I have not posted in a while so thought I’d update two COALs which I still have. First, the 2012 Equinox which was profiled in January of 2019 here. At the time I reported on an excess oil consumption issue common to this GM motor and there was quite a divergence by the CC community of what do to if GM fixed it, or didn’t fix it. The consensus was that a modern engine, regardless of manufacturer, simply should not have this kind of failure. I couldn’t agree more and many suggested emphatically that I’d be best served dumping the car.
So, what happened after I took it to the dealership? I expected the worst, seeing as it had 120,000 miles on it. Instead I got a compromise of sorts. GM offered to split the repair with me 50/50, my cost being $1,275.00, and I had the piston rings replaced. I had it back in 3 days, and it took care of the problem (so far). An ancillary problem to the consumption issue that has been reported has not happened, which is damage to the catalytic converter, and let’s hope it doesn’t as the repair cost is significant. In the end, as my wife drives barely 8,000 miles a year, it made no sense to invest in a new or newer car when we own it free and clear and it gets limited use. And… with COVID-19 rearing its ugly head now and bringing with it such economic uncertainty, cash is king and despite a big repair bill, a year on, I’m glad I did it. Hope to keep this bucket of bolts going another 2-3 years or more. It suits our present and likely future needs, nothing more and nothing less.
On to the 2008 Saturn Astra, profiled here in December 2018. I had stated that it was by far the most reliable car I’d ever owned, and I still hold to that, sort of. It never left me stranded, but there was a fair amount of preventative maintenance done to the car to prolong its life in the last year… close to $2,000 worth. One can argue that the car was barely worth that if I tried to sell it. I realized this was an interference motor and I’d never had the timing belt replaced, recommended at 75,000 miles and I was on borrowed time. If it stretched or snapped, it would grenade the motor and spell death for the car. That on its own was a $700 repair.
Other things done included an ignition coil, struts, ball joints and adding new tires. The front clip/bumper cover of the car is held to the engine cradle underneath the front end by two Christmas tree plastic fasteners which somehow snapped off. My 18 year old son thought nothing of driving it with the large plastic tab underneath dragging on the ground for a few days/weeks and ground it down a bit. It would of taken one reversal over a larger object and it could pulled most of it off the car. There are fracture marks on the front clip due to all the stress. At an oil change I had them shoot self tappers to hold it in place, job done. Oh, and late one night someone sideswiped off the driver’s side view mirror and snapped it off as it sat in front of the house.
Which brings up another point. This is an orphan car from 2008 and only 18,000 of these were sold in the U.S. Parts are becoming more scarce, which means harder to find… and more expensive. No pick and pull yards locally had an Astra. And… the coupe and the 4 door apparently have different side mirrors. I ended up finding one on Ebay for $150.00. I worry about the transmission going. I have maintained it with fluid services, and it is apparently an Aisin, made in Japan and said to be very stout. It also doesn’t like to start after topping off the car with gas, not sure why, but after a few tries, it always catches and with the new coil, otherwise runs great day-in, day-out.
The Astra is approaching 150,000 miles and 12 years of ownership since brand new, and when it does hit that mark, it will be the highest mileage car I’ve ever owned. Barring anything major… we’re going to keep this one going too. Bottom line, rational or irrational, I like the car, I take pride in owning it for so long, and it suits my teen driver just fine.
Stay safe everyone! A business executive that heads one of our vendors closed a COVID-19 briefing last week with a statement on our current dire straits. I rather like its positive tone thus I am going to share it: “I have great faith in mankind to find pathways to help chart new methods of health care to conquer this virus and provide avenues of better governance for future world health challenges.” Let’s hope he’s right.
Good job keeping these cars going and I know my parents would be furious if I let a vehicle of their’s drag a part on the ground for days. I was tempted to buy an Astra once upon a time, but now it would have to be practically free for me to bite. Maybe I should not toss around the notion of buying an Equinox of this generation in a few years.
Both my vehicles have deferred maintenance, higher mileage, and are much older than either of these, you are not so bad off. Due to financial insecurity I’m gonna have to use my snow tires year round since I cannot afford another quartet for the Summer months.
Check Craigslist. We should be seeing a spike in people finally getting around to try and get rid of things they don’t really need and pick up some extra cash. Yes there is a lot of crap, but you can also find some great deals. Just brush up on how to read the date codes and don’t buy a set that is 6-7 or more years old. Also check E-bay. A couple of years ago I scored some nice wheels factory aluminum wheels for $125. They had two almost new Michelns, and two at 40%. Ebay yielded another pair of almost new tires, shipped for about $100. All in I had about $250 for 90+% tires that would have cost ~$700+ by the time they were rolling down the road. Plus a nice set of wheels so the winters could stay on theirs.
