You may have noticed that I missed last month’s post. There just wasn’t enough to write about so I decided to skip it. I sat down this weekend to write a post to cover everything that’s gone on in James’ life over the past two months. As I was writing, I went off on a long tangent about our van situation and have decided to turn it into its own post. I will write a second post that is more focused on James, but probably won’t have it up until tomorrow night.
I was talking with James a couple of weeks ago and apologized that we were unable to go on vacation this year and promised him that we’ll take a trip somewhere fun once we get a new van. Right now, we just need to keep our van running until we can afford to buy a new, or slightly used one. Fortunately, our van has been holding up these past few months without any major issues. Stacy took it to Discount Tire in May to have the tires checked and one of the front tires was worn to the point of needing to be replaced. The other three tires were good, and they each had about the same amount of wear. So why did just one tire wear so much faster than the other three when all four tires were replaced at the same time? The guy told her that it might be out of alignment and offered to replace both front tires for $150, which was a good deal considering the tires are $168 each. She had the alignment checked a couple of weeks later, and all four wheels were within spec, so it wasn’t an alignment issue that caused the one front tire to wear out so quickly. Hopefully it was just a faulty tire, and we won’t have that issue again.
The only other main issue we’ve had with the van was with the key fob. Stacy had been having issues with the fob buttons not opening or unlocking doors for a while. We replaced the battery, and that didn’t fix the issue. I read somewhere online that sometimes the contact points inside the fob get dirty and can be cleaned by using a pencil eraser. I tried that, but that didn’t seem to help either. I even bought new “empty” fobs on Amazon and put the circuit board from Stacy’s fob in one of the new ones. This actually seemed to help…for a while. We finally decided to break down and buy a new fob this past September. The Dodge dealership wanted around $300 for the fob, the programming of the fob, and to cut the emergency key. Ouch!
Stacy found out the Ace Hardware sold replacement fobs and was quoted a price of $250 for everything…fob, key cutting, and programming. We assumed that the key fob from Ace would be just as good as the one from Dodge and decided to save the $50 and go with Ace. That was in September. A couple of months ago some of the buttons stopped working. Stacy called Ace to explain the issue and asked if there was some sort of warranty on the fob. The gentleman she spoke with said that the fobs do not come with a warranty because they could easily get wet and stop functioning but told her to bring it in and they would take a look at it. They reprogrammed it and it was fine for about another month. Then the buttons stopped working again.
Stacy was at Dodge on Monday for an oil change and told the service advisor about the issues with the key fob. First, he was surprised that her original key fob had lasted nine years. He said that they normally need to be replaced in about five years. Seriously?! I had a 2010 Ford Edge (may she rest in peace) for eleven years and never had a single issue with either of the key fobs. After taking some pity on Stacy, the Dodge service advisor waived some of the fees and offered her a new fob for $240 plus tax, which she bought. Fingers crossed that this one works longer than the one from Ace Hardware did. I can’t wait to get rid of this van. It’s turning into a money pit, and we’re just waiting for the next issue to creep up.
I figure that we’re about $10,000 away from being able to afford a new, or slightly used van. As much as I would love to be able to pay for a new van in full and not have an additional monthly expense, I don’t think that is an option. They are just too expensive, so we’re going to have to finance some of it. How expensive are wheelchair accessible vans? BraunAbility, one of the top manufacturers of wheelchair accessible vehicle conversions, lists their MSRP, as well as a breakdown of that price on their website. This is the cost of a converted 2024 Toyota Sienna XLE:
As you can see from the price breakdown, converting a van to make it wheelchair accessible almost doubles the price of the van. It’s crazy, but there is a lot of work that goes into turning a standard van into an accessible one. They basically have to cut the van apart, move the body to a new frame, and put everything back together again. Here is a short video so that you can see the process:
Now do you see why these vans are so expensive? And because this is a niche market, shopping for an accessible van is vastly different than shopping for a normal vehicle. You can’t just browse a dozen local dealership’s websites to see who’s got the best price. We only have one main option in our area that sells wheelchair accessible vans, Mobility Works, and they don’t list prices for the majority of their available vehicles (new or used) on their website. To give you an idea of what these vans are really selling for, I am including some screenshots taken from BLVD.com, which does include prices.
You may have noticed that all of the screenshots above are for Toyota Siennas. After our experience with our 2014 Dodge Grand Caravan, we have vowed to never own another Chrysler product again. That leaves us with only other two main options for a wheelchair accessible van: Toyota Sienna and Honda Odyssey. Pricewise, the Odyssey is about $6,000 cheaper, but the Sienna has a little bit more rear floor space in which to turn James’ wheelchair than the Odyssey, so that is why we’re leaning toward the Sienna.
As I mentioned earlier, I’d rather not have a car payment at all, but I know that’s not going to be an option, unless we win the lottery (which we don’t waste our money on), or one of our trees starts showering us with money, or we get enough donations through our fundraiser. Realistically, we’re going to have to finance some of it. In reviewing our finances, I figure we could probably afford a car payment of $500 a month, so we have been putting that much into savings every month for the past several months to get accustomed to it. I used Calculator.net’s Auto Loan Calculator to see how much car we can afford for $500 a month. I chose a 60-month loan term; an interest rate of 6.0%; a downpayment of $38,000 (which is what we have between our fundraiser and savings); and a trade-in value of $10,000 (this is just a guess). The $2,800 for Title, Registration, and Other Fees was already filled in on the calculator and I left it as is since I don’t know what these costs would be. Based on all of those numbers, the calculator says that we can afford a vehicle costing $65,511.62, which limits our option to the last two vans above.
The 2018 and 2020 are the previous generation Siennas, without a hybrid option. The current generation Sienna came out in 2021 and has a hybrid engine as the only available engine, which almost doubles the gas mileage over the previous generation (36 MPG vs 21 MPG). The hybrid would save us quite a bit of money on gas with Stacy running around most to her various dog walking clients. In order for us to be able to afford that 2023 Sienna XLE above for $72,900, we’d either need to increase our car payment to $660 per month for 60 months; extend the loan to 72 months and increase our monthly payment to $565; or come up with another $9,000 to add to the down payment. It will take us a year and a half to save that much, assuming we don’t have another major expense with our current van.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post. If you’d like to help us out, please consider making a donation, and sharing our fundraiser website with friends and family. We are eternally grateful to those who have already donated. In addition to accepting monetary donations, we are also selling shirts, if you are interested.
