I Love Making A Deal

Those skies that looked like snow a few days ago opened up this morning ... but nothing to brag about. It was something between rain and snow ... we had to go check it out.

Talking about trading the FJ has raised a lot of curiosity among readers. Very few post a comment that can be read by the public but my email inbox is over flowing with comments about it with a few attacks and opinions about my mental make up.  (hilarious)

That's all part of blogging publicly and one that I am willing to put up with. It would be a lot worse if I had talked about this on Facebook where I'm told causing controversy is brutal to read. I post this kind of personal stuff here for a few reasons ... it's part of life here in 'the tropics' and it's great entertainment for those readers that have a sense of humor.

So to give you some idea how 'back and forth' I went ... how about this timeline ... better go get something to drink, this post could get interesting. :)

Saturday Morning -- I want to trade for the All-Wheel Drive Mini Cooper
Saturday Night -- I want to keep the FJ
Sunday Morning -- I want to drive 4 hours one way to buy the Mini Cooper
Sunday Afternoon -- I want to buy the Mini Cooper Country that is local
Sunday Night -- "I'm crazy" I'll keep the FJ
Monday Morning -- "Let's see which dealership gives me the price I want, the trade in value I want ... let see which dealer wants to sell me their car but I get everything I want"

Monday Afternoon -- Deal done ... I bought local.

So after a lot of online research for car reviews, customer reviews, visiting the Mini Cooper forum for Countryman All4 owners to see what they were saying and if there were any maintenance problems ... I didn't have a firm answer.

I needed a spreadsheet to compare the three vehicles I was looking to buy. Of those three vehicles I even included my old Voodoo Blue FJ that is now fixed and up for sale. The spreadsheet was eye opening and kind of swayed my decision ... but first I had to make sure that the formulas I had inserted for cost analysis were accurate.

So I loaded my current FJ loan and confirmed my formulas were right on.

I guess I can admit ... I had a huge amount of 'silent' buyers remorse these past 47 days. I never liked the color of the FJ. Even flipping the white letters on the tires inside didn't help. It was a great FJ but I didn't have close to the same 'vibe' I had with the old blue one with the blacked out windows, black wheels, dried hound drool and massive amounts of hound hair when it was in action. And the FACT was ... in the 2-1/2 years owning an FJ, I never had to put it in 4WD and I never towed anything ... why have it???

In case I really do get down to just one car in the carport, I wanted a car that had a sports car feel and at the same time was able to drive down a road off a secondary road to tent camp somewhere. I did not need a 'rock climber', nor were the hounds a factor since I decided a long time ago that Stella was not a boondocking hound.

The Countryman model did both of those things. With it being 500 pounds heavier than the two smaller Mini Hardtops I had ... that 'go kart' feeling was not there while driving it. With a 188hp, it is just as quick as my Z4 and reaction is just like a sports car, even without using the 'sport' options it has that are just pressing a button away.

Yes, it probably looks like a car your nephew or grandson would drive but that has never been a factor with me. I've never let age dictate what I buy or how I act or things I do. I am probably one of the few people close to 65 that do not have a lazyboy recliner in their living room and have never wanted one. (no offense to those that do)

So here is the new All-Wheel Drive, 6-speed manual, I6 engine and a speedo that goes up to 160mph, road eating monster ... a 2012 Mini Cooper S Countryman with only 57,000 miles on the odometer. Not many for a car built in September 2011.

After my 2nd cup of coffee on Monday morning, I made the call up north to see what they were wanting to give me for the FJ. They had the same model and year of Mini but 20K more miles on it but a better price. They had just had a major snow storm and were moving cars around their lot to they could plow their car lot. He said that even with the low ground clearance and high performance tires ... it was moving through 8 inches of snow with no problems.

That sounded good to me ... but right after the conversation went downhill quickly although I didn't tell him that. I started hearing the old story of "we have looked at all kinds of pricing on your FJ and about all we can do is blah blah blah ... wholesale pricing for a trade in value." I could hear the sounds of trumpets in the background as the 'bullshit' flag was being raised.

I had already received a trade in offer that was the same as my NADA sheet I had printed out from the dealer locally and on Saturday after my test drive. As I hung up the phone from that call I was down to just one possible deal.

When I looked at this car on Saturday and test drove it, it needed tires, it needed the striping on the hood replaced due to a scratch on the decal. What I thought were broken parts to a very strange designed "track" type console I found out later that night after doing some searching on google they were only missing two cup holders and what I saw were the brackets to hold them. And .... I needed a lower price.

