They’ve been mentioned before but my 96 Crown Vic with 188k now on it replaced my 96 Grand Marquis that was rear ended and totaled. It’s needed a few parts but they’re easily available.
(My “new” car is my 02 Silverado with only 104k on it.)
I buy em used and keep em forever.
Police departments and limousine companies swear by the Ford Crown Vic-they regularly get over 300,000 miles out of them.
That’s easy to fix. If you haven’t already done so, you should replace the timing belt. At the same time, you will want to replace the front crankshaft and camshaft seals as well as the water pump, of course.
A rear seal is a much bigger problem.
Any car that has a timing belt should have any oil or fuel leaks that lets the fluid get onto this belt remedied sooner rather than later.
These fluids can cause timing belt failure. If the timing belt fails, valves bend, pistons get hit, not good. Bad, very bad. As a minimum to fix a broken timing belt on most modern cars is at least $1500.00 where as a reseal of the front of the engine is around $350.00 including a new timing belt.
This seems similar to my “Game Plan”. As an aircraft mechanic I can do the maintenance on my own rigs for the cost of parts. Wesley Clark mentioned in another post that he has “a guy who works from home on auto repairs” I am my own “guy”.
A new timing belt for your Olds should not cost $1000.00. I would have spent $100.00, at most, to replace the timing belt. Even if it cost you $250.00 to replace the belt you would be money ahead. It is not uncommon to get over 500,000 miles out of these rigs. You could still be driving this one.
I have replaced the timing belt on my wife’s Buick, (before a teen aged girl, texting while driving, totaled it), The parts cost me $35.00 IIRC. I spent about thirty minutes installing it & changing the oil that day. The Buick is very similar to your Olds Cutlass Ciera. I would not be surprised to find that the part number for the timing belts for both of our cars were the same.
OH Wait! It would have cost you $1000.00 to repair the damage done when the belt broke!:smack: Is that what you meant? Frankly $1000.00 seems a little light for that repair.
Have you ever heard of “preventative maintenance”? Do you have oil changes done? What I meant was that you should have had the timing belt replaced before it broke! You know, at the recommended intervals.
When I was growing up, my parents had an Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser, a giant beast of a station wagon. (This thing would have rivalled any full-sized SUV for carrying capacity.) It was painted a fairly unattractive dark gray. Anyway, eventually it started having trouble and they sold it.
Years later, I was working on a Habitat for Humanity project in Detroit near the Ambassador Bridge. The guy in charge needed screws or nails or something like that, and I rode with him to a nearby hardware store. Sitting there in the parking lot was a dark gray Oldsmobile Custom Cruiser. I can’t be sure it was the same one, but that was never a very popular car, and especially not in that ugly dark gray color. If it was the same car, it would have been well over 20 years old by then.
I do routine preventive maintenance, otherwise the vehicles would not last as they do. I do not always do major preventive maintenance, like a timing belt, due to space/time constraints. That is the calculated gamble of which I was speaking in my post. In 40+ years of driving used vehicles that is the only timing belt that has ever broken on me. It gave me 125k miles on a $700 investment. I’m good with that.
Christine
Killdozer
The Ghost Train
The Flying Dutchman
The Big Bus
OK, Cool.
I just do not see a timing belt change as much more preventive maintenance than an oil change is. Another $35.00 & 35 minutes. Obviously, (Your Mileage Does Vary) YMDV.
IMHO, our “Game Plan” works well as long as we are not too “cool” to drive these older cars. We also have to be willing to buy a used car on short notice. Me, I have enough of these used cars on hand that when one fails, I just move on to the next one. If I find that the broken one in not economically repairable, I have some time to buy another rig to replace it.
A case in point, when my wife’s Buick got totaled, I handed her the keys to a Subaru that I had on hand. She liked it so well that when another Subaru came up for sale really cheap, I bought it. We now have two Subaru legacy wagons in our driveway. They are even the same color. I would drive either of them to any coast, (in the “Lower 48”), and back again.
Hey, I could add to the list of cars that will not die the early 1990s Subaru Legacy. They often can be seen around here with over 500K on the clock. This morning at the grocery store, I counted seven of them in the parking lot. All wagons. There were also three Volvo 245 Wagons out there. They could be added to the list.
they last forever in rust free areas. Not driven in the rain a suggestion.
Is that 1971 BMW a 2002? i always wanted one-is it a good driver?
Remember the Chevrolet Corvair? Remember the book that Ralph Nader wrote? It was called, “Unsafe at any Speed”.
Do you think there was any reason why the most excellent TV drama “Fargo” used a Corvair as the car Peggie Bumquist drove when she hit Rye Gerhardt? That certainly was one car that turned out to be most unsafe. Don’t you think?
Cummins diesel trucks.
The beast is going strong with 170k on it. The hard part is finding real mechanics to work on it in Beamer/Mbz crazy city where I am.
The Crown Vic is hated by the S.O., but I bought it for its reputation–and so far, so good; at 50k. Former Avis rental.
