Just a note: changing the timing belt doesn’t do anything for the engine except guard against the timing belt breaking. If the timing belt does break, the results are, well, extremely bad. Failure to change the timing belt will have precisely zero negative effects until the thing breaks.
I wouldn’t call the beetle a reliable car. Sure, it is cheap and easy to work on, but I have yet to see a beetle go several hundred thousand miles without an overhaul. If there is one that has 1 million miles, I bet the engine has been rebuilt 10 or 15 times. My dad had one, my friends have had them… seems like every 50k miles we were rebuilding the engines. They were reliable in their day, but don’t even compare to the japanese cars.
Booya, ranger owners of the world unite. I only have 99k on my 1999 but it still has had no real problems other than replacing the brake pads on one axle and cleaning out the air injector since it was clogged.
www.carsurvey.org is a good place to get info on reliability if you trust people posting their own personal experience. I bought the ranger since it had tons of good reviews on reliability from other owners.
A chevrolet Prizm might be in your budget Roland Deschain and its built similiar to a Corolla. And if your Corolla went that far w/o an oil change it must have been made on krypton. At the end of the day you probably won’t find anythign better than a honda or toyota. You’re actually supposed to replace the oil every 3k miles though.
Cape York Peninsula (the pointy up bit on Australia’s top righthand side) is tropical jungle with few towns past its base. It is also a 4WD heaven. Tourists from the cities go up there in their shiny 4 x 4s to tackle the track that leads to the very tip. It’s muddy and bumpy. You have to cross rivers, fallen trees, etc etc…
What do the tourists drive?
Toyotas, Nissans, GM, Fords, Mitsubishis, blah blah blah.
What do the locals drive?
Toyotas. All of them. Make of this what you will.
Some of them are thirty years old. Rusty, no glass in the windows, headlights missing, fuel tank on the roof with a garden hose running from it. But they keep plugging away. Others are brand new. And everything in between. But those guys ALL drive Toyotas, and they thrash the christ out of them.
In general, you’ll find that elsewhere in Australia, in conditions ranging from snowy high country to baking outback desert, to the tropical jungle mentioned above, non-city people tend to prefer Toyotas. Part of this is the fact that every town in Australia seems to have a Toyota dealer and parts shop (their parts service is superb), but the main reason is their reliability. This includes old codgers who would otherwise say such enlightened things as “The only good Jap is a dead one”, and whom you would expect to be loyal to Australian metal (like the redneck bikers who have “jap bike destroying festivals”), but they are not. They love their Toyotas. And with good reason.
Of course, Toyotas LOOK dead boring. They never have had much in the way of style, but I can live with that.
I have also added Duralube about every 30,000 miles (usually replacing one of the quarts of oil that I have to add every 1,200 or so miles anyway). However, I’m not really convinced that Duralube does anything it’s just that I’m afraid to break the ritual since it’s worked to this point.
This is one of those question that I could definitively settle if I had alot of bucks (won the lottery ect). I would follow a random sample of automobiles (lets say 10,000 for fun) of various years, makes, and models (lets say since 1985 to keep it simple). I would make sure to include a wide variety of drivers, and those with a great variety of maintenance habids (for example it may well be that Hondas are MORE reliable than Toyotas when equally maintained, but that for poorly maintained vehicles Toyotas due relatively better), and a diversity of geographic locations. I would also provide free auto repairs as an incentive for study participants to report all of their problems accurately. I think that for about fifty million that I could settle this question definitively in less than five years.
I hope that was a typo… It probably would need an oil change every 50,000 miles.
That was no typo. I have changed the oil no more than every 50,000 miles. I actually decided to do this after listening to an episode of Car Talk where “the brothers” joked about doing an experiment where they never changed the oil on an old clunker (I’m not sure if they were kidding). I do however, add a quart of oil about every 1,200 hundred miles. Furthermore, I add a quart of Duralube every 20,000 or so miles (not sure what if any effect that has). However, it’s hard to argue with 306,000+ plus miles on the odometer (and and engine which seems to have as much power as when I bought the car used from Budget Rent a Car).
I have progressed to using premium gas because the car was knocking after the ignition was turned off. However, that was several years ago and it hasn’t gotten any worse.
By the way “when a timing belt breaks is it usually worse with a Honda than with a Toyota?” I had one break on a 1984 EXP (the worst car I have ever owned without a doubt) and it didn’t cause any damage. However, when I was calling about Honda’s in the Trader, I was amazed at how many had engine damage from a busted timing chain. Maybe it was just coincidence, but none of the Toyota’s that I called about had similiar problems. This observation led me to ponder whether or not Honda’s might be more reliable than Toyota’s when they are properly maintained, but less so when the vehicles are neglected.
I used to have a boss that twice in his life bought new cars and drove them to their deaths because he never changed the oil.
The first time was in the 1980s - a Camaro - and it went about 70,000 miles IIRC. I was working for him the second time it happened. Dodge Dakota, about a 1996 or 1997, real nice truck. I can’t remember exactly how many miles that one went, but I think it was less than the Camaro.
Apart from that, he was a pretty smart guy, and one of the best bosses I ever had.
A Geo Prizm and Chevy Nova are also in the Toyota Corolla family–basically the same car. We drove an 84 Nova over 200,000 miles, and it just did everything we wanted. We bought it used for $700, traded it in for $700 on a used Honda Civic–which we like a teeny bit more than the Nova.
I had a 1984 Toyota Camry–boy, do I miss that car–that had problems with the timing belt. Broke at 40,000 miles like clockwork, but never damaged the engine. When the belt broke (once as a result of the oil pump breaking), the car simply died. From what I understand, it’s pretty difficult to damage an engine that’s not running.
Timing belt aside, I’d buy another Toyota in a heartbeat.
You really ough to see The truck that would not die. From BBCs Top Gear. Incredible.
At my Honda service place there’s a sign saying the timing belt should be changed at 90K (and they do the other belts while they’re in there). I was getting my 90K service done a little early and asked about this and they told me that the belts will be done at 105K. I have a 98 Civic and do all the scheduled checkups; will 105K be OK for this?
I had to replace my muffler and that middle pipe relatively soon, and the brakes were done at 60K. Otherwise he’s doing fine, but again he’s only at about 91K.
Yea, I took my Corolla into the dealer for a 100K “belt service” a couple of years ago. I left when they told me that the BASIC price was going to be about $900.00 ! That’s as much as I’ve spent on my Corolla in maintenance in over 300K miles and ten years of ownership! The reason that I drive an old, car is to save money after all.