So my private hire mk3 Mondeo has now cost me over £3,000 in repairs since January 2012 and I'm at the point of walking away and buying something else.
My mechanic is ex-Ford master technician and he's recommended I buy a mk1 Focus 1.6 petrol estate as a daily hack as they're very reliable and cost buttons to fix when they do go wrong. He also mentioned about the possibility of converting it to LPG. Trouble is, the car will be doing roughly 70,000 miles a year and I have absolutely no idea how much installation costs will set me back and how well it would cope with such high annual mileage.
I've worked out that, at current fuel costs and consumption (41mpg), my Mondeo uses just over £11,000 in diesel every year but things keep going wrong regularly so running costs are much higher than that. A 1.6 Focus petrol estate would return around 35mpg in a similar setting and would cost around £12,500 in fuel annually.
I have little knowledge of LPG so I'm wondering how much I'd roughly be looking at in terms of fuel costs over 70,000 miles if I bought a 1.6 Focus and converted it. I understand that with these systems comes the possibility of further faults but I'll look into that later so ignore any increases in running costs and potential failures or repairs until I establish how much of a saving could initially be made.
Any thoughts/experiences to share? Is it worth it?
My mechanic is ex-Ford master technician and he's recommended I buy a mk1 Focus 1.6 petrol estate as a daily hack as they're very reliable and cost buttons to fix when they do go wrong. He also mentioned about the possibility of converting it to LPG. Trouble is, the car will be doing roughly 70,000 miles a year and I have absolutely no idea how much installation costs will set me back and how well it would cope with such high annual mileage.
I've worked out that, at current fuel costs and consumption (41mpg), my Mondeo uses just over £11,000 in diesel every year but things keep going wrong regularly so running costs are much higher than that. A 1.6 Focus petrol estate would return around 35mpg in a similar setting and would cost around £12,500 in fuel annually.
I have little knowledge of LPG so I'm wondering how much I'd roughly be looking at in terms of fuel costs over 70,000 miles if I bought a 1.6 Focus and converted it. I understand that with these systems comes the possibility of further faults but I'll look into that later so ignore any increases in running costs and potential failures or repairs until I establish how much of a saving could initially be made.
Any thoughts/experiences to share? Is it worth it?
![[TW]Fox](/data/man-of-honor/2009.png){kind=avatar}
