Originally Posted by
WhiteRabbit
A couple I'm good friends with has one vehicle pretty much in the the shop all the time. At first I couldn't figure out how they were so rough on them, but after a while I figured it out.
1) They tend to put off routine maintenance as much as possible
2) They ignore small problems until they become big problems
3) They buy the cheapest used cars they can find, rather than the highest quality they can afford.
Yeah, I don't do that. There are several things on my car that are not exactly right, but nothing that's going to really cause anything else to break. Example:
If an O2 sensor goes, I replace it right away, because it'll wreck the converter.
My Taurus has been throwing "bank A lean, bank B lean" diag codes for 4 years. It's got a little vacuum leak. I know what it is, it's not hurting anything, and I just recheck the codes once in a while and make sure it hasn't started throwing any other codes that are actually serious.
I have to admit, I've had nothing but new cars since I've been driving. I've never owned a foreign car so I can't really comment on that, but since I've never had any trouble with a domestic car, I'm not sure a foreign car can get better than "zero problems"