wemay
Site Donor 2023
No
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Another scary trend is the shear number or 2012+ Focus in the year with blown dual clutch trans......
My mother who was not even a "car person" always wanted 3K oil changes and that was always the number stressed to me as a teenager. She usually sprang for synthetic oil, too. She took her 1989 Taurus to 285K miles by 1996 or so when we were kids, with Mobil 1 for all oil changes. It was gonna blow its second transmission, though, thus why it was traded in. Engine ran great, though.
With her current Five Hundred she doesn't drive nearly as much, and we only end up with about 10-12K per year for miles, and average out at a twice a year oil change at roughly 5000 miles based on an OLM. She said "it feels like you never change the oil." She doesn't realize how little she drives now.
Interestingly my 1984 Celica Supra had 6000-8000 mile oil change intervals listed in the manual, except severe use was 3000-4000. But one weird thing Toyota did specifically with the 5MGE engine was spec a large filter, something like a Ford big block filter, in the 1980s, then later on switched to the tiny 4 cylinder Camry filters and a 3K OCI without telling anyone. On one of mine I had oil pressure issues using the smaller Camry sized filters.
Yes but back in the day we didn't have engineer in factory issues like LSPI. The great improvement if you will with the New CAFE Turbo cars.I feel back when I first really worked on cars, it was somewhat rare to find a car with a blown engine, as in, thrown rods, smoking blue, etc. The most common failures I personally remember were cooling system failures and blown head gaskets. If an engine was blown it was usually due to driving with a blown head gasket for hundreds or thousands of miles, or the head gasket failing and contaminating the oil with water. Not just "oh, it broke one day." Reading about say, Hyundai engines throwing rods all seems very weird to me, same with timing chain failures at low mileages. Of course more engines are moving to chains, but on the older V6 pushrod engines that were relatively easy on the oil, I would say chain failures were incredibly rare (though it's a simpler design for sure) but even on the older OHC/DOHC there didn't seem to be common failures.
how many check the oil level every time they fill the gas tank?
I know i do. sadly I've never seen anyone else at the gas pumps doing the same.
Oh yes indeed.While I believe half the problems people have are caused by them, lousy engineering makes up the other half, and trying to milk the last mile out of an oil change makes up the smallest part. People being impatient. starting an ice cold motor and flooring it before the motor has spun 1,000 rpms, might just hasten the failure process. I've also noticed alot of cars for sale with transmission failures. Seems they always take the car to the car wash, but never even think about having the transmission fluid changed. And if you ask someone about changing it, they'll look at you funny and say something like, I don't think it needs to be done on my car. Kinda like when you ask someone ,when was the last time you changed the oil in your lawnmower. Again driving your car like your in a Nascar race, all the time will cause expensive parts to quit before there time. You can use the best brand of oil know to man, but if you let it run low, or never change it, it will do it's job until it's given your motor all it can. And no one will take the blame for ruining the motor, so it must be the oil.,,,