Being black I knew that these pictures would be the cleanest it would ever be and that would most likely only last a day after I washed it in the summer ... in the winter, there is not a chance this black car will look clean ... it will look 'used' ... after all every car you own can't be silver and this one will show every speck of dirt or rain drops.

So after that first call and rechecking my spreadsheets by plugging in different sale prices or different trade in prices to see what this crazy deal was going to cost me ... I decided to give them a call. I thought I knew that they were wanting to sell it pretty quick. It wasn't their type of car to sell sitting amongst a lot of chevy, ford, cars, trucks ... you get the picture.

I told them I needed some allowance to buy new tires that it needed. I did not mention the that I'd like to have it detailed inside and out. During the test drive I it also had the "low tire" light on so I needed the tires checked out. I gave them my sale price offer ... and waited on the phone for my answer.

Check off that trade in value and sales price - I got just what I wanted for their and my car. They actually increased my trade in value from Saturday and still lowered their sale price. Later in the afternoon when I told him I wanted the car, the owner told me he would have them pull the car back inside and get it washed and detailed plus check all the tires. I thought it was nice I didn't even have to ask.

When I picked it up it looked like new inside and outside. Earlier I asked for and received a free CarFax to look at before any transaction was made. Those reports will not tell you everything but they tell you enough and whether you should sign the paperwork or take off sprinting to your car to leave.

The CarFax looked good, I was more than satisfied with it. The 2nd owner did all of the driving in the past 14 months. Being in home health care, she had put on the majority of miles. It had been serviced on a regular schedule since the first day it arrived from Germany. Plus Edmunds car review and KellyBlue Book reviews were telling me the mileage for that year of car was right where it was suppose to be.

Besides getting use to all the electronic 'bells and whistles', I wanted to measure the cargo area and found the 'sub' floor under the cargo floor was 8" deep and the cargo area itself is wide enough to carry my two 32gl trash cans to recycling ... one of trash and one of recyclables.

The hardest part of all of this was removing the dealership decal. Their decal was the largest I had ever seen but it was pretty simple to peel off with Goo Off and a plastic edger ... I never use it for removing calking around a bathtub but those plastic scrapers are great for taking off auto dealer decals.

Since I have not owned it for 24 hours the only way I can show you it's capabilities is from pictures off of google images. With the manual transmission and all-wheel drive I have no doubt it can handle the type of snow we get here in 'the tropics'.

For those times in the future that I am tent camping out west I will still be able to drive out and away to boondock. Rutty forest roads would be a problem but not the type of roads that we drove on in June 2015.

This next picture shows it's a pretty good climber over rough rocky roads.

At least it floats through mud.

With the sleek roof rails it opens up possibilities.

In an extreme situation where the hounds would end up doing a road trip ... there is room in back for both bloodhounds when the back seats are folded down with Heidi riding her normal 'shotgun' position. The carrier on top would provide ample space in the cargo area.

Along with a nice expensive hound accessory to keep all the stuff that comes with hounds under control in back.

I'm not a fan of the rail tracking system for a console but his iPhone rack while it charges is pretty nice. That rail system goes all the way back to the back seats. Included in my console is a case for sunglasses.

Well the hounds are howling for lunch ... Stella has tested the durability of the black exterior paint by leaving drool in places she needed to check out while I removed the dealer decal. That wet drool was frozen by the time I went to wipe it up ... we will call them a form of ice and leave it until warmer weather.

I have put a finger on where all of my car dealing comes from ... my dad. I remember growing up we had 2-3 cars all the time. As a teacher and coach he didn't have many weekends off but the times he did were when he would go out to look at cars. I can remember a times where he would come home after being gone on a Saturday morning telling us to get the keys and follow him. At times he would trade all or a couple of cars at one time.

Most times he would leave on a Saturday morning not telling us where was going but he had obviously seen a car somewhere that had peaked his interest. Later he would come home with a new car as a surprise. As far as I can remember, those trips took place about every 2 years, maybe less.

Did he ever trade a car in 47 days?  Maybe ... after that trip to the Smoky Mountains in a newly acquired Nash Rambler staion wagon ... he found out it didn't quite feel the same to those new Buick's he use to buy ... that Rambler was traded within days after our return home.

So there's that for my excuse ... but basically I love cars and making deals.

I'll be back later today with some hound pictures ... I need to put on those hiking boots or even the snow boots and head out for a walk so we can check out what little snow we have.

