Living with a high mileage car (over 144,000 miles!)
No, I didn't pay too much.
$450 for two little wire connections sounds insane, but again, this was engine wiring harness stuff. Outright replacing that harness would have cost $800 just for the parts. With labor included, it would have easily busted well over $1,000. The price of $450 was a bargain, especially since the car is paid in full.
What caused the wire break? Unknown. Could have been a rodent that chewed through the wires, or something flew under the car while on the highway and yanked the cable hard, or maybe something else entirely.
Newer cars don't have problems like this, but older ones over 10 years old do. My guess is something yanked the cable, and since the wiring is over a decade old, yeah, that can cause a break.
If it's paid and it runs right...
If the car is paid off and running well, which mine is, then it's worth putting some cash into it for repairs. The alternative to that is financing a new car. And $450 is way, way cheaper than that.
My car just turned over 144,000 miles recently. I looked at the miles before writing this, but at this point I don't pay much attention to the miles anymore otherwise. Car maintenance is performed based on time (in months, specifically) because it's just easier to schedule things out that way. My odometer is digital and can be switched over to trip odometer, and that's what I use because it's easier to tell when to fuel up based on miles rather than fuel gauge.
What's it like to drive a car with this many miles on it?
Not all that different from a low-miles car - if you keep up on the maintenance.
It is the maintenance more than anything else that's key to keeping a car running longer.
I'm not saying this is true for all cars and trucks, because some of them are just stinkers like the 2011 Hyundai Sonata and 2014 Ford Focus.
But for cars and trucks that aren't known to be stinkers, running them up to 100K and well beyond that is a totally doable thing, again with proper maintenance.
Published 2021 Nov 2
