I have a soft spot for those cars, there were a lot of them around when I was just becoming of driving age.
Older car daily drivers
- Thread starter doublebase
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I have a soft spot for those cars, there were a lot of them around when I was just becoming of driving age.
I remember when you bought it and posted pics on here. The before and after results were fantastic. Looked like new afterwards. I think it is blue if memory serves correctly.
Yes. I would post another pic but I'm on vacay now and can't because I have them on my other computer lol.
GM = GENERIC MOTORS!!!!! I will tell you what -- I see more 1996 through 2002 Dodge Ram Trucks and especially the Diesels than any Generic Motor or Ford on the road from that era daily. New or newer Dodge Rams are every where in my parts. Three people on my street in the last 2 years have bought new Dodge Rams -- GM or Ford -- same street -- ZIPPO/NADA/NONE!!!!!
Good for you and your street. Around here 99-07 gm trucks are a lot more common than ford or dodge. Or at least more common to be running fine (lots of Fords around with manifold leaks or engine knock or both).
Gm makes a lot of crap vehicles these days, but hating gm shouldn't be a reason to blind people as to what are actually good vehicles. I see exactly (1) 96-02 ram in the construction sites I work in. I get to see the most abused trucks around.
Plus I worked in a couple garages for years at the front counter (Ford, gm and an independent) so I got to see every vehicle going into the shop. What some guy thinks based on what he sees on his street has no merit to me.
I'm in Ford country.....Still A LOT of older Fords on the road & getting worked hard! A lot of '99-'06 GMT800's around to.
Truck brand popularity is regional & has little to do with reliability.....Although the GM 6.5L diesel is a steaming pile. The '94-'02 Ram had it's issues & was certainly not BETTER than the Ford & GM offerings at the time, Build quality was quite poor in fact. I had two CTD powered Rams from this period & don't miss them one bit.
Driving an 06 Volvo V70R with 260+K miles on it commuting 72 miles a day with no issues. Car is tight, looks beautiful inside and outside and underneath (these things don’t rust). I put a SNABB high flow intake and larger FMIC over the last Christmas/New Years break, so this fast wagon got faster. Still wishing the exhaust system would rust more quickly so i have a good excuse to put a performance downpipe and performance exhaust system on it. Darn stainless steel exhaust looks like it will last another 10 years!
Love driving a quality older car that barely depreciates, has low yearly taxes, has comfortable seats, and has solid, safe build. Every time i open and close the doors on this car, it reminds me of how solid the car is. The doors are solidly built, feel heavy and bank vault-like. It’s hard not to keep repairing the car, as it is sooo worth it. It has all wheel drive, dynamic stability control, emergency braking assist, seat belt pretensioners, gazillion air bags, etc etc....all the safety systems were standard equipment well before required.
Likewise, my son is driving an 04 V70R with 230K about 55 miles commute each day. Same story...beautiful, solid car, blah, blah, blah. No end in sight with these cars...
Love driving a quality older car that barely depreciates, has low yearly taxes, has comfortable seats, and has solid, safe build. Every time i open and close the doors on this car, it reminds me of how solid the car is. The doors are solidly built, feel heavy and bank vault-like. It’s hard not to keep repairing the car, as it is sooo worth it. It has all wheel drive, dynamic stability control, emergency braking assist, seat belt pretensioners, gazillion air bags, etc etc....all the safety systems were standard equipment well before required.
Likewise, my son is driving an 04 V70R with 230K about 55 miles commute each day. Same story...beautiful, solid car, blah, blah, blah. No end in sight with these cars...
Since about 2,5 years, I daily drive a 1988 Mitsubishi Galant.
The car itself is quite outdated, powered by a 1.8L l4 carbureted engine, manual windows, MT, no antilock brakes, a/c or airbags.
Valve clearance needs to be adjusted every 20k mls as there are no hydraulic lifters.
However, the interiour is very comfortable, fuel consumption is low and the car has been very reliable to put up with all the use and abuse I've thrown at it.
I bought it in 2018 with alledgedly 80k mls on the clock, now it has about 135k mls.
I drive it 7 days a week and have also taken it on various roadtrips across Europe, for instance racing it up and down some of the highest alpine passes while overtaking various sportscars and motorcycles. ;-)
The longest trip I dared taking on so far has been ~4000mls, but there might be more to come once the travelling restrictions aren't as tight anymore.
