Maintain Your Vehicle Investment
Old School ways of yesteryear taught people with driver’s licenses how to maintain their car. When you took the driver’s education courses in the 50’s, they taught you how to change a tire, and keep up with the regular oil changes and tune-ups. Our products have evolved and it’s really not necessary to do as much as we had too. But going along with modern day ease, laziness and people just forgetting or not “in the know” are killing their cars.
I’ll give you two prime examples. Smaller 3 and 4 cylinder engines have timing belts instead of chains. These wear out. Therefore you are told in your manual and hopefully by a dealer you buy it from to get the timing belt replaced between 40,000 to 60,000 miles. After that, 20,000 to 30,000 because the engine is broke in and starting to wear a little sloppy. If you don’t do this it is guaranteed you will shell your engine making it completely useless. I have seen many beautiful compact cars well maintained as far as the body, very clean and sweet, needing $2,000 to $3,000 engine replacements and those are used prices.
The second example are the oil changes and tune-ups. These used to be done every 1,500 to 3,000 miles. Our oils are synthetic now and don’t break down as easily. The spark plugs are wearing platinum and last up to 20,000 miles or more. I was standing in a mechanic shop waiting for my car one day with a group of other customers. We saw a smoke belching rough running mini-van coming down a hill. It was running so rough, the shop had to cross the busy street and bring it in with the wrecker.
The Lady driving this said her husband had wanted her to bring it in for the last 6 weeks the check engine light had been on. When the shop opened it up they came out and asked her when was the last time the oil had been changed. This young couple confused timing belt 60,000 miles with oil changes and thought the plugs lasted a life time. Nothing had been done.
Maintaining an older car also means lower insurance rates. Think about it, the longer you drive your car the older it is and typically older cars have lower insurance.
They were upset to hear the van they still owed 3 mores years of payments on needed a new engine. No maintenance plan or warranty will stand behind stupidity. Take care of your car so you can always have Happy Motoring!