Look What Followed Me Home Today

[Ron H]

I don't understand your crank up window comment, are you bragging. I got a 10 year, 100 thousand bumper to bumper for less than 1800 dollars and I let someone else worry about **** that breaks. At my age, I drive for comfort, not to save the earth or my bank account and I need my arms for other things besides cranking the window down............ I think his car is beautiful and good for him.

Have to say extended warranties I bought, with the irritating exception of one, worked out great more times than not. Included saving $4,800 on an Intrigue I bought with 30k miles needing major motor work just before 50k. Saved $2,900 on my ’98 Ram when the trans went and was just before the X warranty was to expire. One unusual warranty I had for our ’07 Sonata (my daughter is still driving it with 232k on it) would return $1900 of the $2,000 pay if we didn’t use it. The car gave us no problems; but on a trip out west a rock hit the evap costing $700 to repair. Wife said tap the warranty and I said nope. Got a check for $1900 when I transferred the car to my kid.

On the irritating note: bought an ’06 CRV for my other daughter who was moving to FL. Selected the platinum plan since she would be far away. Well, friggin Honda’s of the era had problems with crap rings eating a qt of oil per 1000 miles. Honda said a qt of oil per 1k was ‘normal’! Saw tons of complaints about this; but saw them too late. And the warranty deftly excluded THIS problem.

 

[funknut]

On the irritating note: bought an ’06 CRV for my other daughter who was moving to FL. Selected the platinum plan since she would be far away. Well, friggin Honda’s of the era had problems with crap rings eating a qt of oil per 1000 miles. Honda said a qt of oil per 1k was ‘normal’! Saw tons of complaints about this; but saw them too late. And the warranty deftly excluded THIS problem.

I had a late 90s VW with the 2.0 gas engine that did the same after about 40k miles. When I sold it with about 120k on it, I even warned the guy I sold it to and he just said 'yea, they do that'.

 

[Hey-O]

My Father always said that with technology, Man becomes mentally stronger and Physically weaker! Truer words have never been said!

No, no braggin at all. I was reiterating a point that you don't need to have 90% of the crap the auto makers throw at you. Why can't I go into a dealer and order what I want, check the boxes of what I want and the hell with the rest! Why do I have to take only what they have to offer or go without? Give the customer What they WANT, not what they think you need! My DD is over 25 years old, tell me why I should trade for something new/newer that has all that crap I'm talking about that breaks?
I hope you don't need your arms to be screwing around with a cell phone while driving, or to fiddle fart around and **** with all those buttons & knobs inside the car with all that neat **** that you don't need to really distract you from actually driving a car!

It's not the car companies, it our government saving us from ourselves. I don't want to get into it, I don't visit the political forum anymore for that reason and I refuse to drag this into the world of negativity in that arena. I had a friend that used to drive pt cruiser's for a work car, he drove 60 miles one way. Went to buy a new one and he said he wanted it with nothing on it but a/c. It showed up like he wanted it, but had power windows. He said I don't want them, they said we don't make crank windows anymore, power windows standard.

 

[Ron H]

I had a late 90s VW with the 2.0 gas engine that did the same after about 40k miles. When I sold it with about 120k on it, I even warned the guy I sold it to and he just said 'yea, they do that'.

Fun (not) chatting with Honda reps about this citing the multiple-dozens of complaints I found on the web. Good thing I’ve always been nitpicky about checking fluids on our vehicles. First time I checked my kid’s oil it was down over 2 qts. Another time NO reading on the stick…more than once. Low oil light? Never illuminated. I had to educate my kid to check the oil frequently, like weekly, depending on how much she drove it explaining what will happen if there’s no oil in her motor. Keep extra oil, funnel, towels in the back. She’s had to resupply her 'extra' oil many times. Friggin Honda reps telling me a quart per 1000 miles is NORMAL? Hmm…so if the oil should be changed every 4k at this rate there’d be ONE qt left in the engine by then! Normal you say? I can drive my old Plymouth all summer and doesn’t lose any oil. Same with wife’s car and my Dakota…oil changed every 4 to 5k and NO oil loss..

 

[Dave6T4]

@Dave6T4 Cool beans but what engine did the Durango have that you gots to pull the intake off to change spark plugs? The things I'm not crazy about are all the warning sounds and lane change stuff. Don't like when the vehicle pulls the steering wheel when you get close to the 'white lines' and all the warning sounds when another vehicle is close. Also noticed that people with back cameras now back up worse than they did before they got a vehicle with a back up camera! lol

At my last oil change at the garage I use (no longer a Chrysler dealer in town), the mechanic said my 3.6 V-6 was due for spark plugs. I said that I had looked that over, but did not seem like an easy driveway change. He replied that they pull the intake to do this on the V-6. This is one of the mechanics that worked at the Chrysler garage in town before it closed. He always worked on our previous Hemi Magnum R/T wagon and PT Cruiser, and I trust him. On the subject of oil consumption that other posters have mentioned of their various makes of cars, our Durango never went down more than 1/2 litre between 5,000 mile oil changes, with almost 100,000 miles on it. I really like the 3.6 Pentastar V-6, when combined with the 8-speed automatic. In my Durango, my average mileage hovered around 28 mpg, and got better with longer trips. This is coming from a guy that previously had a 5.7 Hemi Magnum.

