Driving home from my Christmas Eve dinner at my Mom's house tonight my 1997 VW Golf 'threw a rod', caught fire slightly, and died. Merry Christmas! We put the fire out with no damage to the car (outside of the already ruined engine) ... right now the best option seems to be getting a new engine rather than replacing the whole car. Does anyone have any experience with this sort of thing? Please share!
posted by anastasiav on Dec 25, 2004 - 13 answers

Carfilter: I have a 1988 VW Golf GL that currently costs me about $85/month in repair costs. In other words, I'm finding myself putting about $3-400 dollars into it every 3-4 months. The car has 60k miles on a transplanted eight-valve Scirocco engine. And the steering is getting mushy. And I have no real mechanical skills.

If I take the $6k that I could spend on a newer car and put it into the VW, and I just going to end up with a pimped-out VW that still needs spendy repairs every 3-4 months?
posted by mecran01 on May 18, 2004 - 19 answers