60,000 on a 3 year old car?

It was somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold. I remember Duncan Wood saying something like:

My first car - Victor FC101, 3 speed column change. By'eck that was a piece of shit.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com, Simon Atkinson decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as

I remember having a go in a monstrously tuned (700+ HP) '67 Camaro RS which had a two speed auto transmission..

Gear lever was marked

P R N W F

done really well too, looked original, and the lad who owned it used to just love it when people asked "what do W and F mean?"...

"Warp and Fast"

Was very very bloody quick an all.. especially on crossplies with drum brakes (non assisted) all round...

W will be a 2nd gear lock-up, for "winter"

F will be First - for do-nuts....

That's just so wrong ;-) How many companies would buy a petrol saloon for doing start-stop delivery work?

Not American are you? ;-)

Since carbs disappeared the incidence of cars belching blue smoke or sounding knackered have dropped considerably IMO - FI has stopped excessive over-fuelling bore wear and oil dilution nonsense.

In news: snipped-for-privacy@karoo.co.uk, Tim S Kemp decided to enlighten our sheltered souls with a rant as follows

Aye, that'd make sense, it Carl hadn't actually changed the lettering from PRND1 himself...

Before I had 6 gears (and cruise control) I'd have agreed with you, but I value both now. There is a good reduction in revs in sixth, and it usually romps up the hilly bits on dual carriageways without changing down.

But surely if 5th was set at the same ratio as 6th is now, and the gears were spread accordingly, then performance would barely suffer, and you'd have less gearchanges to do?

IMHO, 6 gears is either merely a gimmick to sell a car, or is needed as they've cocked up the powerband of the engine.

I used to change the oil is my AX 1.5D every 3000 miles with Millers XFE semi synth. Now I stick to the intervals and use fully synth Millers XFD. Not had a problem caused by sticking to the recommended service intervals on any of my subsequent cars, but I usually only do one cold start per day.

At 20000 per annum you have to be doing at least 55 miles per day (if you use the car every single day) so it may have had lots of cold starts, but I doubt it! Your urban idling situation is different, and although your oil must have got up to temperature by the time you get into London, I'd be tempted to change it at half the recommended intervals - and the air filter every few weeks I suspect!

Maybe, but a family could have used it and done lots of short trips, plus the occasional longer trip. 20k a year really isn't much, that was kinda the point.

Peter

No. Just experienced. Long service intervals (>6K) miles have been introduced to reduce the running costs for fleets. The aim is to have a

3year life cycle AIUI! Any mechanic knows that all oils carbonise to some extent and modern engines are very little better at sealing pistons in bores than a good product of 40 years ago. As modern engines in fact run at higher bearing loadings than previously, there is absolutely no sense in extending service intervals if you wish the product to last. The Americans do tend to change their oil more frequently, every 3K for the big engines. This is extremely cheap for them, in the region of £8 for a fast fit oil and filter change and these engines tend to last longer than in the UK IMO. 250K miles is not that unusual I believe. IIUC even synthetic oils contain still, say 30% of bog standard engine oil and reports of small engined cars losing engines at

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It's not that unusual with modern engines here, either. Particularly with diesels.

Could be. However, a colleague has a five speed TDCi Mondeo and he can't get anywhere near 50 mpg in normal use. The 6 speed box really helps with cruising and I think it was needed to get Euro 4 compliance with that engine. I believe VW have added an extra gear to some TDi's to get Euro 4?

I generally go 4 to 6 and back again, but 5 is useful for leisurely overtaking and some longer hill climbs.

But it was a company car! 20k is a lot for your average private motorist

- I do that, but I do 80 miles a day commuting - Joe Public would have to do an absolute binfull of short journeys to get anywhere near 20k and people, IME, don't!

Anyway, this is all fairly moot. My mum's E-reg Mk IV Escort has racked up 108k miles in mostly short trips and still runs as well as the 1.4 CVH ever did, so a 3YO car with 60k I just can't see giving trouble!

Ah, my bad. Forgot it was a company car.

"As well as the 1.4CVH ever did" - lots of lovely blue smoke then :-)

Seriously though, I always did think the CVH was a reasonable engine, but everyone always mentions oil seals going and stuff like that. I asked if a well looked after one would maybe not exhibit these problems and someone (think it was Pete M) mentioned that he once had one that had had a FFSH and the usual stuff still started to go at around 80k. But I'm guessing that would have probably only been serviced around every 10k or so. I wonder if one had had oil changes every 4-5k of its life if it would last a lot better, like this one:

But HOW MUCH for a Mk3 Fester????

Peter

Heh!

The oil changes for my mum's were mostly annual, prolly 8-10k, until a few years ago when she wasn't doing more than 3k or so. It leaks a little oil, but nothing serious and the only major fault I can recall was the head gasket going at about 40k. It's a bit tappity (surprise!), and has been for a while, but it runs very well.

I still view M-reg as relatively new so that doesn't seem horrendous to me!

Head gasket at 40k?? Tappetty? Shouldn't be - those CVH's are quality engines with hydraulic tappets :-)

In that case maybe I should advertise my M reg Fiesta van, with a recent cambelt, about 7 months' MOT and 10 months' tax for £995 then :-)

Peter

"

seems like a reasonable engine to me, my 1.4cvh ford escort D.reg is still running fine, In fact after a little clean of the dizzy cap it started almost instantly a few days ago after 3months sitting out side my house. (but by god did the tappets make some noise). The anoying thing is i bought a pug 405 1.9td recently to be more economical and the escort is atleast 5-8mpg better!! (really need to work out why the pug is guzzling the jucie and fast) Shame its a ford and the body wasnt really looked after (got a bit of rust on the archs) BUt for

17yrs old and about 70k ish on the clock theres no smoke it still shifts,(damm speed cameras) but she can be yours for £200 ono ( well the fiesta went for well more!!!!! lol)

later si