Can your car last 1,000,000 miles..

[Ben99GT]

 Originally Posted By: stubbakatt

You're kidding right? Today's Hyundais will easily reach 500k. The build quality is on par with Toyota and Honda. So, no luck is needed, just regular maintenance.

Hyundai's quality numbers are below Toyota, Honda and Ford, and on par with/below GM's.

 

[Paul56]

Whenever I see a topic like this about vehicles lasting a long time I always think back to my dad's 1967 Chrysler New Yorker. During the time he had that car he used to travel with it for a living and ending up with over 300,000 miles on it after 10 years. During that 10 years of use that car never left him stranded anywhere on the road. But, my dad was a maintenance freak... and was under the hood and everywhere else on that car EVERY weekend. Heck, he would change the oil every 2000 miles! The point? Maintenance plays a huge role in how long a vehicle can last.

 

[PandaBear]

Any car can last 1M miles, it is how much it cost to get there that makes it or breaks it. Do you need an engine rebuild? how about a frame rework to get rid of rust?

 

[Colt45ws]

Im fairly certain I could get 1mill out of my car. Might need a new trans or two or three...axle rebuild or two. Would need new timing chain tensioners and timing chains somewhere around 500-600k if I planned on the engine going all the way.

 

[Gary Allan]

 Quote:

Not sure I agree. I drive the "beaters" to keep my nice car out of the city, and its not uncommon for me to go for drives in the middle of the night just for the sake of driving.

Then you're still into aesthetics. The minor stuff I never sweat. If it bothered me enough, I'd pay to have it fixed just like a worn ball joint.

 

[opposite_locker]

 Quote:

Yup, Dodge Rams, regardless of the engine( gas ), never met a gas station they didn't like. I have had them with every gas engine offered since the early 90's( 5.2L, 5.9L, 4.7L, 5.7L )short of the V6 and they ALL were gas pigs. It is the one real drawback to them. Otherwise great trucks. What stinks for you is the 5.7L gets at least as good as, and for me better than, MPG than the 4.7L. More power AND better MPG.

Other than the mileage, the truck has been flawless without a single problem in the first yr/50k miles. And of those 50k, at least 7500 miles was spent at or above GVWR. Overall, I've been averaging about 14mpg (9.5 mpg with a ton of fruit in the bed) and that's with the 6spd manual trans. I would have loved to get a Hemi but Dodge only offered it with an automatic in the half ton, and that was a deal breaker. At least they improved the 4.7 for 2008...

 

[pottymouth]

It would take me between 35 and 40 years to hit a million miles. I expect that the cars available 10 years from now will be safer, more efficient and have all kinds of gee-wiz features not seen today. I'm sure I'll be more than ready for an upgrade before I hit 200K, let alone 1 million.

 

[crazyoildude]

if you are talking about the ford crown vic that car has a good chance of going a million miles with extremely good care we see the old taxis (crown vics and grand marquis) most of them purchased from police departments with 100,000 on them and then the cab companies put another 300,000 plus miles on them and still the engines are going strong..You see them bouncing around the streets of New York all day and night.. And it seems when you see an old vic in the junk yard they seem to all have the engines removed and for sale

 

[Colt45ws]

Yeah, there is a guy on CVN that is the fleet manager for a taxi fleet in the Atlanta area code. They regularly pull 500-600k out of them, and they dont do much engine work. If its going to be deeper than the intake or exhaust manifold the engine gets ganked and a used junkyard engine dropped in its place. He says usually somewhere in that range (500-600) the timing chains start rattling and within 25k of that starting the engine lunches itself. Although he said the used police units only make 400-500 due to the harsh use initially.

 

[Ben99GT]

 Originally Posted By: Onmo'Eegusee

He says usually somewhere in that range (500-600) the timing chains start rattling and within 25k of that starting the engine lunches itself.

If he would just replace timing chains/guides/tensioners he would prevent the engine from eating itself. Only a little over $200 for all new stuff.

 

[Gary Allan]

I'd say that 400k-500k in police/taxi service is close to 1M miles in equivalent usage. It's just too hard to accumulate 1M miles without taxi or police service in any reasonable lifetime that isn't spent behind the wheel for 8+ hours a day. I put about 65k-80k a year back in the later 70's. You lived in the vehicle. With a typical 25-30 miles span between stops (nuke med delivery) I averaged 40-45 mph. Some others on other routes would do 10k/month. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have bought new equipment as often. I retired too many high mileage new(er) vehicles. Even with a 200 mile commute per day, you're at about 50k/year. 20 years. Beyond that, it's not a commute, it's a second job that costs you money to work at.

