No Warranty Guinea Pig Installment #3...

[RMcQ]

As official forum test subject for ownership without warranty I am compelled to report even the most minor out of pocket cost.

The tab broke that holds the warning triangle mini-hatch closed. Not sure why, I just noticed it flopping around one day. 2 minutes with trusty ETKA CD and 2 more minutes on vwparts.com and I have the part and a $2.74 line item on my AmEx bill. The part is item 12b in the diagram below.



This brings the total cost of non-scheduled maintenance to:

Fan Control Module $180.22
Oxygen Sensors (B1S1 and B2S1). Used VW part number for drastic savings. Wires spliced in with solder. $53.95
Warning triangle hatch latch $2.74

$236.91 with 65,000 miles and 2 years, 9 months of ownership.

[moto-one]

[allroad'Ed now]

In 2 years and 25,000 miles of driving out of warranty, My extended warranty covered $2500 of repairs, and I paid $995 for the warranty.

On our 2000 Explorer, we have a Ford extended warranty. Paid $795 for a 6yr/ 75k mile warranty (doubling the factory. Car went our of warranty in mid-June. Yesterday the extended warranty covered $500 worh of cruise control, radio and throttle body repairs.

[RMcQ]

Personally I'll bet that a DIYer would reduce the $2500 of your covered repairs down to less than the cost of the $995 warranty. A prime example is my oxygen sensors. It cost me $53.95 to repair my car, but had I taken it to the dealer they would have charges 2x $190 sensor plus a hour or more labor. The repair then costs $500 or 10 fold the DIY price. So would your warranty cover $500 in value or $53?

Another example recent posted by allroad 2001. He paid $222 for a repair that would have cost him $15 in parts plus a 6 pack worth of time in the garage with a screw driver:-) (his words). This is way beyond 10 fold. Sure it would have been covered by an extended warranty, but I would not feel like I got $222 of value...more like $15.

Actually more important to me is that the dealership if full of hacks that just don't do the job right. Recent examples of sway bar installs highlight this issue. I only trust myself and I enjoy wrenching.

[allroad'Ed now]

On the old A6, I really didn't care to worry about it with all the travelling I was doing. I commuted from Chicago to St Louis for work.

And on the Explorer- that's the car we take on trips etc where I wouldn't have a place to fix something when it borke.

On the A6, the failures I had- Power steering hoses, valve cover gaskets, instrument cluster, cv joint, tie rod ends- resulted in probably $1500 or more in parts. The digital cluster was over $900 by itself for the part. So in my case, the warranty paid for itself. But that is not always the case.

On my allroad, it's Audi Assured so I won't have to fix anything for 6/100 which I like. But I just installed the H-Sports and my new Hawk pads yesterday on my own. Doing improvements is therapy to me; fixing broken stuff is not, unless I can take the opprotunity to upgrde at the same time. When the struts wore out on the A6, i found a used PSK suspension and installed the springs and struts, cross drilled rotors on a Saturday afternoon.

But as a recent first time dad, I now prefer to spend my weekends playing with my daughter. In the past, I would spend a Saturday tearing down a 911 engine or playing with the track car, but no more. My how times change.

[Paul3.2A4avant]

[bmwrt]

[RMcQ]

[All Italian]

[skidmark]