Cars, auto maintenance, Insurance, shipping

Thanks, I'll keep you in mind, so far so good. My husband can drive a car for years when others would of burnt it out already.We will be on holiday after Sept. until next year so maybe later...

Angolhapsi wrote:

or just [horror of horrors in hungary!!] routine servicing

A poorly maintained car on the road is also a "safety" issues, IMHO.

Since you are an expert in auto repair, and maybe see what is out there on the road in your shop, what is your opinion regarding maintenance and possibly safety of the average car on the road in Hungary today?

I ask, as when we moved here years ago, we had to sell our Swiss car because it was too expensive to import it (it was used when bought in Switzerland, but in great condition). We looked for a used car first here, but what we found for sale at the time were little more than a bucket of bolts held together with string and glue (embroidered and facetious for effect....). Even I saw that auto maintenance was really a problem. Has it gotten better?

klsallee wrote:

Since you are an expert in auto repair, and maybe see what is out there on the road in your shop, what is your opinion regarding maintenance and possibly safety of the average car on the road in Hungary today?
.... Even I saw that auto maintenance was really a problem. Has it gotten better?

I know I wasn't asked but the obvious answer is that cars here are not maintained properly.  There's a lot of slapdash work going on.

Mrs Fluffy brought one car back from our usual ("quality") repairers and it sounded terrible.  For those technically minded, they had left out or maladjusted the cambelt/chain tensioner. It could have been a disaster. Luckily guessed exactly what they had done as we'd discussed the issue sometime back. So it was back there within about 1h and then fixed correctly.  The quality of work has gone down considerably but it seems to be very dependent on the staff.  Our "favourite" people who we trust have all moved on now and standards have fallen dramatically and going the extra bit to keep us sweet doesn't seem to be even considered. Luckily our fave fixer is still on the radar and we'll be asking him directly next time. We just hope he doesn't go "bad".

As elaborated previously, for some things, you just have to do it yourself. Fixing my elderly American car, I had to get underneath (last time I did that sort of thing was in my youth about 35+ years ago). What surprises me is how useless they are here at sourcing the spare parts. I could easily find the parts, at a price naturally and a considerable amount of research and time spent. But it was possible. Just phoning up the local distributors was never going to cut it.  It was an international affair - UK, USA and Germany.

We shipped over a almost brand new Ford Mustang GT 5 speed t-Top in 1990.
I never even dared to drive it since our intention was to sell it in Hungary for a profit, sent over a few other cars too as well as a full container of items to shops in Hungary, everything from make-up kits to toys for the first sex shop in Budapest!! Ray-Ban glasses to toilet seats and Cookoo clocks.
The car was a deal we had gone into 50-50 with a friend. His brother who lived in the countryside in Hungary was to store it until we had it sold.
My husband had to return to the US where we were still home owners..
He returned a few weeks later to check how sales on our things were going, what a mess, people were giving our things away to friends and the beautiful Mustang had been used as a hour rental to drag race with for our (Ex) friends brother to fill his pockets.he let anyone who had a few bucks use the fast car for joy rides, My husband was in tears when he saw how dirty the car was and the transmission was gone. He took it out of the car and brought it to several people to see if they could rebuild it, they didn't have the parts back then. He built a special custom box to ship it back to S. Cal. where the work could be done right. Took it on board in cargo.
Had it rebuilt and took it himself back to Hungary where it was installed into the car, carpets re cleaned and seats repaired, car washed a waxed. Sold it and barely made enough to cover all the repairs and cost of car.
After that nightmare we never came back to HU until my MIL was old and ill, I had no interest in getting scammed again, how quickly we forget...
We give up on Hungary, just buy used cars and keep our fingers crossed. Husband knows a bit about cars and is usually lucky picking out a good used car. We did have a real piece of junk we bought in Hungary with the soul purpose of just taking the car on a short trip to Romania. We paid $300. for it and still had insurance and safety check done on it. We know it should not of passed the safety but the person we bought it from had a friend who knew someone... etc.
Money talks here if you get a stamp on your paperwork no one cares, scary!
We took it to Romania for 5 days thinking we might have to take a bus home at any moment.

Hello everyone,

A new thread has been created from several of your posts on the Hungary forum.

These posts related to the same subject (interesting one) : cars, maintenance, insurance and so on, so it is better if theses aspects can be dealt with in detail on this new thread.

Cheers,
Bhavna

If you could, Angolhapsi, please send or post your business info we may be interested in seeking some repairs at some later date. thanks. I tried to PM you but had no luck with it.