hi i am thinking of buying a friends higher mileage car
it'll be a 2.0 dti vectra estate 51 plate with around 100000 miles on the clock it wil go for 2-2500 in about 12 months time
it will have been used as his company car and serviced when it should be. it carries tools of his trade and that sort of thing
i already have an n reg vectra with 53000 on it and for what i paid (1850) it seems ok we are happy with it.
ive never bought a high miler before and always bought privately where i can.
i know what to look for , im just wondering what everyone elses views on higher mile cars are??? is it worth a chance ? what are other readers experiences??
many thanks derek.
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Never buy a car off a friend if you want to stay friends.
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At 2 grand you could still be best of friends even if it goes pop in a year or two. With a service history, this one should give few problems for years to come.
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0 - 100,000 is low mileage, 100,000 to 200,000 is average mileage, 200,000 to 300,000 is high mileage, 300,000 plus is mega-mileage.
It's the sevicing and kind of use that matter, mileage has nothing to do with it. (except that the car is cheaper to buy)
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mileage is not completely independent of the condition of the car. some parts are clearly used more as the mileage rises. For example bearings (which wear and become loose), steering mechanism (loose track end rods..), and several parts of this type whose wear and tear is not related to `how' you drive the car. On the other hand, some parts are related to how you drive the car, these include driveshaft (if you are a nutter and accelerate with spinning wheels round a corner, then bye bye CV joints), clutch, gear box (the screeching noise when you change gear in a haste and which rounds up 1 mm of the ill-fated gear) and other such parts. Therefore if you want to get a high mileage car, always check that in addition to it having had the service (cam belt is crucial) that it was not driven by a nutter. I have three AXs, one of them is a J reg which has done 140K and one of them is a H reg which has done 70K. the H reg one has better suspension (dampers in better shape), steering feels much better and the car rattles much less and its all due to the low mileage, although the car is older (both are 1.4 5 door). on the other hand the H reg used to be owned by a `boy racer' and so some parts of the car are knackered. the clutch slips, the CV joints are gone, the gearbox is about to go, the engine is completely abused (mainly due to `take offs' at traffic lights) and other problems of this sort. The J reg on the other hand was owned by a father of two who had passed his hormonal overdrive period, and so even though it has done twice the mileage, it is still on the original clutch and it feels perfect, the shafts don?t knock about and the gearbox is as smooth as a Galaxy milk chocolate bar. But because of the high mileage, the wheel bearing are slack, the steering knocks a notch, dampers are about to meet their after life and the car rattles much more. So in the end, mileage is neither completely independent nor completely the only factor on how good a car is. It depends on
1) who the driver was (this is more important as far I am concerned, than if the service book is up to scratch, you can always replace a battery that was supposed to have been replaced, but if you end up with an abused engine, you have had it)
2) servicing - specially oil change, belt change..
3) how did the mileage come about (motorway miles are less damaging than city miles obviously. my J reg AX has a lot of miles because it was used to travel from Oldham to London regularly.
4) sometimes when you test drive a car which you have not driven before its difficult to say anything about it based on how it feels, because you don't know how it is `supposed' to feel. (like first time you test drive a diesel car..). the best way I have found is to test drive at least two cars of the same model you are interested, and this given you a very good idea of the feeling of the car you are about to buy relative to how its supposed to feel.
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