve Cover Gasket



Hyundai Quoted me about $1,200 for a complete repair

I priced out parts to do myself and it came out to be around $500 (I went on the high side)



I'm at the point with this car, where I don't want to stick a ton of money into, because my wife and I are expecting our first child and we've been looking to upgrade and get something bigger. I doubt we'd get much on trade in and I don't know what the market is for selling a Accent outright. She's been the only owner of this car and its got around 130,000miles on it, overall the car is in good shape and it got new tires last spring.



Let me know your thoughts....

 

Brakes, belts, and timing belt are regular maintenance items that need to be changed with every car, no matter what.



As for the other things...they're not major items and end up being replaced on alot of cars due to wear and tear. If you have gone this long with the car, and 130,000 miles later without needing alot of work done other than $500 worth of maintenance and the usual wear & tear stuff...then I would say drop the money into it and run it another 130K.

 

A 2002 accent with 130k on it will be probably worth 2-3k depending on the options it has.



If you plan to keep driving the car, brakes, bearings and tie rods are for safety so replace those.



If the timing belt snaps your engine will die immediately and permanently. But the other belts (AC, alternator, power steering) can break and you'll just lose that item and the car will still technically work. However if you're replacing the timing belt, you might as well have those done at the same time as they need to be removed to get at the timing belt anyway. As for the valve cover gasket, it's for general efficiency. If you think the car is still getting decent power and MPG, and the cabin doesn't smell like gasoline, don't worry about it.



Honestly it's really unlikely that the belt will break unless it actually looks damaged (ask the technician). I'd fix the safety stuff and keep driving it. Just keep an eye out for those "everything must go, extra money for your trade in, 0% financing and a free pie" type of car sales and jump on it.

 

Also why are you still getting your car serviced at a dealership? That's just paying extra money for no reason. Get another quote.

 

$1200 is a decent price for that. My timing belt snapped at 90k miles since it was last changed.

 

Worst advise ever when it comes to a timing belt. They are not known to give you any warning. Lucky it seems the alpha and beta belts do ok running them a little long. My current beta's book sets the change the belt time line at 90k up from my old beta's of 60k.

 

So my wife decided she'd rather have a new car, so for now she's gonna drive our Mountaineer and once we figure out what we can afford we'll probably buy something. She's wanting something new anyways since we have a baby on the way and although alot of this is maintanance items that just need to be fixed we just don't want to keep sticking money into this car.



I'll post in the classifieds pictures and info on the car, so if your interested in buying it let me know cause it will most likely be going up for sale in the next couple weeks.

 

If you're going to go new, I would recommend the new Elantra or Sonata for a family car.



- Great price

- Fully loaded

- AMAZING gas mileage

- 10 year warranty



Nothing on the market today can beat the value of a new Hyundai.

 

Yeah, we've been looking at a few Elantras and we also found a couple good deals on the Kia Optima