From broken bolts to questionable decisions made by previous owners to parts that aren’t exactly the price you thought they’d be, wrenching can be pain. However, every so often, the luck of the draw is on our side. For every handful of repairs that fight you, one ends up being far cheaper than you’d expect. It’s time to celebrate the cheap ones.
As you’d probably expect, cheap fixes come relatively far and few between for me, considering my crippling addiction to heavily depreciated performance cars, frequently of European origin. Alright, maybe calling my 325i a performance car is a bit of a stretch in a straight line, but the inputs are bang-on perfect. Anyway, despite doing the exact opposite of making my life easier, little wrenching victories still happen, and here are two that spring to mind.
When I bought my 325i, I bought it cheap for several reasons. Firstly, COVID just hit, and that had an initial dip on the car market. Secondly, it was an old BMW with a ridiculous number of previous owners. Thirdly, the airbag light was on, and that would be a problem for the eventual safety inspection needed to register a used car in Ontario.
Weirdly, the passenger seat also didn’t move when I picked the car up. A quick peek underneath the seat revealed a crude, homemade smoking apparatus jammed up under there had been wedged against the seat plug just enough to kill connection and trip an airbag light. Removing the, um, paraphernalia, re-seating the plug, and clearing the hard code worked! Total cost? Free.99, and that’s hard to beat.
Likewise, when I bought my Boxster, the translucent cover for one of the alarm system sensors was missing, and I figured I’d just grit my teeth, order a replacement from the main dealer, and cry once to have it sorted. Turns out, the trim piece I needed was less than $15 Canadian. A stark contrast to Infiniti wanting to charge me $100 for a license plate light bracket for my old G35. Plus, the trim bit simply snapped into place in two seconds, and while that’s to be expected, it’s nice when the parts are cheap and the fix is easy.
So, let’s hear it for the repairs that were less expensive than you expected. Whether surprisingly inexpensive parts, a much simpler fix than what originally seemed plausible, or a combination of the two, we’d love to talk about the times the wrenching gods smiled upon you and got you back on the road without emptying your wallet.
(Photo credits: Thomas Hundal)
Mazda Protege5, driving home and it started dying at stops. But I could keep it running with generous throttle application and not letting it get near idle revs. Fixing it required re-seating the beyond-useless short ram intake and tightening the worm clamp a bit more. It was mostly, but not entirely, bypassing the MAF sensor so god only knows what the fueling was doing.
Mazda Protege5, driving home and it started dying at stops. But I could keep it running with generous throttle application and not letting it get near idle revs. Fixing it required re-seating the beyond-useless short ram intake and tightening the worm clamp a bit more. It was mostly, but not entirely, bypassing the MAF sensor so god only knows what the fueling was doing.
I started off my career in the car industry as a service advisor at a local dealership. I was friends with one of the sales people who had a 2019 Audi A7 and he came to me one day saying that his car said he had a “lighting error” but he couldn’t see anything wrong with his car’s lights.
My heart sank, an electrical or lighting problem on a modern Audi? How much is this going to cost him? I prepared him for the worst as is typical in German luxury ownership.
Got it diagnosed, it was a $3 accent bulb near the edge of the headlight. I told him that he could never play the lottery because he just used up all of his luck on the cheapest German luxury repair bill in history.
I started off my career in the car industry as a service advisor at a local dealership. I was friends with one of the sales people who had a 2019 Audi A7 and he came to me one day saying that his car said he had a “lighting error” but he couldn’t see anything wrong with his car’s lights.
My heart sank, an electrical or lighting problem on a modern Audi? How much is this going to cost him? I prepared him for the worst as is typical in German luxury ownership.
Got it diagnosed, it was a $3 accent bulb near the edge of the headlight. I told him that he could never play the lottery because he just used up all of his luck on the cheapest German luxury repair bill in history.
Once upon a time, long ago, I was headed home from Grand’ma visit on the A3 ( Paris suburb motorway, nothing English to see here ) when the temperature light came on.
Since I was at the top of the hill, and headed down hill towards home, I just turned off the engine ( since the Citroën AX didn’t have much assisted, nor any computer controlled stuff, it’s something you could do…up to a point, Brakes would become an issue at some point, but you could get by with a few minutes of idle to renew the pressure. )
I managed to limp home (it was easy as it was downhill, between use of the parking brake and a few engine idling while moving to restore breaking), and parked the car for the night fully expecting the cost of a new radiator or something worse.
The next morning after putting some water in the cooling, I headed to the local Citroën outlet… already planning the next few months of accounting to fit the repair costs in my expenses…
I explained my problem, the mechanician had a look under the bonnet, and came out of it with a melted bit of plastic, telling me that it would take 5 minutes to fix and it would cost me… a full refill of of the cooling and a plastc cork.
The cooling refill actually cost me more than the replacement of the melted bit of plastic.
But in 20 minutes my car was fixed for less than a restaurant lunch when I was expecting a massive hit to my finances.