"Guy" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...
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My '86 Civic has been here all but a few months of its life and is doing fine (until some bozo backed over the left front fender). Its taken me nearly 5 yearsto get everything back in order. It was driveable but need a bunch of cosmetic surgery and spare parts are hard to find. My '82 F250 has spent all of its life here and did fine up to 150k miles when the 300I6 began to tire a bit. Did some minor work (carb rebuild, new timing gear) and it is back in the pink. My other two trucks, '94 F250 and '04 F350, are both diesels and have given me no problems to speak of. Well, I did have a problem with the injector pump on the '94. Its a 7.3L IDI and a large number of the remanufactured injector pumps were not up to specs and failed. Ford replaced the whole lot of them under warranty - cost me nothing, except time. Maintenance on any, except the diesels, is standard. Clean oil (5W-20), filter every 3k. Fuel filter yearly. Manual tranny runs 70wt gear lube, all the time. Keep battery connections clean, make sure the charging system is good. Check the cv boots each spring just before break-up (when all the snow melts). Brake rotors are problematic - warped rotors are fairly common during the melt. Very cold water in the puddles hit those hot rotors and ........ Suspension suffers from the bad road conditions - must watch that. Batteries, contrary to popular belief, are more affected by heat than cold but the cold does slow down the chemical reaction in the battery and the draw on a batter is increased by the stiffness and resistance of mechanical operations (turning the engine over for example), running the heater most of the time, and lights most of the time. Cold and dark are a pair...Geez - didn't mean to make a book out of this... DaveD