Hey there, I see that you're the new person who seems to be making such a splash here these days. Nice to meet you, welcome to the forums.
Not sure if that's good or bad, and I seem to be one of the lunatic few who carry a flip phone anymore by choice, but, hello!
It didn't matter how many times I replaced it, the battery would die. So obviously something more was wrong and it was concluded by an excellent mechanic that my starter needed replacing, so I replaced that. Still random dead battery.
This went on for a good long time as I just wasn't willing to accept that my Corolla was an unfixable lemon. Many thousands of dollars and several mechanics later and I finally gave up on a car that cost me a premium to buy used because Toyota's are very expensive used in Canada.
Did anyone ever suggest a battery cutoff switch to, if not fixing the root problem, keeping you able to start your car?
I don't see how a starter would be root cause for a battery dying. It's far more likely a sticky relay somewhere that's keeping something powered that ought to be powered off when the car is shut off, and a good inline ammeter would let you identify when the problem is happening and run down what's causing it.
Obviously you're rid of the car and it's not possible to run down, but "no reason" on a car is simply "A reason nobody has been able to figure out yet." There is a reason for it. Something is causing a drain on the battery while the car should be off, pulling tens of milli-amps, but it's still drawing, if it would do it during work hours, a few amps or more. Batteries don't like being regularly drained, so the capacity on your battery dropped with each time it was dead, but... there was a reason, somewhere, in the mechanical systems of the car.
I'm honestly less than impressed with most mechanics I see, and I genuinely don't understand how any quick lube place is still in business, with all the engines they must buy for people after screwing up oil changes, air filter changes, and everything else they touch (or, more likely, claimed to have done but never actually did, because it's easier and quicker to charge people who won't ever check their transmission fluid for a flush than to actually change the fluid). I've tried them a few times, and every time they've left something undone that would ruin my car if I didn't catch it. And if I'm going to have to check all their work, well, it's just as fast to do the work myself then. At least I know who to blame, and I'm more likely to take the time to do it right in the first place.
My worse lemon was a vintage Jag that I got virtually for free. It was in AMAZING condition except for two glitchy problems: the electric seatbelt didn't reliably work and the left turn signal unpredictably wouldn't work.
Gremlins in the grounds, perhaps? Grounding issues make for the most bizarre problems. Though if I were towards the broker side of things, a vintage Jag would be on my "not accept even for free, even though it's a vintage Jag, unless I had something else reliable to drive." They have a bit of a reputation. Any old luxury car is best considered an expensive garage princess until proven otherwise. At which point, it's only a matter of time until they become an expensive garage princess again. Or you cow them into submission. Some can be, some won't be. Hard to say which is which until you've had it for a while.
Both unsolvable. Like the Corolla battery problem, no garage could fix my electrical poltergeist.
You come with this faith in garages that I simply haven't found to be true in my experience. The last place I'd take a Jag with random issues is a garage. I'd find an old guy who knew Jags, and let him troubleshoot it, on his time, were I not able to do it. Or, personally, I'd take him out for drinks over a wiring diagram until I knew enough to fix it myself.
So twice I have had expensive, dangerous, frustrating problems that apparently cannot be repaired.
No, you just didn't find the place that could repair it. Though the Corolla one is certainly weird, there are only so many relays that control power to the main systems, and if you wanted to shotgun it, replacing all of them would probably have fixed it. If it's killing a battery that fast, it's not a "Oh, you have a 200mA weird draw from corrosion that's more trouble to find than it's worth." It's something significant. Years ago, a work truck was known for killing the battery in a hurry, and eventually, after quite a few attempts to fix it, someone figured out that the shop that replaced the fuel pump had somehow left a bypass in to test it, and the fuel pump was never turning off. Not enough to kill it in a day, but more than enough to kill it in a week.
And cell phones incidentally.
Try a Sonim.
Oh, laptops don't fare well with me either. My Microsoft surface decided to go all squirrely on me about 18 months after I bought it. Spent hundreds trying to have it fixed, but it couldn't be fixed and they couldn't figure out the problem.
Of course it couldn't be fixed. It's a glued together piece of unrepairable trash that Microsoft foised onto the world to make sure that people would always feel like buying new ones. Get something like an old Thinkpad if you want a repairable computer. Old business grade tanks are the best - discrete parts and they're built to be worked on, not that I think anyone does anymore. You can replace a busted up power jack with just the daughterboard for it, not the whole mainboard or a soldering job like you have to do on the cheaper ones.