 

[Colt45ws]

 Originally Posted By: Ben99GT

 Originally Posted By: Onmo'Eegusee

He says usually somewhere in that range (500-600) the timing chains start rattling and within 25k of that starting the engine lunches itself.

If he would just replace timing chains/guides/tensioners he would prevent the engine from eating itself. Only a little over $200 for all new stuff.

He does not find it worth it. He can change the engine out alot faster than doing the timing chains, they have it down to a science. Heck hes told me he has taken 3-4 different dead/wrecked Vics and built a single whole one before, all the way to putting a complete body on the frame, and so on. Then since its a new(er) engine it does not smoke and use oil, etc.

 

[crinkles]

 Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

I'd say that 400k-500k in police/taxi service is close to 1M miles in equivalent usage. It's just too hard to accumulate 1M miles without taxi or police service in any reasonable lifetime that isn't spent behind the wheel for 8+ hours a day. I put about 65k-80k a year back in the later 70's. You lived in the vehicle. With a typical 25-30 miles span between stops (nuke med delivery) I averaged 40-45 mph. Some others on other routes would do 10k/month. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn't have bought new equipment as often. I retired too many high mileage new(er) vehicles. Even with a 200 mile commute per day, you're at about 50k/year. 20 years. Beyond that, it's not a commute, it's a second job that costs you money to work at.

+1 if I get even 150,000 miles of trouble free motoring out of my car, i would be happy. Would be looking to upgrade by then! anything above that is a bonus.

 

[ADFD1]

The odds of a car lasting a million miles are probably close to 1 in a million. Too many things can happen in that time frame. Odds are something will fall apart, the car will get totaled, or stolen. Not saying it can't happen, the odds are it won't. AD

 

[beermanj]

I remember when I was going to MEPS for the military, we were riding in a ford econoline vans and I look to see how many miles each van had and they were close to a million miles and the driver said that some of them had more than a million. Not sure if it was the original engines. That was 9 yrs ago, memory gets more fuzzy every year

 

[Corran]

The car with the highest milage I have ever worked on was a mid 80's(?) W124 diesel with 425,000 and I thought that was a lot of miles. The SUV with the highest milage I have ever worked on was a 1998 ML 320 with 267,000 miles that a lady used to pull a small horse trailer. That had the original engine and trans that had never been opened up and the OCI was 10,000 miles on older formula M1 0W40.

 

[mstrjon32]

 Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

Then you're still into aesthetics. The minor stuff I never sweat. If it bothered me enough, I'd pay to have it fixed just like a worn ball joint.

If by "aesthetics," you mean, the appearance of my car in the spot where I parked it when I return the next morning, then yeah, I'm big into that. I parked my car on Capitol Hill (by all means, probably the nicest area in DC) one night, and when I returned to it the next day, there was a man standing near it. He approached me as I walked up to the car and asked me how long I was parked there, and I told him, since about 10PM last night. He then asked me if I noticed a red Honda Accord parked in the spot behind me when I parked. I told him I thought there was a green Jetta, but I wasn't really paying attention and I could be making that up. That's when he told me he had parked his Accord there and it was now gone. Nice. But, it is also nice to not have the bumpers smashed up either. There is a difference between a few scratches and dents, and the total painted bumper destruction that goes on in that city. There is no point in getting it fixed, since the next time you're down there, it's going to get damaged again. Not a problem with my steel-bumpered, 10" off the ground Jeep.

 

[440Magnum]

 Originally Posted By: Gary Allan

I'd say that 400k-500k in police/taxi service is close to 1M miles in equivalent usage. It's just too hard to accumulate 1M miles without taxi or police service in any reasonable lifetime that isn't spent behind the wheel for 8+ hours a day. Even with a 200 mile commute per day, you're at about 50k/year. 20 years. Beyond that, it's not a commute, it's a second job that costs you money to work at.

+1 on that. My highest-mileage car is my 1973 Plymouth Satellite at 438,000 miles and change. It spent its first 8 years driving maybe 9,000 miles per year. From 1982 to about 1994, it saw around 27-29,000 miles per year. Then it got semi-retired and stored on and off for 6 years, then put back into 6k/year service for a couple of years, now its stored again, awaiting a restoration. The 29k/year years are not something I want to go back to, especially since traffic is so much worse now than it was then!

 

[FZ1]

I would be quite happy with 250,000. I believe a man ought to buy a new car once every 20 years.

 

[lexus114]

I would get too tired of the vehicle way before 1,000,000 miles.I`m lucky if I can go two years with out being ready for something different.