Hello.
Newbie on here. :-)
I've got a '55 Focus C-Max, 1.6TDCi with 55,000 miles on the clock.
It's presently sitting on my local Ford dealership's forecourt in need of a new engine (cut a long story short: missed a service at 24,000 miles, turbo blew up, turbo replaced, engine now irreparable due to top-end damage apparently caused by carbon build up. Arguing this one out)
Anyway, Parkers price guide put the value around £5k if it was all hunky dory. Obviously without a working engine its pretty much worthless. How much value would a brand new engine and turbo, fitted by a Ford garage add to the car?
I'll not say how much it could cost me just yet...
Cheers.
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In a word, nothing. It's worthless with no engine, and worth as much as anyone is prepared to pay (book price tops) on seeing 55,000 on the odometer.
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Yup sums it up. No engine - worthless, new engine - same as any other on the forecourt.
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hmm. Ok. So what if it had an engine sourced from a scrap-yard?
I've found one with 900 miles on it.
Would it still be worth the £5k or so?
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You'd have to get the engine number changed on the V5, but after you've done that would there be any way of telling if its had a new engine?
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If anything i'd have thought a new engine on such a low mileage car would sound warning bells to a potential buyer.
I'd be wondering just why it needed such drastic action....thrashed till it broke, run out of oil (servicing non existant), clocked mini cab or a dozen other non desirable scenarios.
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Annoying isn't it? It has been serviced, but we missed just one. No-one's fault but our own.
We are trying to persuade the garage and Ford that the work they carried out replacing the turbo wasn't actually complete and contributed towards the downfall of the engine, but that's another story.
Would it still sound suspicious if the rest of the service history is complete?
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Reckon I would try to sell it for the parts and start again, had a recon engine once...a disaster.
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Would it still sound suspicious if the rest of the service history is complete?
I suppose we will all judge each vehicle on it's merits Paul, i can only say if there was a choice of full service history car with it's original engine, and a car with missing service and replacement engine i would be going with the former.
However thats me with my own ideas of servicing which apparently went out with steam, other posters here will feel differently.
Would it be better to get a couple of years out of the new engine yourself, by then the service history may well be back up to scratch.
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However thats me with my own ideas of servicing which apparently went out with steam
You, me, and many others GB. A car worth thousands, neglect it, you must be joking.
Edited by Old Navy on 13/10/2009 at 23:17
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"However that's me with my own ideas of servicing which apparently went out with steam; other posters here will feel differently."
No we wouldn't, GB (and as you clearly have a lot of knowledge and experience I'd hesitate to disagree with you anyway!).
I got a 7-year-old Z3 last year as a fun car, and I would never have bought one without FSH. I know that dealer servicing costs more, but there is an advantage in terms of credibility that F-BMW-SH has over just FSH. (In fairness an independent BMW specialist would be as good - if you knew that's what they were.)
Sadly for Paul, Ford (or the people who underwrite the warranty) use any missed service as an excuse to get out of paying up, whether or not there is a direct link to the failure in question.
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Cheapest bodge then get it to auction.
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On a car of this age and mileage a new engine arguably reduces the value of the car, as to have replaced an engine is a sinister thing to do. It would indicate to many buyers that this may be either a lemon, or a badly abused car.
In any case, given the complexity of modern cars, I feel it would be unlikely thsat the engine swap didn't leave behind some 'gremlins' anyway, as modern cars are usually best left 'un-molested'.
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Sell it on eBay for whatever you can get.
I think a future buyer would be suspicious if the car had a new engine
MVP
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Can missing just one service lead to writing off an engine at 55k? Or is it just any excuse in the small print to get out of paying?
We had this debate recently elsewhere on this forum. I knew someone who bought a new car, didn't bother to get it serviced at all and still saw a big mileage tot up. To be fair, it was a Honda and it was some years ago.
Are today's cars really so fragile?
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A brand new engine fitted by a dealer and warrantied for 12 months adds value compared to the same car with no warranty.
However a recon engine fitted by an unknown indy sounds suspicious compared to a genuine car of the same age.
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>Are today's cars really so fragile?
I guess they are if you run them out of oil or leave the oil so long it turns to sludge.
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Can missing just one service lead to writing off an engine at 55k? Or is it just any excuse in the small print to get out of paying?
Let's be fair here. If I sold you a complicated piece of machinery with instructions that it needed servicing every so often to keep it in proper working order and identify any potential faults, I would probably tell you to get stuffed if something went wrong after you had failed to follow the servicing requirements.
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Re the earlier comments about such things as engine swaps being offputting to potential buyers, I'm not convinced that is automatically the case.
A properly documented engine swap wouldn't put me off as long as the work was done properly, the car drove OK, the numbers all matched the paperwork, and the seller wasn't evasive in any way. The skipped service might, as it tells a bigger story, but based on the last few cars I've sold on, most people couldn't care less. We sold our Scenic with a full documented history, with receipts for everything from parts, to services to tyres, and the buyer didn't even bother to read through it. The invoices could have been pictures of Noddy for all the attention he paid.
My brother in law has £17k worth of BMW 320d M-Sport which has just had total transmission failure requiring a new gearbox, clutch and DMF at 27,000 miles. All done under BMW Approved Used warranty scheme. This is of course documented in the service history file now. I cannot see how anyone would be put off by something like this, as long as the job's done right and everything's properly documented. A second hand engine or gearbox from an unknown source fitted by Bermondsey Dave for a monkey in cash - that would be different.
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