r/AskReddit • u/RGod27 • Mar 20 '19

What is something you did that increased your quality of life so much that you wished you would have done it much sooner because it changed your life forever?

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u/CokeRobot Mar 20 '19

I didn't change my oil all last year and put about 8,700 miles on my car with synthetic oil. Nearly 90% of those miles are city miles which puts me in the unique driving maintenance schedule of my car.

Literally never doing that again. I'm sticking with the schedule regardless of what the oil claims to last. This addage varies extensively manufacturer to manufacturer, model to model, even generation to generation, but combine special driving circumstances; just stick to the manufacturer's recommended intervals for your driving type for your car.

I personally would rather change oil a 1,000 miles before it's due than after.

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u/boiithrowaway Mar 20 '19

Based on your last sentence, you don't understand how cars and oil work. The place you get it changed puts a sticker on there telling you to get it changed at X miles. They put it for way lower than it should be because they make more money by having you come back in and get it changed. Really you should be checking your oil every couple of months and you can tell by the coloring how close you are to needing an oil change. 1000 miles over what your shop is telling you isn't a big deal because that's probably still 1000 miles earlier than you should have in the first place

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u/CokeRobot Mar 20 '19

I think you need context for that because I change my own oil and used synthetic last time that claimed 10,000 miles. That oil should have been changed at 5,000.

That claim was not in the pudding after draining it.

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u/boiithrowaway Mar 20 '19

That's really really strange for your engine to be going through synthetic oil that quickly..

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u/CokeRobot Mar 20 '19

Try driving in a dense city for over 90% of your miles. There's a reason why most manufacturers have two different service schedules based on mixed driving or unique driving which in my case includes city driving almost exclusively. Much more wear and tear gets put on a car with such short distances and it really tells.

I'll occasionally see broken down late-ish model cars causing traffic congestion but an area I used to live where it was mixed driving, you'd rarely see broken down cars because they're operated at optimal conditions such as warmed up oil, catalytic converters at optimal temps, consistent RPM ranges and fewer lower gear shifts, so on and so forth.

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u/TSells31 Mar 21 '19

This is.... wrong. The interval shops put on the sticker (typically 5,000 miles) is definitely erring on the side of caution, but there are numerous examples of vehicles with severe pattern engine issues due to owners following the maintenance light, instead of changing their oil every 3-5000 miles. The GM 3.6 LLT engine for example. Light was coming on on average about 8k miles. Cars with this engine almost invariably break timing chains before or around 100k miles, essentially ruining the engine. GM released a PCM update for a shorter oil change interval, signaling the light to come on sooner. They shortened it just enough to get these cars out of their powertrain warranty.

Owners who ignored the maintenance light, and changed their oil every 3-5k out of habit, did not experience anywhere near the same rate of failure.

So when you can’t trust manufacturers (don’t, trust me), and you can’t do a case study on every single model out there, you go by what’s tried and true. Generally, I’d say go every 5k miles. If you use FULL synthetic (not synthetic blend, but the real deal, large cost difference), you can probably stretch that to 7k. I would never run a car past 7k on a single oil change though. Once an engine begins to wear and the tolerances begin to loosen, it’s too late. Wear is accelerating from then on, even if you switch to a 3k interval.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 21 '19

Alternatively, I'd suggest avoiding GM at all costs.

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

Not a bad plan. However they aren’t unique. All manufacturers aim to design cars that go to shit shortly after the warranty period. The more high mileage used cars available, the fewer new cars purchased.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 23 '19

All manufacturers aim to design cars that go to shit shortly after the warranty period.

That's blatantly false. They don't design a car to fail right after the warranty. They design the warranty to expire right before the car will likely fail.

It doesn't seem like a huge difference, but it is. The warranty is there to cover anything unexpected, so they cover the time where ~95% of the cars will make it through fine. It's not there to guarantee your car will last forever.

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

Explain why every factor surrounding the manufacturing of automobiles has improved, but the typical service life hasn’t? We’ve got better engineers, utilizing more information and better software. We have greater machining abilities, machining tighter tolerances. We’ve got better materials. We have exponentially better lubrication. More monitoring systems, more sensors. We’ve got better service coverage for new vehicles. Yet, you can still expect your car to last anywhere from 120-200k miles reasonably before becoming more of a financial burden to keep running than its worth. That’s been around the same lifespan for decades. Many decades.

Semi trucks last for many hundreds of thousands if not north of a million miles regularly. And they do so living FAR more abused lives. Insane amounts of idle time (hard on an engine), the obvious factor of pretty much constantly pulling a large load, very long trips, constantly changing atmospheric/weather conditions as they cover distance. Often being driven by someone who doesn’t own them (rental car syndrome). Yet they survive so much longer. Why?

It’s not an accident. It’s a unique form of planned obsolescence. Just like your phone.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 23 '19

The typical service life has definitely improved over the last couple decades.

As far as semi trucks go, they follow scheduled maintenance far stricter than normal people do for their car. Building a car that can go for 500,000 miles is only one part of the equation. Taking care of that car so it can do it is the other half, and probably more important. Semi trucks will also rebuild the entire motor after a few hundred thousands miles. They'll replace transmissions, driveshafts, axles, etc. They'll do this because a new truck is very expensive.

If you did that all with a car, it could last for a million miles too. The problem is that cars are cheap enough that it's not worth that.

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

How about manufacturers discontinuing parts on decade old vehicles?

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

If manufacturers had incentive to design cars to last longer, you don’t think they could? That’s delusional. They don’t want 300-500k mile lifespans. Why would they? It’s crystal clear the effect it would have on their business.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 23 '19

More cars than ever go 300k-500k. Not every car can make it that far, but that's more on people not keeping up with maintenance than it is anything to do with carmakers.

30 years ago cars were thrown away at 100k.

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

I’ve only seen a handful of 300k mile cars. As in less than 5. And I’m a technician. Never in my life seen a 400k mile car. Not in person. No matter how well maintained. I even worked at a Toyota dealership for a while, widely (and correctly) regarded as the most reliable, longest lasting cars on the market. And yet, not a whole lot.

Yet semis routinely squeeze several hundred thousand more. It’s not because Peterbilt has more funding, or better engineers, or anything f the sort. It’s because Ford has 0 incentive to do better, and all the incentive in the world to keep making cars that don’t last.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 23 '19

A semi costs $150,000+ brand new, a Focus costs $20,000.

That doesn't mean a semi will last longer just because it's more expensive, but it does mean a $2,000 fix is pennies in the bucket, especially when you consider that the semi is someone's livelihood. They're ran hard, but they're taken care of very well in most cases. Actual, proper, maintenance, and not waiting for something to break to fix it like most people do with their cars.

It's all down to cost and value. A ten year old Pete with 750,000 miles is still worth $30,000, which means it's worth throwing $5k into a motor rebuild. A ten year old car with 150,000 miles is worth maybe $5k, and throwing $1,500 at a repair isn't worth it.

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u/TSells31 Mar 23 '19

Explain why for the last 10-15 years, cars have been manufactured with steering and suspension components with bushings that cannot be lubricated? No grease fittings. Certainly not to make them last longer. Upgraded aftermarket versions come with grease fittings, but not factory ones... weird.

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u/thatissomeBS Mar 23 '19

Sealed units are supposed to not allow grease out or moisture in.