10,000 mile ownership recap
Has it been 10k miles already? Having purchased this car with 64,302 miles on it, odometer currently reads 74,302 miles. Over the last 10k miles, this car has been doing pretty much everything from school runs, short trips, traffic cruising, backroad fun, and autoX with some success. Since, I've talked about all other advetures so far, I am mostly going to focus on the ownership costs here, breaking it down by repairs, maintenance, and track related purchases.
Cost of ownership:
Let's start with the boring stuff first. Maintenance has been very much straight forward so far. Car battery went flat, so I had to replace that, other than that it's been 2 oil changes and a cabin filter. I ended up picking up oil evacuator, which will certainly make the oil changes cheaper immediately, going from $200 at the dealer to just the price of oil and filter, and about 15 minute of my time. AC was a bit weak, so I've had that serviced too, possibly a bit of a leak somewhere, I'll check for dye marks later.
Total cost of maintenance: $667
Next up is tools. I've decided to invest into things that I knew I would be using all the time, since I intend to work on this car as much as possible on my own to save on running costs. Things like wheel alignment hanger to prevent the wheel from falling off as soon as it's not secure by bolts, all the oil change related bits, and even OBDEleven scanner, every single thing has already paid of itself, in some cases more than several times, especially OBDEleven, with its ability to read live data, scan for deep codes and ensure that I don't replace parts to troubleshoot issues, but actually find a "smoking gun".
Total cost of tools: $387
Now it's time for everyone's least favorite subject, the repairs. I was under no illusion that GTI was going to be as reliable as a Japanese counterpart, and it certainly turned out that way, but not specifically for a reason that one would think. Most of the repairs came out of my obsessive desire to keep the car as clean and problem free as possible. I could have easily said "oh, that's good enough" and ignored certain things, but I didn't want to. I am still very much in honeymoon period with this car, which means that small imperfections bothered me. And if you can fix them for cheap, then why not? The only real repair that could have been costly, was the headlight issue, but thankfully I was able to troubleshoot it using OBDEleven, and fix it for nearly nothing, instead of buying a used headlight for nearly $1000.
Total cost of repairs: $964
Accessories were pretty straight forward. I've had the car windows tinted, because the tint that came with the car was awful (bubbles, color differences, blurry), and I also bought a VW First Aid Kit because I'm a parent and you don't know when you'll need a band-aid.
Total cost of accessories: $378
We can leave it on a high note, and cover the fun stuff. I've decided that I wanted to have some autoX fun with GTI, and it has proven to be pretty capable stock but I wanted to optimize it for the street class, so I went shopping. I've searched for various bits all over the place. Facebook Marketplace provided various used OEM bits, and seasonal sales enabled me to save some money that way as well. This is probably the most expensive category, but realistically, this is the one you want to spend money on, because it's for fun, not because something is wrong and you have to pay to fix it.
Total cost of street and track: $2200
In summary, this has been a fairly expensive year, but mostly because I wanted things a certain way. Next year is expect to be less expensive, because all the things that had to be purchased, have been purchaed, and all the blemishes that were inherited with this used car have been addressed. In theory, I didn't have to prepare the car for autoX. I also could have spend just the $667 for the maintenance, and ignore things like bad tint, or slight drip of oil, or worn leather, or even parking brake handle that I broke while replacing the leather handle piece, but that wouldn't be personally satisfying to drive the car around with all these things staring me in the face, so there we are.
Total cost of ownership: $4596
