Originally Posted By: Ifixyawata
Obviously, with a 17-year old commuter car, I'm not going to fix the rust.
Isn't obvious to me, but it depends what you mean by "fix". I'd agree that cosmetic repair is a waste of time and money.
OTOH, slowing down/stopping rust on a DIY basis is trivial in terms of expense, required expertise, and equipment. Provided you keep whatever you use off the brakes there is very little chance of screwing up badly. You are already seeing the result of a lack of preventative maintenance in this area. I'd take it as a warning.
The people (Canadian couple) I bought my car from (25 years old then, 32 now) had had it dealer-maintained by the book right up to the point where I bought it, (This must have astonished the dealer in maintenance-free Taiwan) while doing absolutely nothing about the rust that was rapidly killing it.
People are strange.
Originally Posted By: Ifixyawata
I just have trouble prioritizing repairs and, as I'm sure many are familiar, my wife doesn't like us spending money on something that's not broken.
Well, I'm not married. Maybe this is one of the reasons why, because this is something I would not put up with, though I hear it a lot.
Since, if its a shared expense, its reasonable that your wife should have some veto on expenditure decisions, (even though the stereotypical chances are she knows nothing about it and has no interest in learning) maybe it shouldn't be a shared expense.
In the unlikely event that I found myself in that situation I'd buy her out (not your wife, obviously) for half current market value, which should be relatively affordable in context.
Originally Posted By: Ifixyawata
(I pushed for one more exit and the car ended up melting rings or some awful catastrophic failure).
OK. Perhaps you wont do that again.
I've killed cars through stupidity and neglect, sometimes avoidably. Hopefully I wont do it again either, but its always been with old cars of negligable market value, so as education goes its been fairly cheap.