A caller the other day had a Old car (15+ years). He basically said he didn’t put any money into it (including oil changes).
My question is…How many people own older cars (10+ years) and still keep up the maintenance. I still own a 98 Pathfinder. I still maintain it very well (when ever my daughter comes home to visit from school). My daughter plans on driving it till the end of September then she’s going to get her own vehicle. But I’ll still keep up the oil changes and such. I even wash and wax it. Am I the only one?
My Bronco is about 14 years old. I change the oil every 3k, grease the zerks, change the filters regularly,etc. I ususally wax it every 3 months. I wash it when it gets dirty. It has almost 200k on the clock. The transmission went out around at around 120k, I had the shop rebuild it to powerstroke/big block specs. Other than that it’s been bulletproof. Doesn’t used any oil, doesn’t leak any fluid of any kind. Until someone else comes out with a 2 door full-sized truck-based SUV, I’m holding on to it.
I think you’re right, many 10+ year old cars seem to be on the ‘heap’ path, with very little maintenance done. I’m keeping my '96 ES300 by the book, just had to replace the ac compressor and radiator (ouch) but haven’t come up with something new I really want.
Every car I have owned has had a minimum of the recommended maintenance. I have had maybe four or five over 10 years and or 100,000 miles. They all were sold and they all were running well when I sold them.
My Civic is 11 years old and I still keep up with the maintenance, although I don’t drive it very much these days, so it isn’t that hard to maintain it.
I drive a 1989 Honda Accord (20 years old) and still change the oil every 3000 miles with Full Synthetic motor oil, I also perform all other recommended maintenance like ATF fluid changes and coolant changes by the book.
3 trucks in my driveway. My daily driver, 92 Ford explorer. The ‘saver’ is a 79 chevy c10 short stepside p/u with 70,000.0 total miles. The last time I changed the oil on it at 1000 miles elapsed…two years had passed !
From the post, it sounds like the owner of the car may have been old himself. Most people I know with older cars still change oil and filter, but they may not change anything else! My 91 year old mother-in-law on the other hand, has a 1994 car and twice a year it gets oil & filter changes and her mechanic goes over the cooling system as well. She only drives 3000 miles per year.
Several test show that only topping up the oil on a American car (and not ever changing it) will get you 60,000 miles before the engine seizes up. On imports, especially those subject to sludging that may come a lot sooner. The caller may be aware of this fact and decided to scrap the car in a few years, so no maintenace of any sort.
Agree; since 1965 I’ve owned 5 cars that were either driven to over 100,000 miles or sold at 10 years or more. In all,cases 3000 mile oil & filter changes and regular maintenance were carried out.
When we took our 1977 Dodge Colt to the wrecking yard in 1996, the attendent asked us why we wanted to scrap such a nice little car. But it needed engine work far in excess of the value of the car and parts were hard to get since Chrysler had stopped carrying Mitisubishi cars.
Own a 59 T-bird ( 390 c.i. ), 74 Nova (250 c.i. straight 6 ) and an 89 Mustang GT 5.0. The T-bird and Nova only go to weekly car shows and average about 1500 miles each per year. I do oil changes on these 2 vehicles every 6 months.
The Mustang GT is my daily driver and change the oil every 3,000 miles or so which averages about 3 times a year and do my own basic tune-ups and maintenance.
If I had a 15 year old car that was a rust bucket and I could see the road under my feet through the floorboards I might just run it til it gave out with no maintenance. That has never happened to me however.
The cars I have now are going to have to last 20+ years and regular maintenance is the only way they have a chance of lasting that long.
Maintaining a used car is cheaper than buying a new vehicle.
I’ve always maintained my vehicles.
Even when they got old. Even to the point that when I was under my pickup if I saw an area getting raw I’d shoot some rubberized undercoat on it.
One other habit I have is looking around. When I’m under the vehicle or under the hood doing maintenance I check over everything I can see or touch. You’d be amazed at how many problems can be prevented that way. Any how much money it saves. It’s nice to see the brake fluid getting low and know I have another brake job coming up, or see something fraying and know it needs to be changed, or see a patch of green crust on the ol’ radiator and know I need to stop and pick up a new one.