This is exactly why an automobile should be treated as a depreciating asset, rather than an investment.
You fix a car if it will cost less than half of its value at the time of the repair. If it cost more than half, get rid of it at the first opportunity. There are caveats to that rule of course. So don't fault yourself for buying another car.
You had some bad luck and that is just a part of owning a car. In commiseration, I invested $2500 into an Acura TL that I dearly loved for timing belt and some other 100K maintenance items. Only to have its transmission blow up less than 4 months later. The $2500, plus the transmission replacement would have been well over half the value of the car. I traded it. For a car that I still own and absolutely loathe, but it's been reliable and I've put over 160,000 miles on it. My oldest kid now drives it.
The short answer is:
Keep your current car. It's basically new. From a manufacturer that is notable for the reliability of its products. You also know its maintenance history, which is incredibly important.
Have your payments kept ahead of depreciation? Meaning, can you sell your car for enough to pay off your loan? Just so you know, that's almost always "no", but your results may vary. You would also be forced to buy another car. 7.59% APR sucks, but are you able to get a better rate now on another car? Do you have the down payment for another car? Again, you may not have any money left over from selling your current car and paying off the lien.
If you can refinance it at a lower the rate, then absolutely that is the path you should take. If not, then taking a more global look at your finances are in order to make the payment more palatable.
For some reason, when Cibola Burns came out, Jefferson Mays was unavailable, so another person narrated it. I think it was Erik Davies, but cannot remember, the book has since been redone by Jefferson.
I stopped and returned the book when the narrator pronounced "cumin" as something a teenager does into a Kleenex. Which, to be fair, is actually an appropriate pronunciation of the word, per Webster's dictionary, I've never heard anyone else pronounce it that way before. There were A LOT of other issues with the guy's narration. His cadence, voicing, along with pronunciation was absolutely atrocious. By far the worst narrator I have personally encountered.
Jefferson Mays needs to have someone go through and coach him on pronunciation. Otherwise, his cadence, pacing, voicing are all pretty good. Certainly not an S tier narrator, but pretty solid and he gives "The Expanse" books the tone that they need.
Large ships that ply the stars at super luminal speeds. These ships are equipped with massive energy weapons capable of pulverizing planets. Powered by systems that use anti-matter, or ultra exotic inter-dimensional matter.
Yet, for some reason the ship is constrained on energy and is unable to keep all the lights on, or the crew has to conform to "energy conservation protocols" (ST TOS), or there isn't enough power available to keep the ship at a habitable temperature (BSG).
Life support would not even be a rounding error on the power output of some of the systems described in Sci fi.
55m here.
When I'd post on Reddit and started getting nothing but bots or trolls, or both I started to lose interest in it. The proverbial straw though was the API shenanigans. I used Bacon Reader on my phone, yes I know there were dozens of us, and the mobile Reddit app was crap.
So I did what any Gen'xer who was there at the dawn of the internet does... I searched for an alternative. Lemmy was one that kept popping up.
Been here ever since. Not sure how long ago that was no, 3 years? 4? I've slept since then.
55m here (birthday is coming up next week so I'm owning getting older!)
Get the kids, I have two teenage boys, through University and send them off into life well prepared. At least as prepared as my wife and I can make them.
Retire before I die and at this point, I mean that seriously.
That's it. In my youth I had aspirations to be a pilot and an engineer... But my eyesight precluded me from doing the type of flying that I wanted to do. I wanted to become an EE, but made some stupid decisions in my youth and thought I could make money early, then go back to school. Turns out, to make that money you have to work alllllll the time. I actually didn't complete my degree until age 42. Really stupid of me not to stay in university when I was in my early 20's.
Things I did accomplish already:
Skydiver and attained both my "D" master license and "PRO" licensed. Though long retired from it, I'm quite proud of my time in the sky. There are a several people in the air today, because of what I taught them many years ago. They have gone on to teach others. While my impact on the sport is not as great as some, it is far more than many.
Found a life mate: Which is not something that I thought I wanted until my mid-30's when I met my future wife.
At this point, I just want to make it to old age... Well oldER without ending up in a gutter homeless.
Not just circuit breakers, but why are high powered circuits being used in the habitable parts of the ship?
Even modern cars no longer run high amperage circuits to the driver's controls. Back in the old days, you turn on the lights, the light switch carried a full 12v and a lot of current to control relays. Today, the light switch and turn signal stalk use a signal circuit to tell a body control module what to do.
The bridge of a Star Trek ship should have control panels running on the future equivalent of 5 volt signal circuits that tells a distant and well shielded control module to switch the ultra high powered circuits.
That leads me to the one thing that has always bothered me about Star Trek and its transporters and replicators. E=MC^2... When a replicator creates food or an object, it would take at least the same amount of energy to make, as it would if the same amount of mass were destroyed in a nuclear reaction. That DOES mean in areas where those devices are installed there ARE ultra high powered circuits (EPS conduits) in the wall. So high powered that they have the equivalent of multiple nuclear explosions flowing through them every second... YIKES.
Sorry for the bad image quality.
The image is of the top of piston 4 and the cylinder wall in a Toyota 2AR-FE with 162,000 miles. All Toyota recommended maintenance was performed throughout the engine's life. I have the feeling those recommendations were written by marketing people and not the engineers.
Based on what the image shows, the engine needs a short block. Am I correct?
That is a generally accepted rule for repairing a car. It is not hard and fast, as it is not a simple decision. So you are correct, it's not right, but it is also not wrong either. It's a matter of whose yacht you want to finance? Your mechanic's, or your lender's.
The only time I would consider putting more than half the worth of a car into fixing it, is if it is a vehicle that is difficult or impossible to replace. Case in point is I have a friend that has one of the last Toyota Camry's with a manual transmission to come off the production line. He bought it new. About 4 years ago at a bit over 200k on the odometer, he replaced the short block, plus a lot of other work to essentially make the car "new" again. His total bill was over $10k, which is more than the car is worth in total. Why? He just loves it that much and Toyota no longer offers a manual in the Camry. He hates automatics and has declared it will be a cold day in hell before he ever owns one.