mileage on your car
filed in Misc Car Questions
Question: I am curious how long other people drive their cars? I saw a Toyota ad on TV. An old man drove his pickup 400,000 miles… Wow!
I have 86 Nissan Sentra and 130,000 miles on it. How about you?
86 Escort (1.6 L) ~70,000 miles — too many problems built up to make it worth fixing.
86 Celica 131,000 miles, still going strong!
1986 Saab 99 235,000 miles – I think mostley highway because the original owner drove it to Ontario from Vancouver when she moved here.
Answer: I had a 1973 Mustang Mach 1, 351C/2V automatic that I got from my Dad with 182k miles. It needed a valve job, and I couldn’t see doing just a valve job on an engine with that many miles, so I rebuilt the whole thing. Gave it back to him in 1984 with 240k after moving north to Maryland–I was afraid the road salt would eat it and was getting tired of the car. He sold it in about 1986 with 260k, and I don’t know where it is now. All of this was on the original auto tranny (FMX) and rear end. How ’bout a ‘66 Ford with 220,000 mi. on the odometer? The engine was bored over and had a “performance” cam installed by the original owner; my dad and I overhauled it at 200K–it didn’t need much work; it’d sat for several years; it needed new pushrods (a few had been bent, two were broken); and we got the valve seats hardened (to run on unleaded gas). The rest of the engine was clean.
Of course, that’s just scratching the surface; in my family, I have the only car that isn’t broken in–it has less than 100,000 miles on it. 1966 Ford Galaxie 500 (390 V8) 220,000mi 1970 Ford F-100 (302 V8) 150,000mi (awaiting restoration) 1978 T-Bird Town Landau (351M) 115,000mi (awaiting restoration) 1984 Bronco XLT (351W V8) 150,000mi 1986 Tempo GL 4-door 170,000mi 1989 T-Bird SC (3.8l SC V6) 58,000mi And that doesn’t count the vehicles of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins (which includes Fords, GMs, and some imports). We generally get our money’s worth out of automobiles.
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