I must say her RX 350 looks and drives like new with 70k on it.
Just curious. You and someone else upthread mentioned buying cheap cars and driving them until they die.
Where do you buy the cheap cars?
I have heard that going to a used car auction that is set up for auto dealers requires a license to get in. But the deals are amazing (assuming you know what you are doing, of course).
But assuming you don’t have a license to buy/sell cars in volume, where do you buy your cars? Is it just a combo of keeping your eyes peeled/craigslist/local auctions, etc?
Well, the major complaint about the Corvair’s handling was what was a strong propensity towards lift-off oversteer which in some situations could cause the car to spin around 180 degrees and go down the road tail-first. Remember the scene when they’re trying to cover up the damage to the front of the car by crashing it into a tree only to have it spin around and crunch the back of the car?
(Although they fixed the worst of the problems by replacing the swing axle in the early Corvairs with an independent rear suspension, and the car in the show is a later one. Still funny, though!)
Although incidentally, the Corvair is a great non-example for this thread. GM sold a lot of them and they used to be common enough sights on the roads until the 80’s or so, but I haven’t seen one in the wild for years.
I live in a very hippie/crunchy town, and the place is absolutely silly with Volvo 240s and 245s. It’s usually a “natural”, gray-haired late 50s-through-early 70s type behind the wheel.
I still see the occasional unrestored early-1970s Dodge Dart or Plymouth Valiant on the road.
There are 2 types of auto auction - the dealer auctions that you described above and public auto auctions that do not require a dealer license and are open to anyone. I have bought and sold several cars at a local public auction. The other route is online sources such as Cargurus, Auto Trader, Craigslist, etc. Your last paragraph pretty much sums it up.
There are obvious (and not-so-obvious) drawbacks to each, not the least of which is that you may end up with a piece of crap vehicle. There is, when buying any “as is, where is” vehicle, an element of gambling. If you do this long enough you will get burned. You can minimize the risk by research, knowing a bit about cars and what to look for, being able to do most of the work yourself, knowing a good mechanic to check things out beforehand if possible and pricing the risk into the deal. It’s not for the faint of heart!
Many small, independent dealers use Craigslist to advertised. I tend to stick with those, buying from individuals is inherently more risky on several levels - although the deals can be much better. As with anything, bigger risk usually means bigger reward potential. Auctions have fees - it’s how they make their money - but always factor the fee into your bid price or a great deal may turn into a not-so-good deal. I have, on occasion, also found a great deal at a large dealership, particularly if they have just taken in an older vehicle on trade and don’t plan to keep it on the lot.
The real keys are patience, looking constantly and not being afraid to walk away at the first sign of sketchiness.
Per the original question: we have a 1999 Chevy Suburban and a 1995 Toyota Tacoma (first year that the small Toyota trucks were branded as Tacoma, in fact.) The little truck is the Energizer Bunny of vehicles - a friend bought it new for his business and we bought it for The Boy 2 years ago. Other than the "consumables, " like tires and battery, everything except the ignition, starter, ball joints, and tag light is original equipment. It just keeps going. (And is mechanically simple enough for a handy teenager to repair or replace.) It’s a dandy little truck. As for the 'Burb, we had a few problems a couple of years ago. We looked at the cost of a new/er family ride, with enough passenger seating for a family of 6 plus two dogs, and decided to just put a new motor in the old truck (we’d already done some larger maintenance jobs at the time.) So the giant red truck* drives like new, is cheap to insure, is paid for, and I can find it in the parking lot. I gas up the air conditioner every couple of years, we maintain it, and plan to drive the wheels off of it.
*His name is Clifford.
And then there’s my mother’s old pickup. I remember the evening Daddy came home from work and tossed her a set of keys (back when there were separate ones for the door and the ignition.) “Let’s go get your new truck.” We came home with a new '76 Ford F200 long wheel base, olive green, 4 on the floor. Over the years, that was a grocery hauler, a commuter vehicle, pulled a 30-foot travel trailer all over the SE US. My brother inherited it in 1985 as his first vehicle, and abused the hell out of it - ask me how I know that a 75 Sedan de Ville will pull a full-sized truck out of the river! When my brother left for the military, the truck was parked, but Betsy had her little outings - trips to the landfill or the lumber yard - and waited patiently for her boy to come home and drive her. Eventually, one of the neighbors needed a work truck, so Ma entrusted him with Betsy’s care and feeding. After Mr. Gene died, another old neighbor bought her. Two years ago, when that gentleman came to install our new fence, Betsy proudly brought the posts and chain link fabric. Mr. Johnny said she would hit a half-million miles soon, and his son sent me a picture of the odometer the day it rolled over. Mr. Johnny still drives her.
No-one mentioning Yugos or Skodas? haha
Well there is a fellow wandering about in a 1966 Volvo P1800 that has over 3 million miles on it.
My personal favourite, however, are the 1926 to 1930 Bentley Speed Six.