Car of The Day

Out of context: Reply #1228

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  • Muncher-2

    PR2 you are clearly inexperienced and got ripped off, because there is an ocean of disparity between the classic car descriptor "Pristine" which you have used, and the long list of faults you have listed as being present over the last 9 months. You've been seduced by some car polish and bought a shiny dud. You also list some frankly hilarious items of maintenance, but let's not get distracted.

    Pristine is not a polished car that hasn't been inspected. Pristine is a well maintained car. Clearly you have paid a high price for a badly maintained car. Don't condemn all old cars because of your own ignorance about what constitutes pristine or not.

    As for me I've owned my current 1973 car for around two years and it has had one failed component in that time, the brake servo.

    I paid a small price for the car, and it came to me with lots of apparent running faults. On paper its apparent faults would have added up to a seriously faulty vehicle to anyone that didn't have very much knowledge.

    It took me half a day to get the car running sweet, and it has run sweet ever since. I do do maintenance checks on the car and will decide whether or not I want to take action to prevent further problems as and when I feel I should, but my car is as good and reliable as my wife's 2017 car, with the added assurance that it was built strong enough to still be on the road 44 years later without issue, and designed and built in such a way that there is almost no issue at all that cannot be dealt with using simple tools and a few hours.

    This week I decided to drain and change the diff oil for example. This is not something that is relevant only to old cars. All cars need their mechanical fluids changed regularly. But it's hard to do on modern cars, and nobody even knows that it needs doing anymore, so new cars don't get all of their fluids changed annually as they should, and as a result new cars can incur serious knock-on effect problems. To change my diff oil I had to raise the car, remove the Watts Linkage and lower my rear axle onto jack stands due to the position of the filler nut. It took three spanners, a jack and two sets of jack stands, and about an hour to complete. I did it outside my house in the street. It cost me nothing but the price of 1litre of differential oil. In a modern car that could have cost me about £200 in garage time at a guess, and would have come with other charges for additional things that were discovered whilst doing this.

    When my wife's car needs its fluids changing, she will have to take it back to the dealership and pay for it to be done by their certified technicians because it's nigh on impossible for the owner to do it now for various reasons. She will have to pay $X00s to get it done, but it has to be done. It's no different.

    Modern car owners suffer from 'out of sight and out of mind' and assume their cars don't need any maintenance. They do need maintenance, but all the owners know about is the service bill that they have to pay, which lists additional things they didn't ask for and so they are certain it is an attempt to rip them off. It's ridiculous really to own a car, never do a damn thing to check or maintain it, and then grumble in suspicion that the garage that is looking after your car for you is ripping you off. They are merely trying to keep you safe by doing what needs to be doing, but if you don't understand cars, you can't understand that.

    When people first buy classic cars they try to transfer their 'modern blissful ignorance' approach to old cars, and then find they have problems. You'd have the exact same issues if you bought a new car and failed to have it maintained though, in just a few short years.

    • proud of yourself aren't you?
      christ, what drivel.
      imbecile

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