Old Car and Bike rambling

When that pile of rust you drive doubles in value from filling it with gas, it doesn't make a lot of financial sense to spend $500-600 to pay someone to replace a noisy wheel bearing. It makes even less sense when this is the 4th time the same wheel bearing has needed replacing in roughly 6 years of ownership. After the car left my daughter stranded last year, I paid a shop $1,200 for a tune up to get it running again only to have them tell me it needed another $1k in various other repairs such as a wheel bearing and valve cover gaskets. I was hoping to replace the car with something newer, but the COVID related chip shortages pretty much destroyed the used car market in 2021 making people sell junk for twice their worth. My own goal of retiring in 2022 made spending another $8-10k on a car for my kid a hard pill to swallow so I let my son drive it until it couldn't be driven anymore. The car was marking it's territory wherever it parked, eventually needing a quart of oil e