21 yrs & 520,000km's - engine untouched

[Gary Allan]

I would just do what needs to be done to keep it running. That may include most of the stuff on your needs list. Do other things at your leisure.

The LTR with a car like this is grand, but I think it ends up being a fluke of odds the further out you get. Accidents ..other people slamming into you .. major fatigued part that can't quite be found in good shape ...structural member that you can't get someone to fix due to our new litigious society. I composed a liability waiver to get some stuff done to wheels.


..but good luck. This is evidence of a time gone by. Where an owner could do basic maintenance and have the car run a virtual lifetime. Boredom killed most domestics. That and commonality of numbers.

 

[ShiningArcanine]

Originally Posted By: caprice_2nv
It's a 1989 Chevy Caprice Classic with the 305 TBI (throttle body injection). I bought it for $400 with 490,000km's (about 290k miles), before that it had conventional 5w30 every 3-4k miles for 19 years by the 2 previous owners (I met both). Other than that both owners just fixed it when it broke which apparently was very rarely.

I started running synthetic in it soon after I got it now at about 4k intervals to try to help clean it up. Going to go with 15w50 Mobil 1 on my next oil change to see if it helps consumption any.


If it is leaking oil, Mobil 1 will make it worse. It likely has developed false seals (carbon deposits over the cracked seals) that will be cleaned out by Mobil 1. Motor oil pollutes drinking water and tends to kill dogs that are attracted to it by its sweet taste; you should do something to stop the leak ASAP.

Anyway, I recommend replacing it with a car that Chrysler made before 1960, Mercedes Benz made before 1980 or Toyota, Nissan or Honda made in the past 30 years. A very recent Hyundai might not be a bad choice either. Any of those cars will likely be more future proof in terms of durability and hopefully will not leak. If you buy one that does leak, it will be worth it to have its engine resealed.

 

[Cutehumor]

in this economy, keep the old girl on the road

 

[ShiningArcanine]

Originally Posted By: Cutehumor
in this economy, keep the old girl on the road


While I usually am a fan of not buying new cars, I think this is a case where a replacement is warranted. Chevrolet vehicles from the 1980s are not known for their reliability. From family experience, I really think it is a better choice to drive something with a better reputation and drive that until one retires from driving.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
Originally Posted By: Cutehumor
in this economy, keep the old girl on the road


While I usually am a fan of not buying new cars, I think this is a case where a replacement is warranted. Chevrolet vehicles from the 1980s are not known for their reliability. From family experience, I really think it is a better choice to drive something with a better reputation and drive that until one retires from driving.

Yeah 502,000 Km's is not too much. And the engine is untouched.

Just think if it was reliable....

 

[mechanicx]

Even if a 80's Chevy goes 300k miles without powertrain repairs I guess they're still unreliable just because its an 80's Chevy. It all makes sense now.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: mechanicx
Even if a 80's Chevy goes 300k miles without powertrain repairs I guess they're still unreliable just because its an 80's Chevy. It all makes sense now.


glad there is no bias here... Only facts!

 

[caprice_2nv]

LOL, and it only broke down twice in 21 years and 322k miles. One alternator and one other unmemorable part when it was almost new, according to the first owner. I'm driving it an hour and 15 minutes one way on the highway to work every day right now. I'm not worried about reliability as I said its just all the little things that have been bugging me. Everything bugs me in the winter though I guess.

 

[steve20]

if your 84 Cutlass has the 307-between these 2 cars you are set for life.
Mu 83 Cutlass 2 door went 256K miles-never burned a quart of oil total, in it's entire 18 year life

Steve

 

[ls1mike]

Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
Originally Posted By: Cutehumor
in this economy, keep the old girl on the road


While I usually am a fan of not buying new cars, I think this is a case where a replacement is warranted. Chevrolet vehicles from the 1980s are not known for their reliability. From family experience, I really think it is a better choice to drive something with a better reputation and drive that until one retires from driving.

You are funny man, stick to college and computers, you will be better off.

 

[cchase]

Didn't you know reputation trumps reality?

