Why? I keep my cars 12-15 years, have had few repairs.
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Do you do a lot of the needed repairs for your vehicles yourself?
I can think of two responses to both of the quotes above:
“Your mileage may vary”
and…
“Different strokes for different folks”
What is best for one person is not necessarily good for others.
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No, I have them done, the few that have been needed. A well-maintained car can go way past 7-10 years in most cases with few repairs. If the goal is zero repairs, then a 3 year lease approach might be best.
I have no problem with folks getting cars sooner if their need changes, the car is troublesome, or they just get bored with it. But that’s different than what I’d recommend to save money or what’s needed because of typical repairs.
I’m just wondering why you, the owner of some OLD vehicles, came up with such a short time estimate…
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Ah ha ha. Leave free or die. Not everyone lives by their state motto. I have no idea what minnesotas is but quite sure it’s changing.
Fair question. I anticipated someone might ask though, and tried to address it in the last paragraph of my post above. Short answer, I enjoy the challenge of keeping older cars running. Plus I have mostly local driving needs, so if car stops working I’m seldom far from home base.
Some of us are often 1000 miles or more from home and don’t want a failure.
I am, as a conservative friend describes me, slightly to the left of Lenin.
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The southern part is changing because of the influx of highly educated people due to the high-tech companies and jobs. North of Concord - 90% republican conservatives. Our state government is still largely republican.
5000 hours is probably reasonable for most people. That could be 95,000 miles for a mostly city car. 150,000 miles for a typical car. It could be 200,000 miles for a long distance commuter.
I used to do fleet work for vehicles that would reach those hours by 40,000 miles!
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Averaging 8 miles per hour, 5,000 hours would amount to 40,000 miles.
Were these golf carts?
The shop I was at did service work for the local branch of major phone/cable/internet utility. These trucks often spent all day idling, even though the managers said that they didn’t. Believe me, when a guy spends half a day up a utility pole or in a wet crawlspace, they want a warm dry truck to get into.
As a side note, we maintained these trucks using OEM parts and severe duty schedule. Someone in management was talked into saving money by having a mobile oil change service come to their yard, using synthetic 5W30 in every truck, and switching to 10,000 mile oil changes. A year or two later we started to see a large increase in major engine repair and replacement. Funny coincidence, huh?
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On the highway no matter how fast I go, I usually average around 50 miles an hour. Around town who knows but when I punch the button it is not unusual to see 20 miles average. It would be great to have an hour meter. In fact I think the computer already keep track of hours but just resets when you reset the trip. A couple lines of coding is all it would take to have accumulated hours displayed.
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A 2014 RAM has hours. Volvos since at least the 850 OBD-II count engine hours internally. There is a device that wraps around the spark plug wire on eBay that counts hours for under $10. Works badly with no wire coil packs though. I installed a 12V wired one to the fuel pump wire on my Toyota.
At 8 MPH, that’s a 1250 hour oil change interval! Equivalent to a ~30,000 mile oil change on a typical mixed city/highway car! Actually if you consider idling as half the stress, maybe 15,000 or 20,000 miles? Did they add any oil between changes?
I sold the Chevelle when I moved house, which was before I bought my CX-7. I don’t have a garage here and the money from the Chevelle went towards other needed items for the house. I don’t know that I would want to make it a daily driver if I still had it as we just got a little bit of snow a couple days ago and March to May is kinda iffy on the weather because that’s an inbetween season for Ohio. A couple years ago I was wearing my Carhart coat almost until Memorial Day weekend and then it was hot and humid for a few months right after.
The dealership I leased my Bolt through got bought out by Ricart, and is now Ricart Chevy, so it’s hard to tell if even the same salesman I dealt with is still there. I’ve thought about calling the lease company and asking about it, but I’m also keeping my options open right now. Ideally, if I had to wait, I’d trade even up for something used and then trade that in when the time comes.
I went to the local Hyundai dealership to look at the Santa Cruz trucks they had on the lot and got to talking to the salesman that greeted me and I had mentioned maybe getting something inexpensive in the interim, as the SC has a couple trim levels you can get for under $30k, but not on the local lot, they had the $40k models. The salesman acted like he didn’t want much of anything to do with me and said that those higher trim levels would probably drive differently than the less expensive models, but still gave me his card and said to call when it was closer to the time I could early trade- though he wasn’t sure if they could lease-buyout or not.
But, Columbus has their big International Auto Show this weekend and I plan on going and asking around.
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Hi asemaster:
I’m curious what the engine failures were.
Was it an increase in sludge buildup leading to blocked oil passages?
Thanks.
The Dodge/Ram trucks with the Hemi engines would have clattering/failed lifters and possibly camshafts. This is a weak point on these engines anyway, but neglected maintenance just hurries along the wear. It’s a shame to see a truck with 40K need major engine repairs.
The Fords would see noisy/jumped timing chains or failing cam phasers. Not keeping the oil full and clean certainly accelerates wear on these.
I often thought that service techs for the phone/cable company might have some basic understanding of automotive electrics. But it wasn’t unusual to have a driver complain “the battery light has been coming on and off for 3 days and today my truck won’t start.”
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I bet a number of them never had their oil level checked between changes, so going 10,000 miles would be a real problem.
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Well, they might come by the shop when they hear the valves clattering, if that’s what you mean by checked…
10-15 vehicles worked out of that yard. The company used to keep oil, coolant, wiper blades, headlamp bulbs, small items on hand so the drivers could do the quick and easy stuff to keep the trucks going. But as much of that was being pilfered as going into the trucks, so they decided to do away with all that and told the drivers to bring the trucks to us for everything. You can guess how well that worked.
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