Originally Posted By: Camu Mahubah
This is an oil website, these examples of longetivity should be applauded and studied so as to discover what is required to keep an outfit on the road far longer than most! Everyone has their own opinion as to whether it is smart moneywise or not to keep a truck on the road this long. Just go eeeewwww and aaaaahhhhhh when you read of them! Think of Cuba! Carry on!
Speaking of which, I was thinking the other day that cash starved police departments use old vehicles while ones that are not quite so cash starved buy new ones and people would be inclined to say doing this saves money over driving the older ones due to the cost of repairs. Something cannot be inexpensive and expensive at the same time. One approach is inexpensive whereas the other one wastes money. Any statement to the contrary would be illogical.
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: Camu Mahubah
This is an oil website, these examples of longetivity should be applauded and studied so as to discover what is required to keep an outfit on the road far longer than most! Everyone has their own opinion as to whether it is smart moneywise or not to keep a truck on the road this long. Just go eeeewwww and aaaaahhhhhh when you read of them! Think of Cuba! Carry on!
Great comment re Cuba. For those of you who don't know, they've got many, many 1950s vintage cars and trucks still in regular use because of their inability to obtain new vehicles after the coming of Castro. When you see photos of some of the "creative street engineering" the owners have done to keep their cars on the road, it's sometimes amazing. This is a unique and different situation than we ever see here. These vehicles retain "practical value," since for many ordinary Cubans, there is simply no viable replacement option at all. By contrast, Americans can usually find plenty of low-cost, operable replacement choices if and when the old horse dies.
That sounds like the air force. Congress will not give them funding in any sufficient quantity for new fighters and bombers, so they keep maintaining and repairing their old ones, for decades and this approach is obviously cost effective because if the repairs were so expensive that buying new jets was economical they would have done it a long time ago. The same goes for the army's tanks and humvees.
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: FXjohn
If a truck wasn't rusted out, what would be wrong with replacing the engine and transmission, even if it was expensive?
As XS suggested, nothing at all, assuming the owner does it for the right reasons, and with understanding of the risks involved with this choice. Once you get to dealing with vehicles of this age, there is no "risk free" option (except perhaps the relatively very expensive choice of replacing with a new vehicle with a warranty).
I'm just saying that owners who decide to go this way may very well find the money they spent to make the vehicle run, disappearing if something goes wrong shortly after the repairs.
If something goes wrong shortly after the repairs, the shop is responsible, as they warrant their work for a certain period of time. I know that my local Toyota dealership warrants their work from defects in workmanship for a period of one year following the repair.
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: FXjohn
what risks would there be after installing a new engine and trans? Brakes?
The two big ones are: 1) failure of another worn out system shortly after spending big bucks to restore the vehicle from the first failure, and 2) collision damage. In either case, the money just spent to make the vehicle roadworthy will effectively vanish, never to be recovered. Particularly in the latter instance, the owner will get absolutely nothing for the money spent to restore. The insurance company (if there is one) will shrug its collective shoulder and say that ACV is ACV, and they don't care at all that you just spent ACVx5 or ACVx10 to put the vehicle back on the road.
EDIT: how would you feel receiving your $750 property damage settlement check, knowing that three weeks ago, you dropped a $2000 engine into your now-wrecked beauty???
If you can spend a SMALLER amount of money (compared to restoring roadworthiness) to purchase a working, functionally equivalent vehicle, that would be where I'd put my money. And that's true even though that replacement might not be in great shape itself.
My Dad and his twin brother did something similar in their HS years back in the 50s. Their uncle had an auto salvage yard, and he'd sell the brothers clunkers that barely ran for break-even money. They'd drive one piece-of-whatever for weeks (or even days in some cases), have it towed back to the yard (or in a couple cases, abandon them -- hey, it was the 1950s...), and trade it in for another one that ran.
1. Vehicles fail predictably in a cyclic manner. Once you have owned a vehicle for a few hundred thousand miles, you will know what will fail. Anything new failing would be an anomaly. I have read mechanics saying on here with confidence that w person came in for x repair and he would be back in y miles for z repair. If a mechanic can predict what will need to be repaired with confidence, then the possibility of some random expensive repair occurring that you could not possibly know would happen is extremely slim, because if failures were random events, then mechanics' predictions would cease to be accurate and they would not make them with any amount of confidence. This is validated by the fact that repair shops, especially dealership repair shops, do not certain stock parts for vehicles when they never or rarely find themselves needing those parts for repairs.
2. Collision damage is an ever present risk. If it was too expensive to afford before a problem developed, then it was not worth driving the vehicle. The idea that the check you receive from your insurance company makes a new car purchase worth it when you consider the fact that you could have gotten the same money plus the deductible if you sold your car before wrecking it. The only use that such a check could provide can only be psychological.
Any money spent buying or repairing a vehicle vanishes when it is spent. If either situation occurs after buying or repairing a vehicle, the only money that vanishes is the money that will be spent rather than what was already spent. Effective minimization of losses is dependent on minimizing occurrences that require money be spent, which can only be done in the past when the decision to purchase the vehicle was made (i.e. deciding to buy a vehicle from a manufacturer with a statistically low percentage of problems or one with a statistically high percentage of problems).
Originally Posted By: ekpolk
Originally Posted By: jduramax
... but, maybe you don't need synthetics?? ...
Heretic!!! Be careful lest you find yourself being tossed into a vat of boiling oil. Synthetic oil!
Seriously though, this is one of the fundamental points I've learned since I joined here almost four years ago. Until I came here, all I had to go on was that cheezy "Motor Oil Bible". Now I've seen the UOAs and studied much of the tech info that's available here. I still think synthetics are "superior" but only in a defined envelope of performance. They can go longer than dino, and they can endure true extra-hot environments that dino can't, but most users never encounter real long OCIs or have really hot engines (turbos, 'vettes, and special cases excepted). Modern dinos are a far better product than I would ever have believed four years ago. Million mile Chevy P/Us run on yellow-bottle Pennz would seem to make the point nicely.
I brought some Pennzoil Platinum once for use in my Avalon, but I never used it. I use Castro GTX in it (the oil in my Avalon has 5500 miles on it now) and I have had no problems. In fact, my uncle (who was a huge car enthusiast when he was my age) thinks that my 5000 mile oil change intervals are wasteful because the oil always comes out clean (which I credit to the Purolator PureONE oil filters I use), so I am gradually extending my oil change intervals. Next week will be my first 6000 mile oil change interval.
I imagine that true cost savings would come from using bypass filtration in my Avalon rather than synthetic oil. Here is an article about one company advertising 30,000 mile oil change intervals on conventional oil when using their bypass filter:
http://www.news.com/8301-11128_3-9883278-54.html?tag=bl
I really think that with a quality oil, the oil filter matters far more than whether or not the oil is labeled synthetic. Not to mention the idea that synthetic oils are synthetic is a lie when you consider the fact that almost all synthetics are Group III oils.
