[net.auto] Badmouthing ...

res@ihuxn.UUCP (Rich Strebendt) (04/05/84)

> From: warren@ihnss.UUCP (Warren Montgomery)

> I think that a lot of the problem may not be in the cars but in the
> way that they are driven and maintained.  
> ... I think that much of the trouble people
> have with cars comes from poor driving habits (or just a poor mix of
> types of driving), lack of awareness of minor problems in their cars
> before they become major, and poor quality of mechanical work.  
> ... cars lasting forever ... were
> usually owned and maintained by people who understood cars and got
> minor problems fixed correctly before they became major ones.

I agree.  I do not do my own maintenance because I do not have the time
or the inclination to do much more than watch the odometer for the next
critical number.  I DO fairly religiously take the car to a mechanic I
trust for routine maintenance and for detection of incipient failures
(such as hoses that are getting soft or belts that are close to their
last revolutions).  As a result, each of my cars has given dependable
service until I decided to trade it in.  I try to trade it in at around
75000 miles because I expect to have to put major money into it at
sometime shortly after that (valves, rings, ...) and it is not worth
the hastle to me to do so.

					Rich Strebendt
					...!ihnp4!ihuxn!res