As horrible as it is to use, Facebook Marketplace seems to have taken over from CL as the place to go for CHEAP decent scores as far as car stuff and tires go. It’s a nightmare to navigate but stuff is dirt cheap. And curiously the people, while flakey, seems slightly better than some of the CL people as with an account being needed there is at least SOME accountability.
If you have a U-Pull type of scrapyard out there they often have tires that are in very good shape as well for cheap.
Yeah seems like craigslist is starting to get overshadowed by FB marketplace, especially for whole cars since they instituted the $5-per-ad rule even for private sellers. Plenty of generic scam/spam and curbstoner/dealer posts in FB marketplace, but just not quite at the density of how bad CL had gotten.
I’ve sold cars in the last few years on both platforms as well as Nextdoor. Nextdoor generally has the best quality items at the best prices and easiest to deal with people, even more selective in that sense than facebook. Facebook has the most traffic but the majority amounts to a “do you still have this” message and then nothing. The two times I’ve sold Rangers I’ve always had Hispanic guys message me in Spanish, kind of presumptive on their part lol. The absolute WORST experience I’ve had selling was a set of rusty old Dodge Neon steelies with bad tires that I finally unloaded for $40. My goodness I think I’d have sold them for scrap if I knew what sort of a headache that would turn out to be.
I’ve bought steel wheels from pick-and-pull junkyards several times, perfect way to get cheapo steelies for a winter setup. For my oddball Chrysler Imperial “stamped look” alloys that I wanted for my circle track Neon I ended up finding a mom and pop used parts place in a small town of Amboy Indiana, the kind where the parts are in several large warehouses and barns, but in a surprisingly up to date organized/barcoded fashion. $120 and the excellent condition set of 4 were all mine.
It’s all a matter of perspective. I bought my ’96 Explorer a few years back with 240,000 miles on it. It was in good running shape and came with a thick folder of repair receipts the newest being front suspension arms, rear brakes, a/c compressor and it even had it’s transmission rebuilt (about ten years ago!). Still, rebuilt ten years back is better than not rebuilt at all. I’ve put another 20,000 on since with few problems. The front shoulder belts are kind of reluctant to roll up without help so I went shopping for some replacements at the local Pick and Pull. As I went through the several vintage Explorers in the yard I found a couple of good belts. The vehicles that I pulled them from had 150,000 miles less than my Explorer! They were just like “new!” Stay safe.
Sorry to hear about the issues with the ‘Nox. A friend of mine had a similar situation, but the dealer and the zone rep were far less generous in dealing with her. Of course, I wasn’t there when negotiations were happening, so who knows what actually took place. Maybe there were some heated exchanges. But while it does seem to me that the dealer/customer interface is the variable in these situations, I have a hard time seeing why they want to deny goodwill work on a long time customer. Insanity.
Up until the current situation happened, my wife had been looking at another job, 30 minutes from the house. Once the shutdown notice came, all hiring stopped, so she’s not sure what will happen when the economy comes back up. We were weeks away from pulling the trigger on a newer or even a new car for her to drive; it seems those plans are now on indefinite hold. Regardless, I’m glad we’ve kept our older iron up to date. It runs well and no note or higher insurance premium to deal with…
Count me as another with two paid-for cars sitting in the garage. And, with the Mrs. basically retired and me working from home, we put something like 30 or 40 miles on all last month.
It is hard to tell what will happen when things start opening up again, but I’ll bet there will be some really attractive deals on new cars for someone inclined to take that plunge.
*Technically* I’m sitting on three paid-for cars.
I still have the Mercury Monterey minivan my younger kid ‘gifted’ me last Fall. I’ve never re-registered the van as I have zero need for it right now. A few weeks ago I mentioned on here that I would probably just hang on to it for the foreseeable future due to the fact that it would be a big headache to sell via CL or FB Marketplace.
I have a feeling that it is totally sales-proof, now.
Someone will buy that van and make it a home. There are an amazing number of minivan vanlife videos on YouTube. My middle schooler fantasizes about living in a van in college, way cheaper than rent and thinks it’ll be an adventure. Lately he’s realizing the hashtag vanlife thing is perhaps closer to reality than ever… 🙂
I think there’ll be an even bigger shift to work at home and there will be massive overcapacity of office space as people A) have already set themselves up at home and B) companies realize that a major expense can be removed from the books. We gave up our physical office a couple of years ago and a part time drop in office thing three months ago. Have not missed either whatsoever.