 

[Herz]

lol the car has over 300k miles and this guys stating theres a chance that cars from that era are unreliable. Amazing.


Keep the car, find a good junkyard and see if you can find replacements for the broken stuff cheap. IMO the only thing thats important to a car is a good running engine, a working radio, and air conditioning. Windows used to be important but sicne I do not smoke anymore they got deleted from my list. Just run the car till she dies. Maybee she'll get you over 450k.

 

[ShiningArcanine]

Originally Posted By: Bill in Utah
Originally Posted By: mechanicx
Even if a 80's Chevy goes 300k miles without powertrain repairs I guess they're still unreliable just because its an 80's Chevy. It all makes sense now.


glad there is no bias here... Only facts!


Bias is usually more likely to be in favor of those you consider to be your own. To be biased toward a company from another country is a fairly profound statement, especially when it is not any particular bias but an educated assumption based on the experiences of those around you and actual studies and reviews.

The fact that something is more closely related to you than something else does not have any logical relationship to how good or bad that something is relative to that something else, yet it is more than often the case that people think that their things are the best, even when they are clearly not. Try to keep track of how often people refer to their own things (e.g. skills, purchases, property, personal qualities, etcetera) as being garbage instead of as being great. You will be surprised how often people say that x thing of theirs is great, even though it really is not and they have no basis to state that it is good or bad.

 

[ShiningArcanine]

To expand on what I said above, an example would be the other day when I was talking to a girl who wanted to become a teacher and claimed to be great with children. She then described children yelling at her that they will not do x thing again if she does not punish them. For her to recall such a heavy handed approach to dealing with things when thinks of an example of her being "great with children", I cannot help but think that she put the children in a position where they were naturally inclined to do something she did not like and then resorted to punishment when they followed their own inclinations. Someone who was great with children would not have put the children in a situation where they would be encouraged to have negative behavior. Someone, such as herself, who would put the children in such a situation should not be allowed to become a school teacher, much less be around children. Rather than saying, "I am bad at handing children", she said "I am great with children", even though her description of how she interacted with children described the complete opposite.

Ever since I became aware of this sort of thing a few years ago, I have been amazed (and appalled) at all of the places in which I have found it. I find the situation involving so called domestically made vehicles to be the same. I refer to them as so called domestically made because I must consider what it means to be domestic. I am well versed in US history and I find that people's attitudes toward things that had been set in the past do not change what those things are, no matter how much they feel about the topic. An example of this is the fact that we have states in the United States of America. The states are sovereign states, not significantly different from England or China. The only difference is that they did not wanted to avoid dealing with relationships between themselves and foreign governments, so they formed the United States Constitution. Under this system, which is known as a federal system, everything made in a state that is not your own is actually foreign-made, cars included. As a consequence, with the exception of people in Ohio and other major manufacturing centers, all cars are foreign made, whether they are American, European or Oriental, so the idea that you can be biased toward one car because it is "domestic" is illogical because no car is actually domestic.

For the majority of Americans, all arguments on foreign versus domestic products and trade deficits are pointless because no matter what they do, they are still buying foreign products, and that will never change. The free trade that eliminated massive parts of each state's economy in favor of more specialized economies suited to the individual region that export their goods has benefited us immensely and no one in their right mind would fabricate an auto industry in their state for the purpose of hording their income because the other places that already do it tend to do it better than they can. It follows from this that the ultimate improvement would be to take this notion globally such that only the few countries in the world that are best suited toward making these vehicles would make them and the rest of the world would buy from them. The automobile industry in the US and Europe has failed all objective evaluations of their performance and the quality of their vehicles while some of the companies in Japan and Korea have not, so the ultimate improvement would be to let those companies make cars and have the other countries find things they are better suited at doing. It is not like the cars would be domestic with the current approach anyway. If you think otherwise, tell me where I can buy a car where the majority of the parts were built in New York with New York labor and I will concede that I was mistaken.

 

[mechanicx]

That is the biggest bunch of baloney I every read. Even the part that had nothing directly to do with automotive reliability and that was dealing with trade is flat wrong. Let me just say there is a big difference between inter-state trade and international trade.


