Spending a few dollars on regular maintainance will save you a bunch of money in the long run.
You should always perform regular maintainance on your car. Remember that if you take care of your car, then it will take care of you. Regular maintainence means an oil change every 3,000 miles, transmission service, spark plugs, a new PCV valve, and a new air filter every 15,000 miles, and last but not least, cooling system maintainence every 24,000 miles. I know that this sounds like a lot of time, money and effort, but would you rather spend an hour or two at most (when you do everything together) and less than a hundred dollars or would you like to be stranded some day and have to pay a tow bill and a repair bill for a new engine or transmission?
The engine in my car
My car.
My other car. It's a Mazda 929.
Too many cars, not enough time.
I have too many cars to post here (currently 11 of them since I get
them at auctions and sell them), so I only posted the ones I usually
drive. The picture of the engine in my Sunbird was from last
year before it and the turbocharger were modified. I found out the hard
way what happens when you roast a turbo. It was not pretty. Since I had
to rebuild the engine I decided to do some upgrading on it, and since
the turbo was trashed I figured I might as well do it too. I found a
guy who does nothing but turbochargers, and since he is almost retired
he says he dosen't need much money and only charges 10% over parts for
his labor. He also knows neat things to do with turbochargers,
wastegates, and boost controllers. Really neat things. Now I run 13.5
psi of boost. The down side is I can only use premium gas. The sacrifices
I make for fun.
My Mazda 929 is the car I use when I have to haul people around. I got
a really great deal on it ($500), so I had to buy it. It has all of the
power goodies, a leather interior, sunroof, and it looks good too,
though in the picture it's a bit dirty since I don't think it will ever
stop raining here. Some day I will post pictures of it after it's been
washed.
Fun in the Sunbird
Here is a picture of my gauges with my Sunbird maxed out.