Spending several thousand to repair an 11 year old car with 300k miles is a really bad idea. If you need a reliable frugal vehicle I’d recommend a hyundai accent, a 1999 model or so sometimes goes for $3500 in the classifieds.
I just heard a commercial for "the Biggest, most popular, bestest, cheapest,most reliable, most trustworthy,(you get the idea) car dealer in this area.
Their lowest price states “keep your old car”.
So they don’t want them.
Gee whats that tell you about your prized flivver.
If I’m buying a used beater for transportation why would I pay good money to maintain something thats not gonna be worth much when I get rid of it.
Probably not. I am guessing that the changes (and lack of power) have occurred so slowly over the years, that you are not noticing them. If somehow you could get into a brand new 1994 Corolla, you would be amazed at the extra power it has over your car. I often notice the reverse of this when I change company cars at 15,000 miles, my “used” car has much more power than my new car, owing to the engine being broken in.
Also people who are not mechanically inclined often have a very flexible use of the word “fine” to describe how their car runs. I have had people bring cars to me that ran “fine” that would barely get out of the driveway and into my stall. 
I don’t know if this is some type of defense mechanism, or if they really can’t tell when a car is running poorly.
A couple of other observations, first some engines either by design, or luck of the draw seem to better able to withstand abuse or lack of maintenance by their owners. I have seen lack of oil changes kill lots of engines, and every once in a while a guy will come in who does not change his oil, and his car is still running when others with the same lack of maintenance have gone to the great parking lot in the sky. Why? Luck? Karma? Beats me.
Also Roland don’t forget that not all car repairs can be headed off by regular oil changes. For instance if your brake master cylinder fails, regular oil changes would not have prevented that. So you cannot always draw a line between doing maintenance and saying my car will not fail on the road. What can be said is that a failure is much much more likely on a car that has not had regular service. Just like I have never smoked, but that does not preclude me from getting lung cancer. But it is much more likely that a smoker will get lung cancer than me.
I guess it depends on the level of care. Taking care of a vehicle that must safely bring your kids around is a big deal. Stalled/broken cars on the side of the highway is probably the most dangerous situation to be in. If you can’t afford (say) tires, how is that responsible ownership? You create a hazard for both yourself, your kids and everyone else sharing the road.
Plus, you also need to spend enough to keep your car from polluting too much. I’ve seen far too many cars burning what seems to be pure motor oil on the roads. Driving behind someone like that is a poison hazard.
If you can’t afford to keep your car in acceptable state of repair (at minimal decent tires and brakes) you can’t afford a car and shouldn’t be driving one.
If Roland can’t afford a $15 oil change, what happens when his brakes start to go? Or his tires? Heck, even right now the vehicle sounds like it wouldn’t past an E-test seeing as it’s loosing so much oil (unless it’s just leaking).
Actually, EVERY auto maker that I’ve seen data on will refuse to consider your car’s oil consumption abnormal until it uses in excess of one quart per 1,000 miles. Meaning, if you request warranty claims to address oil consumption and you’re burning or leaking less than their standard, your claim will be denied.
I’ve seen this to be said of: Honda, GM and Ford.
I would wager this is a universal in the industry.
I follow these issues compulsively on the forums at www.bobistheoilguy.com
For the record, all cars use some oil.
Roland
Walmart
Possible shots fired
Bad idea
Didja have an onion on your belt?
LMAO. In Indiana nickels have pictures of bumblebees on them. Gimme 5 bees for a quarter you’d say.
I think all of you are being a little hard on Roland. This is a nearly twenty year old corolla, not the Pieta. I once had a very junky pick up that I not only didn’t change the oil in, I put used motor oil from the oil change job I had in the engine. I burned about a quart every two hundred miles, and managed to put twenty thousand miles on the truck before it threw a rod. It probably looked like I was spraying for mosquitoes when you drove behind me, but it got me back and forth to work.
In other words, they don’t want to fix your car under warranty unless the problem is spectacularly bad. That doesn’t mean a car that “only” burns a quart every 1500 miles is in good shape.
An oil&filter change is the cheapest way to lengthen the life of your engine.
If you’ve ever been around a race car pit crew, where length of life is measured in race hours, they will all tell you that.
I should add that its been burning or leaking about the same amount of oil for the last 150,000 miles. In fact, I remember when I had the timing belt changed (over 100K miles ago) and telling Miller about the oil thing that he said I would soon have to consider having the valves ground/seal replaced or something.
My boss has a car he calls alternately the “Gray Ghost” and the “Miracle Honda”. It has over 400,000 miles on it (original engine, etc), just with regular scheduled maintenance.