The catalytic converters are on their way out and some sensors are getting a bit moody, replacement is hard to come by.
It is questionable whether the car is gonna pass next state inspection, especially smog, in 2022.
Either way, I am not planning to sell it, as I have had a lot of nice memories with the car and it's been a trooper.
I plan on buying a newer (pre 2000 ;-) ) daily driver, maybe a Camry, and give the old Galant some time and TLC, might use it as a summer car.
The car itself is quite outdated, powered by a 1.8L l4 carbureted engine, manual windows, MT, no antilock brakes, a/c or airbags.
Valve clearance needs to be adjusted every 20k mls as there are no hydraulic lifters.
However, the interiour is very comfortable, fuel consumption is low and the car has been very reliable to put up with all the use and abuse I've thrown at it.
I bought it in 2018 with alledgedly 80k mls on the clock, now it has about 135k mls.
I drive it 7 days a week and have also taken it on various roadtrips across Europe, for instance racing it up and down some of the highest alpine passes while overtaking various sportscars and motorcycles. ;-)
The longest trip I dared taking on so far has been ~4000mls, but there might be more to come once the travelling restrictions aren't as tight anymore.
The catalytic converters are on their way out and some sensors are getting a bit moody, replacement is hard to come by.
It is questionable whether the car is gonna pass next state inspection, especially smog, in 2022.
Either way, I am not planning to sell it, as I have had a lot of nice memories with the car and it's been a trooper.
I plan on buying a newer (pre 2000 ;-) ) daily driver, maybe a Camry, and give the old Galant some time and TLC, might use it as a summer car.
Ever since the pandemic started, I've been working from home. But before that I was commuting/daily driving my 1992 Accord with 214k miles. It's very reliable and rarely needs any repairs. I took it on a road trip down to West Virginia from Connecticut (500 miles each way) two years ago, and hit 200k miles on the way down. I'd drive it across the country without hesitation. I'll keep driving it till it's dead, but it doesn't look like that day is coming anytime soon.
2007 Tacoma with almost 232,000 miles here. Bought new in 2007, so I know its history.
Engine and transmission - rock-solid. I'd rely on them to drive from here to Seattle. And I've replaced all the wheel bearings and rebuilt the driveshaft. Suspension components are original, but there's nothing to lead me to believe any of it needs replaced. Steering feels great, and the truck tracks dead-straight, and, of course, it's lived its whole life in the South. The miles are mostly highway.
We take our trips in the wife's 2018 Civic, but, I guess what I'd worry about if I were to take the Tacoma on a long trip would be a failure of the starter, alternator, fuel pump, or water pump, since they're all original components. No indication that any of those critical components are on their way out, but, I've seen those things fail on vehicles with far fewer miles.
Starter or alternator would be pretty easy to source and replace. The other 2, I haven't looked into how hard they are to get to or anything.
What sucks is that my truck has been hit at least 4 times in parking lots. The latest incident happened just a couple of days ago. It's extremely discouraging when you do your level best to take great care of a vehicle, washing, waxing, detailing, doing all the maintenance it needs in order to go the distance and get your money's worth out of it, and then some lowlife damages it in a parking lot and doesn't have the class to leave a note or anything. Wish I had a dash cam in my truck. Might not have caught what happened, but, then again, it might have.
Engine and transmission - rock-solid. I'd rely on them to drive from here to Seattle. And I've replaced all the wheel bearings and rebuilt the driveshaft. Suspension components are original, but there's nothing to lead me to believe any of it needs replaced. Steering feels great, and the truck tracks dead-straight, and, of course, it's lived its whole life in the South. The miles are mostly highway.
We take our trips in the wife's 2018 Civic, but, I guess what I'd worry about if I were to take the Tacoma on a long trip would be a failure of the starter, alternator, fuel pump, or water pump, since they're all original components. No indication that any of those critical components are on their way out, but, I've seen those things fail on vehicles with far fewer miles.
Starter or alternator would be pretty easy to source and replace. The other 2, I haven't looked into how hard they are to get to or anything.