Then the claim that American vehicles like GM and Ford failed in reliabilty is also wrong.

You have an example of an 80's Chevy with 300k miles yet you continue with the reliability myth. What facts would it take to convince you?

 

[nthach]

Disclaimer: I'm not a Chevy fan here.

But I will say this - the older BOF Chevys like the Impala/Caprice are rock solid, provided the chassis and body are free of cancer. Sure, the powertrain is a gas hog and somewhat underpowered thanks to emissions regulations and the interior ain't nothing to write home about either.

However, the old Chevys are for the most part owner friendly in the fact that you can work on it for all but major repairs - dependent on the owner's mechanical ability. A SBC+Turbo 350/400/4L60E is as simple as it gets for the most part. hwy do you think the CHP was crying when GM killed off the 9C1 Caprice?

I take it that's a 350 or 305 in that Caprice?

 

[cchase]

Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
As a consequence, with the exception of people in Ohio and other major manufacturing centers, all cars are foreign made, whether they are American, European or Oriental, so the idea that you can be biased toward one car because it is "domestic" is illogical because no car is actually domestic.


You have grossly oversimplified something to prove a point that I don't think I quite grasp.

There's quite a difference between a NY resident buying a car made in OH over a NY resident buying a car made in Germany. If you're trying to sound intellectual, all you've done is turned a fairly simple concept into something bloated and irrelevant.

 

[ShiningArcanine]

Originally Posted By: mechanicx
That is the biggest bunch of baloney I every read. Even the part that had nothing directly to do with automotive reliability and that was dealing with trade is flat wrong. Let me just say there is a big difference between inter-state trade and international trade.


Then the claim that American vehicles like GM and Ford failed in reliabilty is also wrong.

You have an example of an 80's Chevy with 300k miles yet you continue with the reliability myth. What facts would it take to convince you?


Interstate trade is a form of international trade. The United States federal government is a very fancy free trade agreement between sovereign states, nothing more. When things cross state borders, they are from another country as far as the people in that state should be concerned.

If you are not acquainted with this concept, then you should examine the European Union, to see another example of a very fancy free trade agreement between various countries. It is in a much earlier state of development than our own, but it is very similar to the Articles of Confederation that predated the United States Constitution.

By the way, I am a applied math and statistics/computer science double major, so I can tell you, the existence of one sample that has some desirable characteristics in a population is meaningless in the context of the larger population. There are no verifiable records for the car in question and even if there were, it would be meaningless without being able to rule out the possibility of it being a special case. There are no proof and there no facts in the statement that x car (without any proof or evidence that this car actually exists) has y characteristics. To say otherwise is the fallacy of affirming the consequent:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affirming_the_consequent

Originally Posted By: cchase
Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
As a consequence, with the exception of people in Ohio and other major manufacturing centers, all cars are foreign made, whether they are American, European or Oriental, so the idea that you can be biased toward one car because it is "domestic" is illogical because no car is actually domestic.


You have grossly oversimplified something to prove a point that I don't think I quite grasp.

There's quite a difference between a NY resident buying a car made in OH over a NY resident buying a car made in Germany. If you're trying to sound intellectual, all you've done is turned a fairly simple concept into something bloated and irrelevant.


The only difference is that there is a ocean between New York and Germany while there is a mountain range between New York and Ohio. Both are foreign cars as far as I am concerned and there is no reason for anyone in New York to think otherwise.

 

[cchase]

Originally Posted By: ShiningArcanine
The only difference is that there is a ocean between New York and Germany while there is a mountain range between New York and Ohio. Both are foreign cars as far as I am concerned and there is no reason for anyone in New York to think otherwise.


The difference is that the company located in Ohio pays taxes to the same federal government that you pay taxes to, and as a result you share, albeit indirectly, in the profits of that business. In addition, this country is united politically, financially, economically, and culturally.

If you think that Ohio is a foreign nation, there's no real reasoning with you.

 

[cchase]

It's great that you consider the United States as though it was the 18th century though. If states were sovereign entities they would have the right to secede from the union, which they do not.