Subaru Reliability

Hi, Are you riding on brake? My '98 Honda CRV has over 100K miles and it still has all original brake parts. What's going on? My two kids' 2000 Impreza has original brake, clutch as well. ????????????????????????????????????? Tony

I'd say the 15000 oil change is too long. Others may disagree

No disagreement here. 7500 seems about right. Consumer Reports did a test several years ago and used taxi maintenance logs together with tear down reports. The consensus was less than 7500 was just a waste of oil.

I personally think 15000 miles is way too long. I change the oil on my moms car every 3000 miles, she drives about 27000 miles a year, and her 1993 subaru impreza has 298,000 miles on it and shes still driving it. absolutely NO engine problems at all. changed clutch, timing belts of course and a water pump. other than that no other costly repairs.

paul J

You could have saved yourself most of that if you had changed the brakes when they wore thin rather than let them eat the rotors.

Charles Perry P.E.

On Sat, 12 Jun 2004 02:30:09 GMT, tomcas wrote in news:RUtyc.12604$ snipped-for-privacy@news4.srv.hcvlny.cv.net:

Most wear is on cold startup. Using a taxi for a benchmark is a mistake unless you drive your car up to 24 hours a day and it never gets cold.

Some may argue, but I would think any test using taxis is going to reflect something other than what the average driver experiences. Few of us fire up our engine and run it 12-24 hours at a stretch. In the late '60s/early '70s I was a student doing oil changes in a gas station, and our used oil was picked up by a reclaiming company. I asked what they did with reclaimed oil, and the driver told me they sold a lot of it to taxi fleets, who often got 500k miles out of their engines. Using the same oil in your "regular" car would a) void the warranty, because it didn't meet any of the higher API "S" series requirements (I think it was rated "SA"), and b) probably cause a lot of problems with cold start wear, foaming, etc., since it didn't have a complete additive package. So driving style has a LOT to do with change frequency.

Rick

Actually, that's what most of us are probably using, who use dino oil.

Go down to any of your local quickie oil change joints and ask what happens to the "changed" oil, and who buys it (that's a clue). That "changed" oil isn't done going thru "changes".

Steve

We drive on a lot of it! Used oil, aggregate, shredded used tires: mix well, cook it up a bit, call it blacktop, asphalt, tarmac, whatever. Works pretty well!

Rick

In the reserves I ran into a guy that used to manage/own several quickie lube places...according to him, that oil is unchanged by engine service, and gets processed/filtered and re bottled......truth or fiction, I don't know, but he had no reason to BS me about it...

Steve

Walmart used to have a house brand of oil that was recycled motor oil and they were proud of it. Had a nice green label on it to show you are saving the planet. I wouldn't use it in anyhting other than a lawn mower however :) Most used oil around here gets burned, we use the oil at the shop in our waste oil furnace through the winter.

I don't know about all the practices of the quickie places, though I was under the impression each chain is pretty much a marketing arm of a particular oil company. For example, one of ours locally promotes Castrol, another Pennzoil (and Quaker State, same co.) So I'd think they have a proprietary interest in selling new product, but one never knows.

Thirty plus years ago, the process you describe is precisely what our reclaimer told me: he sent the old oil to a "refinery," where it was filtered and re-canned (before bottles!) The most common brand in our area was described as "re-refined" on the can.

Rick

CRS who he was under, Exxon or Mobil...was up in Chicago. I was pretty amazed when he told me that, but he claimed the oil itself was "unchanged" and by filtering (and presumably restoring additives and whatever) it was as good as "new". He also felt that the synthetic stuff was way, way better, that Slick 50 was bogus, and that the profit margin on Rain-X was obscene (in his shop, lol).

Steve

Yeah, burning as fuel, that I had heard of...spoke with staff at a landfill ("waste management district", oops) out in Cali years ago, they took used oil and sold it to a cement mill, where it was burned under controlled conditions...so this other guy telling me it was cleaned up and repackaged and resold, surprised me!

Steve

What he told you has been pretty much conventional wisdom for decades about oil "wearing out" or being "changed," since at least the end of WWII (don't remember the study that used to be a favorite quote, but IIRC it was the military that commissioned it around WWII.) The base stock does not wear out, only the additives, so cleaning it and reformulating with new additives does make sense on paper. Economically, I'm not sure, which is probably why so much old oil ends up elsewhere.

The synthetic argument I won't touch. Slick 50's been pretty much determined to be bogus by enough agencies to make one wonder why it's still around (yeah, I know, there's one born every minute!), and if you can't afford Rain-X, in a pinch supposedly you can "make" your own--slice the end off a potato and rub the fresh part across the glass. I haven't tried that one, but it sounds like a fun way to waste a potato if not make a huge mess!

Rick

Not to be misconstrued on the Rain-X (actually he said the entire quickie lube op was *extremely* profitable) issue, I love the stuff. Haven't heard of the potatoe alternative, but the bottle does say it's acidified isopropanol, and I have heard you can do the job with regular rubbing alcohol. I'm still using the same bottle for the past eight years I'd guess, but I'll try the rubbing alcohol when it runs out...maybe the potatoe after that, heheheh.

Steve

I personally don't care if Rain-X contains donkey piss. I'll still buy it and use it. It's an incredibly good product and it certainly lives up to it's claims.

Canadian Tire used to sell Nugold. Dunno if they still do.

Ron