Or, I suppose, we can just give up, all buy Teslas, wait for them to get the OTA of death that kills them, buy the latest iPhones, hope Apple fixes the "whatever's causing iPhone 15s to be super hot," and defer to the "experts" when stuff needs fixing, instead of learning to do it ourselves. Even after learning, over and over, as you have, that the "experts" have no more clue about it than we do.
Kinda disappointed in this forum, tbh. Not at all what I expected it to be based on reading the, admittedly, older articles. I suppose, in that way, they're very Mustachian. Make a crapton of money and buy whatever you want because it's nifty.
Wow, that was a condescending read, lol.
First, you're not the only flip phone user here, you're not even the weirdest flip phone user here. He's one of our most beloved members and you've already met him.
Second, it may surprise you, but I'm not *actually* a moron, and I'm well aware that problems were solvable if they were findable, but my point was that these problems were not solvable within my means.
It's not that I have magical faith in mechanics, it's that I tried several mechanics and they couldn't solve the problem. I had more faith in them to fix it than my own ability, that's true, but it doesn't mean I think they're infallible.
My point was that I hit a wall where it didn't make sense to keep throwing money at mechanics who couldn't make my car reliable. You asked for an example, and I gave it to you.
OF COURSE no one should try and drive a vintage Jag as their main car, you think I didn't learn that, the hard way? But you also don't know my circumstances at the time and why I ended up with that car.
But again, you asked for an example and that's an example. Or, were you just asking for examples so that you could rip them apart and try to embarrass people??
As for the cell and laptop examples, included those more as a joke of how electrical things and I don't get along. Which also happens to be why I don't value them very much and prefer not to spend much money on them if I can avoid it. Electronics and I really don't seem to get along. Yes, even my old flip phones used to have weird issues. Even landline portable phones too! I swear there's something about me that electronics just hate me. It's a running joke in my family.
As for the forum disappointing you, yes, the place has gotten VERY soft over the years with a lot of very high earning, higher spending folks who aren't particularly focused on keeping their spending very low. It will not reflect what Pete used to write, but if you've seen his latest about buying a Tesla and spending on luxury when you have more than enough money, it very much is in line with that. Although we had some strong critical opinions about that post.
I'm personally someone who misses the more frugal and face punchy days, but to be fair, I'm also someone who shamelessly owns a second home, so it's not like I'm living as frugal as possible. Lol.
So if you burst in here and expect to be able to shame people for their personal life choices and spending, it's not likely to be as well recieved as you may have expected.
Our discourse here is much more about finding the optimal balance of spending, but with a lot of respect for the fact that that balance is personal. We challenge people's spending and will absolutely dole out face punches, but generally only when invited to do so, when we think someone is full of shit, or when we're concerned for someone and think they need to be shaken for their own good.
We have some vicious debates here, mostly about the 4% rule and what counts as retirement, lol, which is rather silly sometimes, but hey, that's what the community is like.
Overall though, it's a generally supportive place and known for being one of the nicer, more respectful corners of the internet. Although we do have our horrible moments, because it's still the internet, but they're few and far between, even when we're discussing extremely contentious topics like politics.
If you don't want to be part of a place where people talk openly about buying $5000 mountain bikes, then yeah, you may not enjoy it here and might prefer an ERE forum.
But if you can get past the fact that this place isn't entirely what you expect, you may find something you enjoy as it is packed with some of the most interesting, well informed, incredibly well educated folks who have a lot to say about, well everything.
We're more focused on the MMM concepts of spending and happiness and what happiness really means for any one of us.
So you can come at us with the perspective that we're all kind of dumb and missing the obvious point, or you can stay awhile, learn what we're about, and see if there's any value here for you.
If there isn't, that's fine, but I'll tell you that you're not going to change this very well established and highly functional community by basically calling us stupid.
You obviously have a lot of car knowledge and we have a bunch of car folks around here, so that is actually *highly* valuable and I hope you stick around to contribute, but I hope you also find a way to respect the community if you do choose to stay.
So it's up to you, do you want to project what you imagined this community to be and be disappointed in us for not being what you imagined or do you want to stay and learn what we actually are?
