We had to reserect the poor old Ford Aspire from it's well earned retirement today. Slapped another battery in it and fired it right up. And that's after it had been sitting for nearly 2 years. Dang old thing has nearly 300,000 miles on it. The transmission in our newer one went out. No transmissions to be found anywhere in the vacinity, so I jumped on craigslist and found a whole car, and probably cheaper than we could of gotten a transmission for anyway. So, basicly we solved 2 problems with one car. A transmission for the new car, and an engine for the old one. My better half is going after the new one tommorow. At least he got a friend to take him and isn't going to have to drive the poor old car. The clutch is really slipping in it.
Keeping my fingers crossed that the trip goes ok!

Have you heard about the 1928 Roll Royce Picadilly roadster at the Springfield Museum? It was a car Allen Swift got from his father as a graduation present and he drove it for as long as he lived and clocked about a hundred and seventy thousand miles. Yes, that's right, it's 170,000 (four zeroes in there). I'm pretty sure a Rolls Royce is a machine built to perfection. However, it isn't something that you would drive over to run an errand to buy groceries - it has neither the fuel economy nor an affordable price tag, and I am pretty sure the service center charges them a pretty hefty amount too.

My experience with a Toyota Avalon 2000 is that it was an amazing car. It ran for a whole decade and continues to run like a finely tuned swiss watch. It never had any breakdowns and the only two times it didn't start were due to a dead battery - a quick jump start and the car was back on its way. Perhaps a more frequent battery change would have prevented that too. It has never been left without being turned on at least once in five days, so it has not been sitting by like your Ford Aspire has been. I'm guess you must have had at least car jacks or cement blocks to keep the tires from going flat. For long term storage, unplugging the battery, having the car up on jacks, getting it a fresh change of oil, and a full tank of fuel should have the car last for at least a couple of years.

I have an old Suzuki Esteem that I got as a present from my dad when I got into college and it has been running for seven years. The only breakdown I had was when I got the car back after lending it out for a couple of months and drove it for the first time after starting it up without an oil and filter change in a really long time. I hope to hold on to it for at least another year but it is being ill-maintained right now as I haven't been able to get to it... it's cheaper to get another vehicle than to have one vehicle transported across national boundaries, from registration to import duties and just the whole hassle of dealing with the officials.

A recent purchase in the family is a Lexus ES350 2011. I imagine it has the same build quality as the Toyota Avalon 2000, but it is built on a smaller wheelbase than the Toyota Avalon. Perhaps it is a cost cutting measure but once you get used to it, it fits like a glove. This may surprise you, but the Lexus ES350 2011 has a lot in common with the Toyota Camry 2011. The Lexus ES350 shares the same platform as the Toyota Camry but has had the body built to insulate the cabin from the rattles of the engine. Take a test drive in the Lexus ES350 and the Toyota Camry to feel the difference. The Toyota Camry feels a little less refined although it has the same engine while the Lexus ES350 comes with parking sensors, a rear parking camera, a panoramic roof, electric seats, seat ventilation, a global positioning navigation system, and a whole load of other accessories that you would not find on the Toyota Camry. The difference in the price tag comes from all of the goodies that come bundled with the Lexus ES350 and is not from the Lexus badging alone.

Well, once again, we are back driving the original Aspire. The second transmission went out of the newer car, and since we were out of tranny's and still had the engine, the old car got the engine out of the junker we bought. The timing really sucked, with the new car having 5th gear out, when I got sick the old man didn't want to take me to the hospital in it, I sure wish he would of, the ambulance cost over $1,900!!! That hurts!
I had kinda been missing the old car. The new one only has an am/fm radio, the old one also has a cassette player, which I have an adapter for so I can play CD's. and in this area we don't have any decent Oldies Rock stations, so now I can have my music again at least. And the old car has a lot better suspension system, we can haul 20 bags of feed instead of the 12 that bottoms out the newer car.

Hi!

It's been a while since I've been to this thread, but I have been looking at what I can do with my old (Maruti) Suzuki Esteem 2004 Di. It has a 1.5-litre Peugeot TUD5 engine but it probably only has about 57 horsepower, a mere pittance compared to the diesel engines available today, and can go 14 kilometres to the litre on the highway at about 100 kilometres per hour. The gearbox is best suited for travel at 70 kilometres per hour because the engine rotations per minute goes up to 3,000 right at 100 kilometres per hour. At about 120 kilometres per hour, I see the fuel economy drop to single figures (modern day diesel vehicles such as the Suzuki Swift, which comes with a 1.3-litre Fiat multijet diesel engine, has a rated fuel efficiency of 21 kilometres to the litre on the highway), and if I go over 140 kilometres per hour, I am pretty much red-lining it so fuel economy should not even be something to think about at those speeds - the ability of the engine to take to 5,000 rotations per minute is more of a concern.

In case you are wondering, the car is totally stock and was built during the time when Indian highways were dual carriage roads so speeds of over 80 kilometres per hour were uncommon. Now, most of the national highways in India are funded through tolls and are maintained better so the roads do enable travel of up to 120 kilometres per hour, though the official speed limits are posted as 100 kilometres per hour.

I sometimes wonder why some cars seem to have running problems if they have not been run in a while. The Suzuki Esteem does not particularly like being left sitting on blocks (or jacks, for that matter), and seems to develop what feels like an engine mis-fire for the first fifteen minutes or so of starting it up. It isn't a worn out glowplug because that feels different and needs more cranking in the morning, but it could possibly be a faulty glow plug in some of the cylinders (I am assuming that each cylinder has an independent glow plug - it is a 4-cylinder engine). Different mechanics have a different take on what the problem could be so I definitely think that they are guessing. One mechanic suggests that it is an engine timing issue while another suggests having the fuel pump looked at. The car has probably done 110,000 kilometres but it is hard to tell for sure because I did lend the car out for about a year and the odometer only has 5-digits to tell you how much it has done so as soon as the car goes beyond 99,999 kilometres or 199,999 kilometres, the odometer rolls back to reading 00,000 kilometres (zero kilometres).

Anyway, I hope to keep the car for as long as it runs and trade it in for a newer vehicle. The Suzuki Ritz diesel and the Suzuki Swift diesel are on their way out as the designs have been around for a while, but the Suzuki Ritz does seem to be more practical than most hatchbacks with a 40-60 split folding seats to accomodate more luggage. The Suzuki Esteem has a complete folding rear seat so if you have no rear seat passengers, you do get more boot space but if you do have a passenger, you have to set your luggage onto the seats (good luck cleaning up the seats after you have removed the luggage!).

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