2008 C30 T5 at 151K miles - worth keeping?
 

I have a 2008 C30 T5 w/ manual transmission that is now at 151k miles, and I am trying to decide whether to keep it or not. Can I expect mostly trouble-free driving for the next 5 years / 50k miles, or is this car going to start falling apart? I do basic maintenance and medium level repair myself, but major repairs like turbocharger or head gasket replacement are beyond my repair skill set. We bought the car from our neighbor about a year ago, who was the original owner. She was a conservative driver, and kept up on the scheduled maintenance.

One thing that I notice is that the oil looks pretty dirty at oil change time (every 5k to 6k miles, Castrol full synthetic). Is this typical? Also, it consumes about 1 quart every 3k miles or so at this point.

Another thing I have noticed is more driving noise that is proportional to speed and independent of RPM. It's not tire noise or wind noise. It seems like front wheel bearing noise, but the "12:00 and 6:00" test when on jack stacks stands is fine with no obvious wheel bearing issue when spinning by hand. Do they just get noisy when older on this car? The wheel bearings are original. (It looks like the front wheel bearing replacement, unlike the rear, requires a press to install the new wheel bearing into the steering knuckle hub; so it's not a simple bolt on hub job.) Or is this car just a noisy at highway speeds in general?

Opinions appreciated.

Thx,

Bob

Assuming you have done regular maintenance on the car, there's no reason it won't be reliable for another 50-100K. Sure you will need repairs from time to time but you can budget that in vs the cost of buying a replacement. As to the noise, I've never had good luck tugging on rims to find a wheel bearing issue. I generally drive with the windows open and listen for sound changes turning left or right. The other likely source is tires. Tires can cup with a poor alignment and then get noisy. I own a VW CC which are notorious for tire wear creating noisy tires to the point people align the wheels every 5000 miles. You can try rotating front/rear to see if anything changes but really won't know until you drop on some new tires (lol my snows are quieter than my summer tires right now). If you suspect a wheel bearing, you can have a shop do the investigation for you (ie car on lift so the wheels can spin etc). Sometimes its hard to tell if its a front or rear bearing too.

Hi mt6127,

Thanks for the feedback.

When I got the car, I replaced the front tires with tires that I know are quiet yet good performers ( I use them on my Lexus IS300). That definitely helped reduce tire noise. The old tires did not have any obvious cupping or asymmetrical wear patterns, but I may just go ahead and get an alignment done anyway. The tires on the back are about 2/3 worn, and I will replace them in about 6 months. For an experiment, I swapped the old/new tires front to back. The suspect noise was still there, and there was much more tire noise in the front.

When/if I figure this out, I will report back to the forum my findings.

Bob

My C30 makes more tire noise than any car I've ever had. I assume it's because the camber angle is pretty steep to make it handle well? The rear end looks like it's squatting. It could also be that they tried to save weight by reducing cabin sound-proofing. The tires seem to wear fairly evenly, but they are really noisy, even with brand new tires they seemed to be loud. I wonder if using stiff suspension bushings could be a reason. I don't know, but the fact remains: noisy.