My guess is there may well be a shortage of new cars initially after this is over (if it ever is) but in the meantime a lot of people may be trying to unload their used or nearly new used cars especially if their job situation gets worse and the “stimulus” efforts either fizzle out or get more and more delayed. $1200 doesn’t last very long for most people and the other items are not necessarily accessible to regular working folk. I foresee a huge amount of repos too, don’t need a car if you lost your job and can’t leave the house anyway, especially once you miss a few bills and your credit goes to crap. Let them take the car.
I think you’re right about the shift to work from home. I have a feeling that companies will realize they spend a lot of money on office space and are probably getting just as much accomplished without that huge amount of overhead. Maybe those public shared workspaces (I don’t know what to call them, rental offices?) could see an increase in popularity; for the times you absolutely have to get the “team” all in one room.
You also may be right about folks trying to unload a car after we come back “up”, but barring an accident, I can’t see me buying a car for some time after the emergency is over.
The $1200 in the US is insufficient for many people, and I’m hoping that we can resolve the housing situation for everyone involved. I have a feeling that if I had to pay rent on an apartment or payments on a car, I might choose the car. You can live out of the car, but it’s really tough to be completely homeless. OTOH, if you have no job, what do you need a car for? I feel a lot of folks may be facing this dilemma before too long.
Doing the timing belt on the Saturn was a good call.
I’ve written on here several times about a buddy of mine who has a Saturn wagon approaching 400k miles. He bought it new, recovered it when stolen, and continues to keep it going. I think it’s still on the original transmission. If you take good care of yours, it should last for a long time to come!
No vehicle payments. Our 2011 Equinox LTZ is paid off, and I have my ’02 Tahoe and son’s ’00 C2500 is here as well.
We were around 115,000 miles with the ‘Nox when we took the oil consumption test and had the engine rebuilt. We also took care of the cam sensors while it was down, since no labor charges would be incurred.
Since we drive our vehicles 20-30k miles/year, we keep them maintained. Just changed the lube in the ‘Nox differentials, in fact. Last year we did struts, shocks and brakes. Tranny fluid/filter just after the holidays. And so on. 187,000 miles and it drives like new. Really. I wouldn’t mind finding another, only a 2013-15 LTZ with the 3.6.
A renowned german carmagazine, auto und bild I think it was, did a 100k miles test on the Astra when new, and found it one of the most reliable car they’ve ever tested, functioning pretty much flawless during the whole test. However where I live where they salt the roads, almost all, and there are many of them here, suffer from rust. My mother owns one and they are great to drive.
topping off, probably not a good idea… German cars typically do better as first click of the fuel nozzle… done. Has to do with the fume reclaim system… My BMW not pleased to be overfilled either.
The Saturn Astra, is actually an Opel Astra…
Parts are available from Germany or the UK (Vauxhall Astra)…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opel_Astra#Astra_H_(2004%E2%80%932009)
The Saturn’s issue is almost certainly an evap vent valve thats not working great, or maybe a fuel tank pressure sensor (these were very common on the related Delta-platform/Ecotec-engined Cobalt and Ion). May not want to worry about it until it throws an evap code and a CEL. Which will probably be soon.
As far as the Equinox, the oil consumption will kill the cats (most of these are PZEVs with 2 inline cats, the rear of which is welded to the rest of the exhaust as a single piece from dashboard to rear bumper), oxygen sensors, and VVT oil control valves. The running low on oil thing also stresses the timing chain and water pump drive chain. And one of the main causes of oil consumption is clogged PCV (which is part of the valve cover on this and most other Ecotecs). If the valve cover/PCV wasnt changed, and/or the timing chain systems weren’t fully replaced as part of the re-ringing, I would expect big issues again soon. Also, most of the GM-fixed engines I have dealt with begin using oil very soon after the re-ringing, as the cylinder walls are often scored heavily by the time they agree to fix them. So it may slow down a bit for an oil change or two, but it isn’t FIXED fixed, as it were.
Good luck!
Glad the Astra is serving you well. I was thinking of picking up an Astra as an around town car so I could put the VW up for the winter. Liked that the lights and wiper controls work the same as the VW, except the non-latching turn signal lever seemed a bit odd.
Took one, with about 45K on it, for a test drive. The front struts were shot, the car bounced all over the road. Then there was the diesel-like rattle from the cam phasers. Seemed every Astra I looked at had been neglected. Some had oil leaks. Some had a Dexcool crust in the coolant tank with the DIC giving an erroneous “low coolant” warning.
Parts support from GM seemed to start to evaporate just about the time GM sold Opel to PSA. I don’t have the skills or space to work on it myself, so was not enthusiastic about trying to source parts from England. I moved on to other beater candidates.