Stella has had it waiting around, lost her patience ... constant howling now ... she wants to eat.

It's never dull living in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.

The Shocking Unexpected Trading Of The FJ

When I bought this FJ in May 2014 I had plans of keeping it forever. Even as late as last Friday I had plans to keep it. Things had been changing though and by late Friday night I was searching on cars.com for 2007 FJ's for sale within 100 miles from my house .. I also went to a site called cargurus.com to see if their analysis was a good deal and find out how long they had been on the market for sale. 

The story actually starts two days after I bought the FJ in 2014, when those 4 warning lights on the dash blinked on all at once. I called the small family owned car dealer I bought it from, someone I did not know, and asked about the lights and any info they could give me. They said they had never seen them. Sure they hadn't ...

I went to a FJ forum, and found it was a common problem with FJ's that had a lot of miles. There were various ideas, solutions, some worked some didn't. I started by unhooking the battery so the ESC could reboot itself and then find out if the lights came back on. They did but it took over 5 short trips for them to do that.

Possibilities were:

• O2 sensors were bad
• Gas cap was not tightened properly or o-ring wore out
• Gasoline may have ethanol in the mix
• Catalytic converters were bad

I went to the local Toyota Dealer to talk to their service manager and found out most likely it was the O2 sensors, they could be cleaned and that could be a fix. They tested the car and it coded out as O2 sensors NOT catalytic converters. He told me I could drive the car with those dash lights on but eventually I'd have to replace the converters.

Move forward to the end of May 2015 a year later. After the lights had stayed off once the O2 sensors were clean, about a week before we were headed on the trip to Utah, all four of them came back on. The guys on the forum had said all of those lights were set to come on at once, as a packaged deal.

Flying down I-70 going through Kansas in June 2015 with Heidi riding shotgun, with Winston and Sadie in back ... at about 80mph, those lights clicked off ... never saw them again until a few weeks after we returned home in Indiana.

Was it change in altitude or the difference in octane ... 91/93 here in Indiana but 93/96 out west. So any thought of catalytic converters went out the window of my mind. At this time I did not know the cost of replacing them.

So from June 2015 until December 2015, those lights went on and off intermittently. At no time did the performance of the engine decrease ... ran like new. It was quiet, powerful and with the hood open and then engine idling ... nothing sounded strange.

Sometime last winter in the snow .. January or February the lights come back on to stay on all the time. I am sitting at Dairy Queen drive through, close to the pickup window but right next to the wall of their building, window rolled down ... when I hear some sort of metal vibration or small rattling. I figured I had a loose nut or bolt on one of the skid plates, thinking I would fix it when the days got warmer and I could crawl under the FJ to look around.

It was the same "rattling bb's sound" I heard last week when I am under the FJ trying to find that sound ... catalytic converter ... off to Toyota we went.

By August 2016 I "thought" I was hearing a whine from somewhere, transmission, wheel bearing, u-joints ... what? That is like me trying to figure out if those blog photos are blurry or not or is it just my eyes. Since I am half crazy ... or accused by some people to be 100% nuts ... was I hearing things?

I was almost positive what I was hearing was getting louder by the week although I really don't drive that many miles per month now while retired. Even when I drove to Indy to trade it on Tuesday the sounds had gotten louder and I was concerned a little bit ... if I would make it 70 miles with a breakdown.

Last Friday, the 21st I had gone over to see my friend and stopped by Toyota Dealer to have them plug into my car to see what codes were popping up. A SHOCK!!!!

Catalytic converters were bad PLUS a new one ... something about 'brake lights circuit'. I had brake lights and tail lights so that one was confusing. It was at this time on the drive home for 20+ miles I thought about making a possible trade.

I wasn't going to take ~$5,000 out of my account to fix a car, any car with 146,252 miles on it. I might be wrong on that idea but I won't do it. So I started looking for a possible trade around midnight Friday night and as you know once I start researching it's a non-stop venture and things start moving pretty fast.

One reason I wanted to buy from a Toyota Dealer this time was because I know the car would have been gone over with a fine tooth comb to fix any issues it had before it was put on the lot for sale. Toyota actually pays their mechanics extra for every problem they find and fix during their inspection before putting the used vehicle up for sale.

In the mean time, Saturday morning I called the Toyota Dealership for a cost estimate for replacing the catalytic converters (2 each) and new O2 sensors. Plus I checked with a business I have used in the past that works on all foreign made cars along with the garage in town that works on all kinds of cars and trucks.

