That doesn’t necessarily mean much of anything. For the last 30 years, only a fairly small percentage of cars get sold or junked because of a bad engine. The overwhelming majority of cars get sold or junked because either (A) the transmission needs repair/replacement; (B) the car is involved in a major accident which would require horrendously expensive body work; or (C) a combination of smaller things needing repair.
Right. A reason not to perform unnecessary maintenance is the increased chance of something breaking as a result. Even with steel on steel cross threading on the plug could occur. As long as the oil fill cap is open something could accidently fall in. The car could fall off the jack or the frame or body could crack by jacking it up at the same spot all the time. Once again it’s a case where people should remember - “Don’t just do something, stand there.”
The question was asked and I gave my experience. Very few vehicles even now are still on the road at 200k. I agree that the tranny is more problematic.
Every aluminum oil pan I have ever come across has a steel threaded insert for the drain plug. The expansion rate for the dissimilar metals, especially with aluminum, would easily cause problems with the drain plug staying tight. Chevy learned a lesson in this with the Vega engine. The first generation engines were designed with machined threads in the aluminum blocks for the head bolts. After a few hundred heat cycles, the head bolts started coming loose. They then installed steel threaded inserts which somewhat fixed the problem. There was still the problem of the steel cylinder head and aluminum block with expansion rates causing head gaskets to leak and the cars overheating. I learned more about Vega engines than most people would care to know. Blew 7 of them in the first 10 races when I bought a Vega race car. Finally spent the big bucks to buy one with pressed in studs instead of head bolts, steel sleeved cylinders and a high volume electric water pump to keep the engine cool. Didn’t have anymore engine problems with that car.
Does anyone know: What is the average lifespan of vehicles nowadays, in miles? And what percentage of them make it to 200K? (I’d be especially interested if the questions could be answered, not just for cars in general, but for cars that wore out or died of “natural causes” as opposed to being totaled in an accident, if such data is available.)
My Envoy got to 200K but didn’t make 208K
About 1%, apparently. These are the winners.
With only a couple of exceptions those vehicles are expensive, high-end models which makes me wonder: are those vehicles achieving their high-mileage status not because they are better built than others but rather because it’s considerably cheaper to maintain those vehicles than it is to replace them? (And yes I realize that’s true for most vehicles regardless).
One could buy four brand new mid-level Civics for the price of an entry-level Land Cruiser.
IOW it may be that cheaper cars may be more “disposable” than the more expensive ones and thus are less likely to be repaired than to be replaced.
Thanks. That’s somewhat interesting and helpful. But it’s based on “cars sold in 2021.” I don’t know what they mean by that—I can think of at least two or three different interpretations, but none of them account for all cars currently on the road.
Under the “Methodology” section, this is based on used cars that were sold in 2021. And reading between the lines, it appears to be sales on their own website.
I went to their main page, and did a search on cars for sale in my area. There are 20 regular (non-“featured”) results per page. Ranking the results from low price to high, only 3 out of the 20 on the first page have fewer than 150,000 miles. Another 3 have 150k-160k miles. Close to half are over 200k. So if you either don’t mind a high-mileage car, or can’t afford anything else, you’ve got plenty to choose from.
That’s what I thought it might be. And that wouldn’t count cars that aren’t for sale because their owners want to keep them until they’re no longer drivable.
I feel like several people missed my post above since they are still talking about stripped drain plugs and forgotten crush washers. Install a drain plug valve and never worry about those again, no matter if you change at 5000 or 10,000 miles. And get a Subaru if you don’t own any tools but still want to change your oil (I guess you need an oil pan).
I had a second hand mercedes diesel like that in the 80s. Never had an oil change, but one liter refill every 1000 km at the latest. Then it rusted away.
Maybe older engines, but not with newer cars. My last car, I owned for 8 years and only put about 9,000 - 10,000 miles anually. I changed the oil every 10k which was about annually, in accordance with the manufacturers recommendation, and never had a single problem.
As someone who has worked with military-grade lube oil systems aboard Navy warships, I can personally assure you this is an area of engineering that has been thoroughly studied. I worked with “clean” oil systems for turbine bearings, gear chains, and shaft bearings, but the principles aren’t that different for dirty diesel or gas turbine systems. Imagine oil filters big enough that you could climb inside them, and designed primarily to remove metal wear. Each filter comes as a pair, and you swap them over regularly to drain and clean the off-service side. Each oil system has a sump and a pump, and you maintain sump level by adding oil from reserve tanks as needed.
A car system would be similar, swappable oil filters so you can change one without affecting the rest of the system, the ability to monitor oil level while in motion and add more as needed, and the ability to partially drain and refill the system every so often would be the key factors. It would be needlessly complicated for a car, but for a vehicle that had to keep moving at all costs the increased complexity could be worth it.
I have a ten year old plug in hybrid, a C Max Energi, with approaching 100K. The ICE is used only for some fraction of the total miles driven. It is equipped with what they label an intelligent oil monitoring system which tells you when to change the oil. Per the manual that can be up to two years or 20K depending on the specifics of your driving, and that is about how long my intervals have been.
Having had, or been adjacent to (my dad’s cars) several that made it past 200k, the engines were NEVER the problematic part. Some of them did burn some oil, but they weren’t on their last legs or anything.
Mostly it was everything ELSE breaking that became too onerous to deal with. And not just the normal parts that commonly wear out like water pumps or alternators- stuff like rear axles, radiator cores, master cylinders, etc… sometimes had problems at that high mileage.
And FWIW, none of these were particularly babied in terms of oil/oil changes. Most got regular 3-5k changes with whatever oil in the proper grade was cheapest at the quicky-lube, or on sale at Wal-Mart if I was doing the changes myself.
There is a lawn tractor that sort of does this, as I understand it every season you unscrew the old oil filter and screw on the new one which is precharged with oil.
The technical term is ugga dugga.
My current car is a 2004 Chevy Trailblazer that I bought for $1100, 3 years ago. It has 303K on it, still runs fine. Electrical system inside the car, not so much…