Quote:
Originally Posted by NachtRitter
Take my situation for instance... there are two routes I can take when commuting to work. One is ~75% freeway, the other is 100% surface. I get worse FE on the freeway, but gut feel says it's less stress on the car being able to cruise on the freeway in a single gear than taking the surface route with the more frequent full stops and the associated gear shifts...
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Steady state driving will of course put less stress on fewer components than city driving, which is the worst place for a vehicle to spend it's time. How many times in an ad have I seen a vehicle with hig mileage advertised as having mainly highway miles, and after seeing the vehicle realizing the thing still looks new? Yet a vehicle used for pizza delivery or taxi service seems to suffer more despite having fewer miles?
There should be a hour meter installed as standard on a vehicle, because the hours spent with the engine running compared to the miles driven will tell a much more detailed story than miles alone.
Our Maxima has 210K+ miles on it, but for most of its existance it was driven a 20 mile route between towns. 17 miles of this route is a 55 mph 2 lane road that, while curvy, is basically a constant speed type of road. It was also driven by a lady who valued her car. This car feels new, despite having no suspension work done in years.
I drove another Maxima of the same year that I think had been driven hard and fast by a youngster. (You can generally tell if you look close enough.) It felt wayward and unruly, despite having nearly half the miles.
In my years of driving I've owned close to 20 vehicles, and I can say with certainty that the driving done with a vehicle does a number on the various components thereof according to the type of driving. 200k miles on highways is nothing on a good quality vehicle compared to 100k miles in a congested city.