Some may remember the story I posted of the guy in the Dodge pickup who had about 7 degrees of neg. camber on the RF wheel and lost that wheel along with most of the suspension just a few minutes after passing me. (And after acknowledging my frantic waving that he was about to become a fataility.)
This idiot must have a relative. On the way home yesterday a guy in a Ford pickup passed me doing about 5 over the posted 65. Both front wheels had about 3 degrees neg. camber and were wobbling furiously about 2" off the centerline. I picked up the speed, looked over to get his attention, and motioned to the front wheels. He nodded that he was aware of it and motored on with one hand rocking back and forth on the seriously wobbling steering wheel.
A couple of years ago while visiting my son in Utah we were in moderately heavy traffic north of Salt Lake City when a Mazda Protege passed us doing about 80. I noted the RF tire was half flat and most of the others appeared to be badly worn and told my son the 2 young people in there were going to get killed. About 10 minutes later brake lights were popping on and traffic slowed to a crawl. There was that Mazda sitting on the shoulder with a long trail of rubber bits and steel gouged asphalt leading up to it. The female driver was standing there sobbing and shaking like a leaf. They were extremely lucky the car skidded to the shoulder instead of rolling and that they did not take out anyone else to boot.
The number of people with death wishes who choose to blow off potentially fatal problems and turn up the radio will never cease to amaze me.
I want any equipment that I own to function safely and correctly. If one has even a little knowledge as to how a car should function, one’s senses of smell, feel, sound and sight should help. Turning off the radio once in a while to listen for noises if important in detecting wheel bearing noises, spark knock in the engine, etc. If the brakes or steering don’t seem to feel right, it is time to check things out. Smelling raw gasoline, hot oil, ozone from an electrical spark is an indication that something isn’t right. A glance at where a car is parked can let one know of a fluid leak.
Some of the best preventitive maintenance is a five minute weekly check of the engine oil and tire pressure. While checking the engine oil, a quick look at the overflow tank for the radiator coolant just takes a second. Many cars have a translucent reservoir on the brake master cylinder which affords a quick visual check. Add another 5 minutes and the headlights, brake lights, turning signal lights, etc. can be checked.
Years ago, there were attendants at gasoline stations that would do quick checks while pumping the fuel. Now it is up to the individual motorist. It seems to me that 10 minutes a week on top of regular servicing is a pretty good safety investment. The only investment in tools is a tire pressure gauge. Another safety tool that won’t break the bank is a tread depth gauge.
I do as much preventative maintenance as I can afford. If I had infinite $ I would do just about everything but for now I have to gamble a bit. Of course I do the timing belt and oil changes at recommended intervals. I don’t have the $ or inclination for the wallet flushes and such. (But admittedly I should do more electrical stuff) I do check the tire treads and pressure all the time, check my lights pretty much constantly, and check my fluids every few weeks. If I hear something I turn off the radio and roll down the window. If I smell something I turn the heater on full blast and put my face on the vent. If I run over serious road debris I pull over and check the tires. If its free, I will do it. If it costs anything, I do it only if absolutely necessary. Necessary is subjective though I guess.
Preventative maintenance. My uncle took this to the extreme during a trip out west with his new VW van in the 60’s. He bought a spare engine and took it with them. The van had no problems except for storage in the back compartment because the spare engine took up too much space. My aunt still fumes about the trip from time to time. She called the van a refrigerator because it never would heat up when the weather got into the freezing range.
A spare tire being extreme? That’s just being prudent!
Some years ago, I was on a 500 mile road trip with my cousin, traveling in two separate cars together. Before any road trip, I generally check fluid levels, tire pressures, and the spare tire. On this trip, she had a flat tire about 10 miles from the Florida State line. Guess, what? She had no spare! We spent the next two hours trying to find a replacement tire. This was around midnight on a Saturday night. We got lucky, and found a tire at Walmart, but the tire shop was closed. They sold us the tire, but couldn’t mount it. We then found a truck stop with a shop open that mounted the tire for us. Made a trip I’ve done many times before with no issues a nightmare.
A friend of mine had a project with a Central African oil company. It involved traveling to the interior on a light company plane. The dispatcher told my friend: “Just for you sir, we gave the plane some maintenance”. It further scared my friend, but a trip by jeep through the jungle would have been far more trecherous.
I had a look at the books of this country’s national airline, and for the last two years listed at that time, the maintenance budget had been $0.00!!! A year later their last 737 ( an extremely reliable plane with maintenance) crashed and the airline ceased operation.
My brother is very meticulous in maintaining his car. My son is sometimes a little lax in checking things. At any rate, for a celebration of our 25th wedding aniversary, we agreed to meet in a place that was about 200 miles from my son’s house, 200 miles from our house, and about 100 miles from my brother’s house. My son had a tire go flat on the interstate that should have been replaced and he drove the last 50 miles on the temporary spare. My brother had the bearing let go in the clutch on his air conditioner. Our celebration was on a week-end. My son was able to go to WalMart on a Sunday afternoon and get two new tires. My brother left his car at the Cadillac agency and we took him home. My son’s problem could have been prevented by purchasing a couple of tires. There really was no way that my brother could have foreseen that the bearing would fail in the air conditioning compressor. One thing that did happen is that my son is more particular about his tires. After he bought my last minivan from me, he equipped it with 4 brand new Michelin tires.