 

[funknut]

Fun (not) chatting with Honda reps about this citing the multiple-dozens of complaints I found on the web. Good thing I’ve always been nitpicky about checking fluids on our vehicles. First time I checked my kid’s oil it was down over 2 qts. Another time NO reading on the stick…more than once. Low oil light? Never illuminated. I had to educate my kid to check the oil frequently, like weekly, depending on how much she drove it explaining what will happen if there’s no oil in her motor. Keep extra oil, funnel, towels in the back. She’s had to resupply her 'extra' oil many times. Friggin Honda reps telling me a quart per 1000 miles is NORMAL? Hmm…so if the oil should be changed every 4k at this rate there’d be ONE qt left in the engine by then! Normal you say? I can drive my old Plymouth all summer and doesn’t lose any oil. Same with wife’s car and my Dakota…oil changed every 4 to 5k and NO oil loss..

It's definitely frustrating that they push this kind of crap down to the consumer. Especially in today's environment where nearly nobody does any periodic checks, much less basic maintenance. Clearly an engineering problem (soft rings maybe?) but their solution is just to wait until these motors eat themselves and deny warranty claims.

 

[Hey-O]

I won't own it when it's time for spark plug change, 80,000 miles or so, by then I'll be ready for a change. Just like the oil, I have never checked it. I have the oil change, full synthetic oil every 2500 to 3000 miles, if it runs to low in 3000 miles and blows up, I don't want it anyway. I went from doing it all, to not even opening the hood. I will change my air filter this week, just over 12000 miles on the car. Make no mistake, my car looks new, and gets whatever it needs to stay new, they just need less work on them compared to 20 or 30 years ago.

 

[Cranky]

At my last oil change at the garage I use (no longer a Chrysler dealer in town), the mechanic said my 3.6 V-6 was due for spark plugs. I said that I had looked that over, but did not seem like an easy driveway change. He replied that they pull the intake to do this on the V-6. This is one of the mechanics that worked at the Chrysler garage in town before it closed. He always worked on our previous Hemi Magnum R/T wagon and PT Cruiser, and I trust him. On the subject of oil consumption that other posters have mentioned of their various makes of cars, our Durango never went down more than 1/2 litre between 5,000 mile oil changes, with almost 100,000 miles on it. I really like the 3.6 Pentastar V-6, when combined with the 8-speed automatic. In my Durango, my average mileage hovered around 28 mpg, and got better with longer trips. This is coming from a guy that previously had a 5.7 Hemi Magnum.

Your Durango sure blows my old 2000 Durango away in fuel mileage! I always got 20-30% better mileage than my wife got.....which was 10 with the 5.2 and 3.92 gears. Heard it was running good up until about 2 years ago when she ran it out of coolant.

 

[Ron H]

The only car I service now is my ’63 (and do my large mower). I have a shop where I’ve known the owner for eons and take my truck and wife’s car there for service. I’ve found changing the oil cost-wise isn’t all that different than having it done. Used to accumulate gallons of old oil/anti-freeze to stow until taking it to the recycle center. Up until about 15 years or so ago, did most of the service/repairs buying a scanner to diagnose trouble codes etc. until the scanner became obsolete. Got plenty of other chores to do; damn list gets longer the more I do.

 

[MarPar]

Congrats Dave! She's a beaut eh! Im sure you'll get many a trouble-free KM with her!

Nevermind the debbie downers. They get their rocks off shitting on somebody else's parade.

 

[Dave6T4]

Your Durango sure blows my old 2000 Durango away in fuel mileage! I always got 20-30% better mileage than my wife got.....which was 10 with the 5.2 and 3.92 gears. Heard it was running good up until about 2 years ago when she ran it out of coolant.

Our Canadian Imperial gallon is 20% larger than a U.S. gallon, so that is why my mileage looks so much better. To convert to U.S. mileage, multiply by .8, so that would make my equivalent economy at about 23.5 mpg.

 

[funknut]

Our Canadian Imperial gallon is 20% larger than a U.S. gallon, so that is why my mileage looks so much better. To convert to U.S. mileage, multiply by .8, so that would make my equivalent economy at about 23.5 mpg.

Wow, I was 100% sure you were joking until I googled imperial gallons. Learn something new every day!

 

[Dave6T4]

To make everything more interesting, we are on the metric system up here in Canada, thanks to our current P.M.'s dad, Pierre Trudeau who was also P.M. at one time. Our fuel is sold in litres and our distance is measured in kilometers. Our mileage is measured by fuel used over a certain distance. So, 4.5 litres = 1 Canadian gallon. 100 kilometres = 62.5 miles. Fuel economy is litres per 100 kilometers. Are you lost yet?
So, when I see the computer mileage readout is 9 litres (2 gallons) per 100 kilometres (62.5 miles), I know that 1 gallon is giving me 31.25 miles. Simple, eh? On one long trip in the Durango, I saw it as low as 7.2 L/100K.