The best auto maintenance is no auto maintenance. You buy a car and it runs perfectly until you sell it nine years later. It would be nice if we all could be so lucky.
Given that only the super rich can now buy a new car, the rest of us are stuck with used car options or we purchase a cheapie. Either way, we know the vehicle is not going to make it without breaking down at some inopportune point.
So you have to figure in auto maintenance. You know walking in the auto repair shop door, it’s S75 before you even open your mouth, and $75 for every hour after that to get the technician to tell you what is going on in a language that requires an interpreter.
If you can leave for under 500 bucks, you should probably consider yourself lucky. So auto maintenance lesson #1 is to run your car forever.
I have several friends who subscribe to this theory and have been relatively successful at bucking the trend that says you need to regularly change the oil, oil filter, air filter and other components that keep the car tuned up. His remarkable goal is to instead not do any of that: Drive the car until you kill it.
This was first demonstrated to me back when we got out of college. Four of us decided to drive from Illinois to Minnesota to do some skiing. We took his car, one he’d just bought. It was a small import, if I remember correctly, and we were extremely cramped for the 9 hour trip, but we all fit it, and it got great gas mileage.
He kept that vehicle for many years, eventually moving to Denver, at some point. I’m not sure where he was when he finally got rid of it, but what I do remember is him laughing and talking about how he drove it 67,000 miles and never took it into the shop. This is back in the late 1970s-early 1980s, so cars weren’t designed to last as long as they are today. That made his mechanic-less journey even more remarkable.
No oil changes, no replacing the spark plugs, no new gas filter, belts or hoses, and I’m not even sure he changed the tires, though it would seem impossible in looking back that tires could last that long. So he probably did replace them.
That car was the beginning of “my style of auto maintenance,” he explains. “I have developed an ability to properly drive and maintain cars. Many of you might not be aware, and this is of no fault of your own because you are so quick to notice my more obvious talents, that I have driven four vehicles in excess of 300,000 miles,” he wrote to several of us friends recently.
“This includes the truck I presently drive that has an odometer reading 366,240 miles. Little did the lucky few realize at the time that I was researching automobile engine and transmission dynamics.”
“For the record, that first car of mine was a ’78 Dodge Challenger imported from Japan. It cost $5,129.00. I was lucky enough at the time to have paid cash for it, and when I gave it to my younger brother-in-law, the odometer read 302,333 miles.”
So I guess he surpassed the 67,000 miles I thought he’d driven. Which goes to show you that you can drive a car into the ground. Just keep piling on the miles, avoid the auto mechanic. Fill it with gas, and drive on. Maybe he’ll get lucky some day and hit 400,000 miles.
Given that only the super rich can now buy a new car, the rest of us are stuck with used car options or we purchase a cheapie. Either way, we know the vehicle is not going to make it without breaking down at some inopportune point.
So you have to figure in auto maintenance. You know walking in the auto repair shop door, it’s S75 before you even open your mouth, and $75 for every hour after that to get the technician to tell you what is going on in a language that requires an interpreter.
If you can leave for under 500 bucks, you should probably consider yourself lucky. So auto maintenance lesson #1 is to run your car forever.
I have several friends who subscribe to this theory and have been relatively successful at bucking the trend that says you need to regularly change the oil, oil filter, air filter and other components that keep the car tuned up. His remarkable goal is to instead not do any of that: Drive the car until you kill it.
This was first demonstrated to me back when we got out of college. Four of us decided to drive from Illinois to Minnesota to do some skiing. We took his car, one he’d just bought. It was a small import, if I remember correctly, and we were extremely cramped for the 9 hour trip, but we all fit it, and it got great gas mileage.
He kept that vehicle for many years, eventually moving to Denver, at some point. I’m not sure where he was when he finally got rid of it, but what I do remember is him laughing and talking about how he drove it 67,000 miles and never took it into the shop. This is back in the late 1970s-early 1980s, so cars weren’t designed to last as long as they are today. That made his mechanic-less journey even more remarkable.
No oil changes, no replacing the spark plugs, no new gas filter, belts or hoses, and I’m not even sure he changed the tires, though it would seem impossible in looking back that tires could last that long. So he probably did replace them.
That car was the beginning of “my style of auto maintenance,” he explains. “I have developed an ability to properly drive and maintain cars. Many of you might not be aware, and this is of no fault of your own because you are so quick to notice my more obvious talents, that I have driven four vehicles in excess of 300,000 miles,” he wrote to several of us friends recently.
“This includes the truck I presently drive that has an odometer reading 366,240 miles. Little did the lucky few realize at the time that I was researching automobile engine and transmission dynamics.”
“For the record, that first car of mine was a ’78 Dodge Challenger imported from Japan. It cost $5,129.00. I was lucky enough at the time to have paid cash for it, and when I gave it to my younger brother-in-law, the odometer read 302,333 miles.”
So I guess he surpassed the 67,000 miles I thought he’d driven. Which goes to show you that you can drive a car into the ground. Just keep piling on the miles, avoid the auto mechanic. Fill it with gas, and drive on. Maybe he’ll get lucky some day and hit 400,000 miles.