What sucks is that my truck has been hit at least 4 times in parking lots. The latest incident happened just a couple of days ago. It's extremely discouraging when you do your level best to take great care of a vehicle, washing, waxing, detailing, doing all the maintenance it needs in order to go the distance and get your money's worth out of it, and then some lowlife damages it in a parking lot and doesn't have the class to leave a note or anything. Wish I had a dash cam in my truck. Might not have caught what happened, but, then again, it might have.
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I had an 04 CR-V when I was a drug rep that had 170,000 miles on it I’d do about 140-180 miles a day, tons of idling and a lot of short drives. Worked well and I pocketed my $700 car allowance. Ended up throwing a ton of emissions codes, failed to start after one of my appointments, and I knew I needed to swap out brake calipers. At the time I was making a crap ton of money and was busy so I basically gave the car away and went out and bought a 1 year old Ford Fusion cash to use as a rep car and finished the rest of my meetings for the day. I wish I kept the thing but I was too behind the 8 ball to get the car driving nicely withou spending a boat load of time and money doing a restoration project on a pretty common crossover. Even if I did all the work at the best level I’d be spending a lot of my time driving a car with a 13 year old cabin with a 6 disc CD changer that was rusty underneath. The 25 grand I spent was a drop in the bucket and the interior was a spaceship in terms of modernity/amenity.
good mentality to have is to only take responsibility for the clear coat. Dings, dents and scratches you can’t control and as long as the paintwork is in good shape you won’t really notice them, now swirl marks I can see those from 500 miles away.
The biggest factor to safety is the driver. An idiot in a new S-class is still able to kill himself (and others). He might survive stuff that would kill him in a 20 year old compact, but if he tries hard enough, he can die even in th enewest S-class.
A good driver in a classic car has a good chance that he might die in a crash, and he most certainly will hurt badly even in what would be harmless fender-bender in a modern car . A good driver knows this. So he tries everything he can not to be involved in a crash. Sometimes you have no chance, but most of the time you do - and you can even fix most of the mistakes other people make. But that requires some experience and not letting yourself become distracted. Luckily, not getting distracted from driving is much easier in a classic car than in a new car.*
There is a reason why (at least in Germany) insurance premiums for classic cars are WAY cheaper than for newer cars, even if the contract covers much more and the insurance sums are higher. In general, people who drive classic cars do not have accidents...
*Try adjusting the dashboard light brighness in a modern Golf, for example, to avoid your night vison being screwed up. In an old car, there is a dial in the dash that you turn clockwise to makes things brighter and counter-clockwise to make it less bright. Can be done without even looking, just by feel alone.
In the new golf, you have to take your eyes off the road and navigate through three menues on the touch screen display.
Recently there even was a court ruling in Germany that a driver who crashed his Tesla was supposed to pay for his damages alone, with no recurse to his insurance. He had tried to adjust dashboard brighnes. After being shown the procedure,it was clear to the judge that this cannot be done safely while driving, and thus was an act of gross negligence.
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An 86 Chevy Caprice saved my life. I fell asleep driving at night about 16 years ago and went into the woods at over 60mph, flipped it onto its side and landed against a tree. Minor cut on my forehead from the rear view mirror and that's it. Walked away from that one and bought a $300 87 Caprice to replace it.
I would love to find an old caprice. They are basically non existant here in Ontario. I do see the occasional clean on that someone clearly bought from an estate sale or something.
I just traded my 83 to a friend in exchange for the body work on my way truck. I paid $1500 over 10 years ago and put about 70k miles on it, the body job was worth about the same $1500. I'm in Ontario too. I see a few still driving around town. One is an 89 that the lady bought new in 1989. She is still driving it.
My old Buick doesn't have alot of miles but she is 26 years old. I drive it a few days a week to work which is a 50ish mile round trip. Heat and a/c work and gets great gas mileage. Also saves the wear and tear on my Ram.
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Just drive the RAM, that's what it's there for.
Sweet. I started looking on Kijiji after my comment last night. Saw a 75 for 6500.... Tempting lol. I'm up in Ottawa and since it's a government town everyone seems to drive new-ish stuff.
A 77-90 may be better for a daily driver as parts availability is better. Plus its a 30-43 year old car instead of 45+, lots of stuff degrades over time. Mine needed all new weatherstripping and lots of other minor stuff after 37 years.