Thread: Vehicle age Vs Kms

Personally I like low km, but with as close as they are I would look at the newer one, or bargain the price down on the older one, also are they in similar condition bar the km

I once bought a bike with very low kms for its age. The condition was excellent externally, but after a while problems appeared. It had been stored very near the ocean and the sitting had caused rust inside some major bits like the fuel tank, the valve guides and one cylinder bore.

Probably an extreme case, but I bought it because of the low kms and it bit me.

Jeff

Originally Posted by Jeff

I once bought a bike with very low kms for its age. The condition was excellent externally, but after a while problems appeared. It had been stored very near the ocean and the sitting had caused rust inside some major bits like the fuel tank, the valve guides and one cylinder bore.

Probably an extreme case, but I bought it because of the low kms and it bit me.

Jeff

On the flip side to that, my current bike had 105,000Km on it when I bought it, but it had been fastidiously maintained, and is still in excellent condition and I've had no issues at all with it apart from needing a new battery and new disks, but they are just maintainence items IMO.

Swings and roundabouts. A well maintained higher KM vehicle, will be better than a lower KM POS that never got looked at...

Cheers - Gav.

My simple mind tells me that even tho it has less kms, the parts such as hoses, belts (timing belt) etc are all 8 yrs old, where as a newer car has more kms but the parts are newer, so maybe last the distance regardless of kms.

Cheers Ean

It will always be a balance of the two, but here's my personal experience:

I purchased my D1 with very low kms thinking that was the key. I certainly have age related problems and makes me think I overpaid for my D1. Body and chassis condition and internal accessories suffer from age more than kms IMO. Just the other day, the a/c vent lever broke. There is rust in some places. The dash plastic has gone brittle in some places. The locks on my doors are badly worn and can be opened with any object of key shape... (hope no one knows where I live!!). Etc, etc...

Most are not critical components, so depends if you care about those type of problems. Mostly cosmetic etc, but old vehicles will suffer these problems IMO.

But if you have to give up one of the two - kms or age - the alternative is high kms and possible mechanical problems. I'll still take my cosmetic issues and be happy.

Originally Posted by Ean Austral

My simple mind tells me that even tho it has less kms, the parts such as hoses, belts (timing belt) etc are all 8 yrs old, where as a newer car has more kms but the parts are newer, so maybe last the distance regardless of kms.

Cheers Ean

This is also true. On my low kms D1 I still had to replace those kind of parts, but I guess I considered it part of good servicing.

Also depends to some extent on how the KMs were added...lots of short- run/stop-start /heavy traffic or lots of long runs... I'd go for the latter even if there were more KMs all else being equal...

Ean,

Low km is good but vehicles are priced by age and then an adjustment for condition/km. In years to come the older vehicle will still be older and the km will be similar. For your example I'd go the 2008 given all other things apart from km are the same e.g. same accessory levels, condition. The 2005 is considerably below average km so how did they come about? As Hodges says, lots of little trips, city running?