News
Welcome to the News community!
Rules:
1. Be civil
Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.
2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.
3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.
Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.
Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
5. Only recent news is allowed.
Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.
6. All posts must be news articles.
No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.
7. No duplicate posts.
If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
8. Misinformation is prohibited.
Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.
9. No link shorteners.
The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.
10. Don't copy entire article in your post body
For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.
view the rest of the comments
You're buying bad cars, but that aside there's a big range between your $500 shitbox and an overpriced $50,000 penis-extension.
Fyi, beaters can usually be sold for what you paid for them. Buy a beater for $1000, save for better car. Sell beater for $1000, and get $5000 good car.
Any used vehicle has the potential to be poorly maintained and unless you have the time and experience to thoroughly inspect every car you buy, there's a chance that the $4k 2004 Toyota Camry with 130,000mi you bought ends up with a piston rod through the bottom of the block.
On paper it looks like a steal, but you didn't know that it had an oil leak while it was sitting in the garage not being driven for months. Mom and Dad passed away and now it has to be sold along with all their stuff, so the family drove it to their property to make sure it runs. They noticed the oil was low when the light came on so they drained it and added new oil. Now you come along don't see any obvious signs of damage and buy it, but the cylinder wall is warped and it slips a bearing 3 months in. Engine needs a rebuild or you deal with the hassle of selling a car that no car enthusiast is wanting to rebuild an engine in, no dealer wants because it doesn't run, and no highschool kid can use because to get it to run they need to spend $3k on a drop in replacement for the engine.
The scenario you're painting is an infinite money glitch that doesn't exist.
I've driven nothing but beaters and beater-adjacent vehicles all my life. Even though I can afford a nice vehicle now, I don't waste my money. Good test driving and mechanical skill goes a long way.
Oil in the coolant? Coolant in the oil? White smoke? Run away.
Knock? Walk away. Lifter tick? Ask to knock the price down, flush oil. You won't throw a rod bearing on a modern car because it was low on oil a year ago. If it somehow does, you bought a car for less than a car payment. If it lasted 2 months you're still ahead and now you have a parts car, get another.
Always head straight to the scrappers and grab an alternator and starter, put them in the trunk for when one of them eats shit.
Learn to spoon tires or make a friend with a tire machine. Tires are a huge expense and used ones / takeoffs are nearly free. Haven't bought a new tire in many years. Get a plug kit too.
Learn to recharge AC and identify a working compressor with no charge. Then hard ball on the price. "Broken" AC devalues the car terribly and is a $10 fix.
Standard transmission cars go for a song, especially with slipping clutch they are worthless, learn to change a clutch and you can have one for decades. My favorite beater was a 1985 Corolla I owned from the age of 16 to 26, bought for $400 sold for $600.
I'm not saying that it's not possible, but it's not good life advice for the majority of people. You're an enthusiast who knows what they're doing around a car. You seem to spend a lot of time fixing things that go beyond normal garage shop fixes. Rebuilding a transmission requires time, skill, space, and most importantly tools. Two more things, not everyone is going to have the storage space for a parts car like you're suggesting. In fact, lots of American towns have ordinances against sitting cars. And second, I don't trust people to change their tires at the right time. Half the accidents during the first couple of freezes are from people that are essentially driving on belts. Do you really think I should trust people to properly seat their own used tires?
I'm glad that you are able to make this work for you, but it sounds like you have the requisite knowledge, tools, skill, and time to make it work.
Lol. You're buying bad cars.
Okay, and your average person doesn't have the knowledge to buy 'good' cars. Google can only take you so far, and RNG will still fuck a significant number of people even with knowledge. If your system requires people to have fairly in-depth knowledge in a field they don't work in just to not get absolutely fucked, then your system is shit.
Your failures are your own.