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-   -   My engineer neighbor's approach to oil change breaking in his truck ? (http://www.autobanter.com/showthread.php?t=74081)

jeffcoslacker[_100_] September 7th 06 02:08 PM

My engineer neighbor's approach to oil change breaking in his truck ?
 

jeffcoslacker Wrote:
> Break out the crash cart...code blue!
>
> I'm with you for the most part. One of my customers was a bank that ran
> a fleet of Ford Escort wagons as courier vehicles.
>
> They'd get them new, right away they'd go with their 7500 mile interval
> on changes, running conventional oil. They had to use that interval,
> these cars got run so much daily, it'd be in the shop for maintenance
> every 10 days or less with a 3000 interval.
>
> Those damn things would go 250,000 miles until they'd sell them, and
> every one of them run perfect and didn't use oil (except one that got
> run out of oil once when relatively new)...I would have bought one in a
> heartbeat if I had any need for it.
>
> The only other things they got were the usual consumables, brakes,
> tires, batteries, timing belts and water pumps, and tranny service jobs
> (50,000 miles)
>
> That proved to me that even the cheapest car you could buy will give
> excellent service if the maintenace schedule is adhered to, and the
> fluids are checked and topped of at every fueling (as these were).
>
> That's a very small price to pay to get a quarter million miles or more
> out of a cheap 4 cylinder car....


You know, I was just thinking...it also shows that time more than
mileage is a bigger factor in how much trouble a vehicle will
give...while rolling up 80,000 miles a year, NOTHING ever went wrong
with these things...

And conversely, I've seen lots of customer cars that hardly saw any
mileage that things were always falling apart on...seen 8 year old cars
with 30,000 miles on them that had stretched timing belts and tensioner
assembly falling apart, stuck proportioning valves in the brakes,
steering rack leaking badly, etc...and even the ones that were in
relatively good shape would utterly disintegrate once in the hands of
someone who would actually drive them sometimes...loads of people
having problems one after another with low mile "cream puffs".

Reminds me of many years ago, shopping for a used car for the wife. She
wanted an Olds Cutlass Supeme RWD, early 80's style. One of the dealers
I work with had two, one '82 with 125,000 miles (very high miles for
it's age at the time), original EVERYTHING, hoses, belts, etc, but
obvious signs of loving maintenance...appeared it was highway driven by
someone who travelled for a living...and an '83 that had only 33,000
miles, no doubt some elderly person's car (even had the old person
smell)...but the brakes felt weird, as if partially seized, the motor
idled jittery, and it had the beginnings of an intake manifold leak up
front, tires dry rotted, etc...

Guess which one we bought? Yup. Paid less than half what they wanted
for the "cream puff", and had it until almost 300,000 miles, when the
tranny finally and suddenly ate it's last pancake...great car...


--
jeffcoslacker
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