Cost estimates were from $4,500 to $5000 with the Toyota Dealership being the cheapest. I did an estimate to compare what it would cost to fix to trading for a new car and financing it. Since I had bought the Z4 in May with cash, I was going to have to finance the FJ if I made a trade. My analysis showed it was very close to the same amount of money if I were to make the trade compared to fixing the problem. I compared total cost left for paying it off and looking at estimated new loan to see it was going to cost me close to $5,000 either way.

One key point in the decision ... I could trade for the same FJ model except for the off road package that included rock rails, extra skid plates and the TRD performance exhaust ... but ... I would have an FJ with only 119,000 miles instead of 146,252. That's a lot of miles to some but with regular preventive maintenance Toyota's are known to go for 200-300,000 miles ... I'm afraid I will not live that long to test that amount of miles out at my current annual mileage rate.

You may be asking why not buy a newer model, less miles???? I like the style of the older models more than the newer ones. I also haven't found a color I like on the newer models. Toyota stopped making them in 2014 but currently there are rumors they are going back into production.

I had found one with a stock look instead of the radical "blacked out" look of the Voodoo Blue one I had. Same size of tires although it looked lower to the ground compared to the one I had. I actually liked what Toyota calls "black cherry" compared to the "voodoo blue".

The new one had a lot less rust on the undercarriage than the one I had. There was one minor body mark that I can get fixed, but it was also cleaner on the inside than mine from the previous owner, not the hounds. I also need to buff up the roof rack.

I also estimated that if I wanted to go back to a "blacked out FJ" I could do that to the new one for a lot less than spending $5,000 cash to fix the one I had. I didn't see keeping the old one just because of the way it looked.

So after talking to the sales person on Saturday I planned to go up on Tuesday to test drive and look at theirs while they looked at mine. (I also knew if I could go to Indianapolis for most of the day, that would give any strangers that were blog readers enough time to stop by the house and check on the hounds for me while I was gone. j/k)  I sent them all the photos of mine including the dash warning lights that were on ... plus told them the story of O2 sensors and the recent findings of bad catalytic converters. They offered a NADA trade in value sight unseen ... we both agreeing that it could be adjusted after they confirmed exactly what need to be repaired.

I thought at that time they would decrease the trade in value for the cost of catalytic converter replacement of $4,500. Would I still make the trade if that turned out to be true? I decided after more analysis that yes, I would make the trade even if they reduced their trade in value offer. If they had to fix the problem before they could sell it ... that would only be the fair thing to do.

I found out they were going to decrease the offer by "their cost" to replace them for $3,000 not $4,500-$5,000 retail.

While looking the engine over I could see, as these pictures show ... Toyota had replaced the oil cap, new hoses, new switches, along with some new clamps. I knew from the Carfax I would be the 3rd owner but the previous owner had only driven the FJ around 8,000 miles per year for the last 4-1/2.

Both previous owners had it serviced as scheduled at Toyota Dealerships. No accidents or major repairs were reported. On the test drive on I-70 it ran quiet with not a sound from the transmission, transaxle, wheels etc. I still think and thought at the time mine might have had some future repairs in store based on those sounds I was hearing recently. The dealership also took my FJ out for a test drive on the freeway to check it out.

It has running boards instead of rock rails .. that also makes it look lower. Also both driver side and passenger side windows were not tinted like my other ... easy fix if I want to go back to that style.

It also doesn't have the second larger skid plate over the stock skid plate in front like my other did. I'm really not sure how much I would need that since I have no plans to be a 'rock climber' like you see out in Moab. If I changed my mind on that then I'll make the required changes.

Although it does not look like it the tires are the same size as the Bridgestone tires I had on the other one, the Yokohama's are the same size and TireRack has some good reviews for those tires. I will replace them with BF Goodrich AT once these wear out.

So that is the LONG story of what took place and a little bit about why the decision was made.

The hounds have not made their maiden voyage in the 'black cherry' FJ yet, although Stella has left some fresh drool on the rear corners as she was trying to see if there was a way she could open the back door and jump inside. She believes that there isn't a door that she cannot open and get in or get out. Dried bloodhound drool is hard to get off the surface of a car. LOL

There might have been some buyers remorse on the way home because I loved that blue FJ yet by the next morning all was good. By the time I was taking the trip to the lake yesterday I knew I had made the right decision ... it rain quietly ... no whines from anywhere!!

If you made it this far after reading all of that babbling ... you really are an "official blog reader" about the hounds.

Cooler temps today here in 'the tropics' of southern Indiana.