Nice update, just keep them going as long as possible, way cheaper than replacing (in general) and they look fine. Astras are rare even in the junkyards though so parts support may well become a bigger issue. Either they’ve mostly cycled through already or there are plenty out there still running around like yours.
The whole fleet here is paid off as well, the newest is currently in the shop for a hail damage repair from last summer’s major storm. That’s the furthest it’s been driven in the last month, the other cars have been sitting as well for the most part.
Glad to hear of the good Equinox experiences. I was never much of a fan. Beginning with the first generation (the replacement for the old Tracker four-door), they always seemed to be dragging up the CUV rear, far behind the class-leading RAV4 and CR-V. IOW, the same old GM gameplan of designing, engineering, and building on price, alone. One of the biggest pet-peeves was a rear seat that didn’t fold flat when the all of the competition did.
All that has been corrected with the latest version which has gotten good reviews (and a worthwhile alternative to the Toyota and Honda). Unfortunately, it seems to have come at a much higher MSRP, too (particularly on the higher trims). Hopefully, with the usual discounts and incentives, that can be remedied.
Or you can get the same thing in GMC clothes.
It’s funny, because I had a very different takeaway from the comment thread. The owners are certainly happy with them, but of the three Equinoxes discussed here, all had problems. Looks like all three had premature engine rebuilds and one a transmission replacement before 100K. KalapanaBlack’s assessment above suggests this isn’t unusual. Carlsberg66 was taken care of by warranty and his dealer, but I would consider that a good dealer/corporate experience mitigating a disastrous vehicle, and Geozinger’s friend didn’t apparently get the same treatment.
This thread encourages me to stay away from the Equinox, though I think Carlsberg is right to keep his going and I wish him many more happy miles in it.
Time to get rid of the Astra and step up to an Aura. There’s a metallic red 2009 4 cyl XE with 21K miles available in Florida (no rust!). CD changer! Woooo!
Funny you mention that. I always liked the Aura. The week I bought the Equinox, I test drove a low mileage, lightly used fully loaded Aura with the 3.6 and the ..I believe it was called…Moroccan brown leather …pretty nice car. We just wanted more room for trips. This is as close as we got to the Vectra…which I thought was a nice looking car. My coworker has had one for 10 years…relegted to her sons car now…been pretty decent overall.
As many here know, I’m a fan of the Epsilon bodied GM cars. In my family we’ve had six so far. My one kid had a 2007 Aura XR with the 3.6L V6 and the six speed autobox. That was one quick car for the times, and it drove really well.
One of my co-workers inherited his mother-in-law’s XE after she was no longer able to drive and gave it to his kid. It’s turned out to be a great car for a college student.
Your final sentence is very inspiring. And yes, as another reader suggested, you could probably try sourcing Vauxhall/Opel parts for the Astra. A man whose Opel Omega needed a fuel pump here sourced one from a Cadillac Catera and it worked without any problems.
I too had an Astra with a bad coil pack. The (Chevy) dealer quoted me $600 to replace in 2012 or so, but I bought it online for about $100 shipped over from http://www.vauxhallpartsuk.com and replaced it myself in 5 minutes. I would definitely check them out should you need other parts! I loved that car, I had the 3 door fully loaded with a 5 speed. This was it the day I brought it home. Wish I’d have kept it, but I still get a similar vibe from my 2006 9-3 convertible.
czechers, were you able to get air bag replacements for your Saab 9-3? I have seen several very desirable convertibles in great condition…almost like new, 2009- 2011 (last year?) Most priced <$7-8K, but Takata has other priorities. An open, manual trans car, would be great since I no longer have any hair.
The print ads for the Saturn Astra explicitly played up the German connection.
Astra parts are easy to get from UK (sold as Vauxhall) or AU (sold as Holden) eBay. In Australia the Astras are considered cheap and unreliable, especially with the timing chain fiasco. Very looked down upon. But parts are CHEAP! I bought a mint wing mirror for mine from a wrecker for AU$50. (approx US$30) UK parts are expensive.
Astras all have the same common problems. For you guys in the US buying anything from Australia is dirt cheap right now as our dollar is totally worthless.
Aisin, made in Japan and said to be very stout…
Yes they are well regarded as transmission manufacturers go. My TourX has a 8 speed Aisin and that is one positive to an otherwise “dimwitted” transmission (slow to downshift, sometimes a little confused as to what gear it should be in.)
Given how similar the characteristics of Toyota’s current 8 speed in FWD/AWD applications some automotive reviewers have wondered out loud if Toyota was cribbing Aisin’s homework.
Toyota owns about a third of Aisin, so it’s quite likely that there is some or a lot of cross-pollinization.