I guess I am a mixture…but would lean heavily twd preventative if I owned only one vehicle. I currently have 8 with a mixture of cycles/cars/boats etc
I’d go bankrupt doing all the prev maintenance on each…but if I had one bike and one car…yes…preventive… thats really the way to go.
It also depends on what it is thats about to fail…what kind of timeline it will give you to prep for it etc… Like a failing clutch as opposed to leaking brake line…Obviously one deserves immediate attention and the other doesnt and since I know whats going on in each vehicle I am not surprised by any repairs…
PM is appropriate for inexpensive items or items that could cause a lot more problems when they fail. For instance, if one of your headlights fails, you could replace them both. They don’t cost too much, and you probably won’t have to do it for another 6 or 7 years. Keeping up with fluid changes is probably the smartest PM you can do. On the other end of the spectrum, replacing the timing belt when specified by the auto manufacturer will prevent catastrophic failure and engine replacement. You could set up a risk/reward matrix if you really are into it.
jtsanders; the practice of Reliability Centered Maintenance (RCM), as widely practiced in industry does just that. Failure Modes and Affect Analysis (FMEA) looks at the frequency of failure (likelihood) and its effect on cost to repair and lost production.
A recent article in Lubrication Engineering had a hypothetical situation of two Georgia peach farmers with identical trucks. One maintained his faithfully, especially changing transmission fluid, the other did “run to failure” maintenance.
The cost of a 3 year transmission fluid and filter change was $186 while a transmission overhaul was $3800. Aside from that, the indirect cost of not having a truck at the peak of the season resulted in a $17,000 !!! loss of spoiled peaches that could not be delivered.
In industry we always consider the direct breakdown cost, the indirect production loss cost and the safety implications of a breakdown.
If a car is used for commuting to work or business travel, breakdowns get very expensive.
Pragmatism is the best approach. Maintaining a car is like maintaining a marriage. Some things you pay attention to ahead of time…oil changes and anniversaries; some things you fix when needed…brakes and some one having a bad day and in need of a little emergency TLC.
dagosa; pragmatism and common sense go a long way. Taking an interest in your vehicle and checking various things on a routine basis will provide a lot of warning when certain things will go wrong. Truck and bus drivers do not perform actual maintenance but it is in their own interest to be proactive in diagnosing potential problems.
My wife has a medical background and is alert to every noise or change in behavior her car may exhibit, which she relays to me to further investigate.
“Doc”… I really like the military approach and used it with my kids who got to drive any car I owned if I wasn’t using it. The vehicles I drove in the military always had a sticker saying the driver is responsible for the condition of the vehicle. That meant checking all fluid levels, air pressure and reporting anything unusual about the condition of the car. You detect anything unusual…kids tell dear old dad…or military personel, Uncle Sam. Sounds like we have the same approach.
My wife seems to have so many things on her mind, I am the last one to know. So regularly, I just announce, dear, you take the truck today, I’ll use your car…please ?
Heck Doc, you can buy a decent borescope for less than $200. And a compression tester for much less. But I do tip my hat to you for monitoring the motor’s health.
Personally I “read” the sparkplugs when I remove them. That on top of the regular monitoring I do gives me a pretty good feel for the motor’s internal health.
The most interesting preventitive maintenance I witnessed was back in the early 1960s as a graduate student at a midsized university. I was studying in the library and three men were pushing a scaffold. I noticed that they were changing out every single flourescent light bulb. When the men took a break, I asked them about it. All they knew was that this was their assignment. A year later, I met up with the campus electrical engineer. This was his project and he invited me to his office to examine his data. He really was saving money. He had a crew that went around campus and changed the bulbs at regular intervals depending on the use of the building. In the library, a seven story building, they reduced the janitor staff by one. The crew could replace the ballast or the end contacts on the spot. I was impressed. A couple of years ago, I decided to try this with the outdoor bulbs at my church. I thought it made sense to change all the bulbs on a workday. One woman on our house committee objected, so I just changed the bulbs that had burned out. The next week and the following week, I was back changing the other bulbs. It would have made sense to have changed them all in the first place.
The difference was really the time and expense of setting up the equipment to reach the bulbs. Setting up a scaffold, even a portable one, is a very time consuming task. In my house, most of the bulbs can be reached without a step ladder. I change those as they blow out.
But, the chandelier requires an 8-foot step ladder in a narrow stairwell. The time to haul that bad boy in the stairwell, twisting it through the short ceiling between the stairwell and garage, unfolding it on the tight landing, and angling it just right to reach the chandelier while remaining stable on the landing is a real bear. Since I’m up there, I replace all the bulbs, blown or not. This way, I only need to go to that effort to replace them once every few years.