While we’re at it, bear in mind that even a run-of-the-mill conventional oil can remain chemically sound at oil change intervals of 8000 miles.
As we’ve calculated that Mr. Deschain is in fact de facto changing his oil every 6000 miles, there is no real reason to believe that in a leaky but otherwise mechanically sound engine, his oil is not performing properly.
My former vehicle, a 1996 Caprice Classic, advised me to change the oil based on my driving, and regular oils were reccomended for usage in that car. It reccomended intervals ranging from 6500 to 7500 miles.
Regarding the issue of his filter clogging up, it may have, or it may not have.
I’ve seen anecdotes indicating that cars with good air filters and fully broken-in engines don’t need oil filters. Here’s a thought experiment: You have a metal box (your engine). You burn gasoline and air in it. You filter both the gasoline and air before they come into the box. You run oil through the box. Exactly what would you need to filter out of the oil? You have just combusted filtered air and filtered gasoline, and at 200,000 miles I’d wager the engine is done being broken in.
I’ve seen oil analysis showing identical contamination levels [within statistical variance] on a high-mileage Ford Escort wagon where the owner put a plate over the place where the oil filter was supposed to be. Meaning, he ran it with no oil filter and got the same results as with an oil filter.
Here are some worthwhile links on this topic from my book marks:
- A guy with a Camaro goes a long time on synthetic oils:
http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories/oil-life.html - The same author discusses various theories behind oil change intervals:
http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/stories/interval.html
Maybe the inner works of an older engine has a repair by someone who soldered something…and that something would be “un-fixed” when the oil’s detergent dissolved the solder’s flux.
Non-detergent oil dosen’t dissolve stuff…just increase the oil change schedule.
Hasn’t Car and Driver or Consumer Reports (or someone else) ever done a simple experiment where they take ten cars and change the oil as reccomended, and another ten that they let go much longer and then seen how the vehicles perform? Obviously, such small samples wouldn’t be conclusive, but they might be interesting never the less. By the way why couldn’t someone design an engine that was easy to change the oil even for a moron like myself? Basically, I thinking of a system where you would push a button and the oil would drain out then you would simply add new oil. The filter would be accessible from the top of the hood and would simply snap out or unscrew letting you put a new one in place in about ten seconds. Think of all the money that would be saved in oil changes. Of course places like Jiffy Lube would see a real decline in their business.
Quote Roland
By the way why couldn’t someone design an engine that was easy to change the oil even for a moron like myself? Basically, I thinking of a system where you would push a button and the oil would drain out then you would simply add new oil.//Quote
Actually they do make a oil pump that pumps out the used oil. I’ve never tried it and have only seen it in magazine ads.
Combustion by-products that blow past the piston rings when the engine is cold, water vapour, carbon, nitrogen and suphur compounds that are corrosive, unburned petrol that dilutes the oil, metal particles sloughed off by the bearings and pistons/rings & cylinder walls, all acumulate in the oil.
I agree that Roland’s schedule of maintenance leaves a little (ok, well a lot) to be desired, but maybe switching over to a sythetic or synthetic blend motor oil would be beneficial for him. I use synthetic in both my cars, and change the oil about every 5,000 miles (give or take a few hundred) and the oil isn’t any dirtier than a conventional oil after 3,000 miles. Both cars have most of the miles put on cruising at highway speed, with a few stop and go trips thrown in for good measure. The only other thing I would recomend that he do would be replace the belts as you don’t want to suddenly lose things like power steering, or your alternator. The hoses should be ok if they are still soft & pliable until they start cracking and/or leaking. Also keep an eye on the engine coolant, over heating in the summer or freezing and cracking the block in the winter would be a Bad Thing.
My wife’s car (an '89 Toyota Camry) has gome without an oil change for the last 8 years since she bought it used. She bought it with around 100k miles on it, it is now up to 350k miles and still running fine.
She has never changed the oil or the filter, she just pours in a couple quarts every couple of months or so.
At first when I met her and found out about this (being a fanatic about changing mine every 3k or 4k miles), I waved my arms in apoplectic consternation insisting that what she was doing was against the graven holy laws of nature itself. Years afterward, the car continued to run fine.
Now I have to slink out of the house every couple of months when I get my oil changed, knowing that when my wife will inevitably say “Why are you doing that? My car runs fine, it’s a waste of money”, I have no response. And me, a good scientist and common-sense rationalist, what am I to do, how can I have any faith in physics or nature or entropy when faced with my wife’s Camry?
It’s like telling George Burns that he’d better quit smoking all of those cigars…