COE Bidding for October 2015 2nd Open Bidding

My Lancer Sports is coming to its 10-year term. The current COE will expire in March 2016. In Year 2006, the COE was about $10K and at one point, the COE was $8K. I quickly went in to buy the Lancer Sports 1.6A which was selling for $52K with the COE at $8K. I got the COE at the first bidding which was about $11K, so effectively, I had gained $3K from the COE.

The Lancer Sports is quite durable and the only major repair (or replacement) is the timing belt. Every two to three years, I had to change the car battery. I have no problem with the air-conditioning. The one good thing about this car is the tyres. C&C gave Yokohama Aspec DB tyres which are very durable and hard. They had served me for almost 5 years (100K km) before I really needed to change them. Well, I think I'm a good driver who knows how to take care of the wheels while driving. I had heard friends or colleagues who changed tyres every one or two years. They are surprised when they heard that I changed every 5 years. I remembered the first Lancer that I bought in 2004, it was having the same Yokohama tyres and when I traded in to the agent in 2006, they thought I just changed my tyres when they inspected them. Well, I told them that I had not changed them since 2004. The only drawback about the tyres is that they are quite noisy when driving over certain road conditions. You need to get used to the noise but I saved quite a lot with these tyres.

Coming back to the COE Bidding for October 2015, I knew that it will go up because of the reduced number of COEs for Nov-Jan period. This was because a lot of people are renewing their COEs and fewer cars are being scrapped. The reduced number will cause some kneejerk actions and drive up the prices. True enough, the COE for CAT A went up by $1.3K and the price of Lancer EX went up by 1K too. Luckily, I locked in the lower price and yet got a higher COE price. What a good deal!



I got the bid!

The PQP for CAT A is $56,583 and if you want to renew your old car for 10 years, this is the price to pay. If you want to renew for 5 years, I think the price is halved. But if you renew for 5 years, you cannot extend it at the end of the 5th year. So, at the end of the 5th year, you will need to scrap the car. Another thing to note about renewing your COE for old car, you will lose the scrap value of the car, yes, it will be zero if you did not scrap it at the end of the 10-year COE. Also, the road tax for the car will increase every year for old car. The other problem is the maintenance of the car, most likely at this point (9th to 10th year period), the car will have a lot of issues, such as leakage radiator, engine brackets corroded, leather seats worn out, horn spoilt, rusting parts, air-con problem, suspension issues, noise from car, gear-box issue, chip and dent on paint-works, etc. That will be another $3K to repair or/and replace the spare parts.


COE Bidding Results - source from http://www.onemotoring.com.sg

Rinnai Gas Dryer

I have been using Rinnai Gas Dryer RD-600 CG from City Gas to dry my clothes for almost 8 years and have only done one time of repair. It is a durable machine and can dry clothes say 5 to 6 kg of washed clothes. The time taken to dry one load is about 30 minutes. Normally, for an electric dryer, the time taken will be double of the gas dryer.

When you start the cycle, the gas will be ignited to provide the hot air to dry your clothes. You may want to provide some ducting to channel the hot air out of the house. It is recommended to install this near a window for ventilation. This Rinnai Gas Dryer can be installed above your washer via mounting brackets to the wall. I don't think it can be stacked onto the washer directly as it is 5cm wider.

I have anticipated to install this Rinnai Gas Dryer in my new condominium unit but now after collecting the keys to my unit, I realised that the width of the washing area is only 64cm. Even if it is 65cm, I don't think I will be able to fit the Rinnai Gas Dryer into the space because there should be some clearances between the wall to the sides of the dryer. I was very disappointed with the design as the developer has not considered that people may want to install gas dryer which is around 65cm in width. I was hoping that the washing area width will be around 70cm which is good to fit in the gas dryer. I was considering the possibility of knocking down the wall to make way for the gas dryer but the DB, OpenNet Fibre Optic cable and telecom points are located behind the wall. It will be a major renovation work if I need to hack the wall.

There are only two options available. One is to get an electric dryer instead and stack it above the washer. The other option is pray that Rinnai can manufacture a gas dryer which is around 60cm in width (which is closer to the standard washer/dryer dimension). The later option does not seem to happen in the next couple of months or even years. Well, I will need to switch to an electric dryer for my washed clothes. This will definitely increase my electricity bills.