Million mile car brainstorming (will explain how it's MPG related)

[tjbell]

Originally Posted by ChazInMT

My Civic owners manual says change the oil & filter every 10,000 miles. I use Mob 1 5w-20 on it and buy Purolator Gold filters. Fram filters are crap. It is due for brake fluid change out, something most folks neglect.

Purolator gold filters are excellent, i use wix, bosch, or purolator gold. saab called for 15,000 mile oil changes on SEMI-SYN oil from 1999 and on. crazy. thats why sooooo many cars sludge up

[Frank Lee]

There are good oil change interval debates posted here already.

Re: brake fluid change: might help, might not. Here in the Rust Belt the hard brake lines rust through from the outside. Then I am forced to go through everything and flush.

[tjbell]

Originally Posted by Frank Lee

There are good oil change interval debates posted here already.

Re: brake fluid change: might help, might not. Here in the Rust Belt the hard brake lines rust through from the outside. Then I am forced to go through everything and flush.

yes there are, sorry.
as far as metal brake lines I feel your pain.


OP: I think cryo treating normal wear parts is a lot of time, and money for not much reward, maybe cryo treat the gears in a 1,000HP corvette manual transmission, but brake rotors are cheap, pads cheap.
but i do think 1,000,000 is realistic. I currently service a 2000 F350 diesel with 650k... i think he will make it

[Frank Lee]

Re: cryogenically treated bits: It's MN. It's -40 half the time. The whole car gets cryogenically treated automatically.

My '94 F150 still has the factory brakes, except for some of the hard brake lines. Use them sparingly and they last forever.

[basjoos]

Two things you can do to extend a car's life is to reduce the load on the engine and reduce the engine's revs per mile. Since most of the load on the engine at highway speed is from wind drag, you can reduce this load by aeromodding to reduce the car's Cd. Taller gearing will reduce the revs per mile. Since brake linings are a consumable (you use a little bit of the lining each time you hit the brakes), by using the hypermiling technique of "driving without brakes" to reduce the use of the brakes, you can get more miles between brake jobs (I typically get 140,000 miles on the front disc brakes and 300,000 miles on the rear drums, almost 600,000 on the car).

[freebeard]

I think the original Post was a good one; it covers what I would suggest, cryogenics and spray-on coatings. I had my brake rotors and drums cryogenically tempered. Parts are cheap? For double the cost (less saved labor) I should get 2-5 times the service. I don't have any experience with aerospace coatings, but anything that manages heat and friction should probably be considered. Also lots of parts are available in different grades; e.g. stranded vs single wire throttle cables. Low rolling resistance tires and aerodynamic improvements will make each of those million miles more easily obtained.

Some years ago Mechanix Illustrated, or someone, ran an article on 'How to make your car last forever'. I don't have a citation, but the gist was manufacturers economize on certain things like hoses, and uprating them will help.

Since the record is more like 3 million miles, you goal is conservative. According to Wikipedia, rust (which never sleeps) is the biggest hurdle. See Car longevity - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

[Frank Lee]

Originally Posted by basjoos

Two things you can do to extend a car's life is to reduce the load on the engine and reduce the engine's revs per mile. Since most of the load on the engine at highway speed is from wind drag, you can reduce this load by aeromodding to reduce the car's Cd. Taller gearing will reduce the revs per mile.

Load on the engine at cruise is but a fraction of load during accel.

Fram filters are just fine.

[jamesqf]

Easy way to do this is to just buy a Honda or Toyota, and live in a place where they don't put salt on the roads. My '88 pickup probably has close to 250K (don't know for sure, 'cause the speedometer gear went out a while back, and I haven't bothered to fix it - the only mechanical problem I've had with it). '00 Insight is creeping up on 170K, and likewise no significant problems. Don't know if they'll reach a million miles: at roughly 7500 miles/yr for the Honda and 3000 for the Toyota, we'll probably run out of oil long before either reaches that mark, even if I'm still around to see it.

[War_Wagon]

Originally Posted by tjbell

synthetic oil every 3,000 miles, only premium gas, fix it when it breaks, dont put off untill its to late. drive gingerly

Keep the oil, just change the filter at 3000 miles.

As for OP? The highest mile vehicles I have ever seen were a 1995 Cadillac with a 5.7 LT1 (780k KMS - 484k miles) and a 1992 GM Astro van with 575k kms (357k miles). Neither of those are what you would think would be at the top of the heap for longevity, so it just goes to show that maintenance and lack of abuse will get you a good return. Though if I had to pick something that would have to last me the rest of my life, hoping it wouldn't break? I'd say mid-'80s diesel Mercedes with a manual trans. If you kill one of those, you had to be trying hard to do it.

[Frank Lee]

Shouldn't be anything in the filter worth disposing of in 3k either. In fact it says in the Owner's Manual for one of my cars to change the filter every other oil change.

See?



The "every other" recommendation is even true with the "severe service" regimen.