Well I got the car to the service place yesterday morning to get the smoke looked at, and the guy said he was 99% sure what it was, blah blah blah stuff I can’t remember, it’ll be about $600-650 to fix.

Dammit.

I ummed and ahhed for a few minutes. On the one hand, I’d like nothing better to do than to offload the car ASAP and get something nicer, and I don’t want to spend up big on repairs on a car that’s worth bugger-all. On the other hand, realistically it ain’t gonna happen tomorrow, so I need this car to keep running, and obviously I can’t have it putting out smoke like it’s been doing.

Especially not with a PTUA sticker on the back bumper.

I could keep feeding it oil (the smoke is from oil burning off), but he said that would have other consequences.

So I told him to go ahead and do it. Nothing else I could do. It ended up being $634.

Interestingly, a search of Drive shows Magna sedans from that vintage on sale for $1950 to $3999, so while it’s not worth much, it’s maybe slightly more than bugger-all. But given most of those are dealer sales, any money I’d get is probably not that much more than today’s repairs cost me.

Still, at least I can offload it before the 220K service, which I was told will be a biggie… though yesterday’s work covered some of that.

So… anybody want to buy a car?

PS. 10am On school run this morning, steam coming out of bonnet. Ring car place, go to car place, they look. Radiator cracked. Estimated cost $150 - blarrrrgh!

PPS. 11pm. Actual cost $287!!!