Here’s
a bit of good news about new cars, for a change: Some routine
maintenance tasks are easier to do — or don’t
need to be done as often.
Sometimes,
they don’t need to be done at all.
For example,
most new cars don’t require periodic adjustment of their fuel
injection systems — which will usually operate without a hitch
for years before needing to be cleaned out or a component
fails and requires replacement.
Scheduled tune-ups
are also much farther apart — often just once every 100,000
miles — and fewer parts are involved. Many new car engines
don’t have a distributor cap or spark plug wires — which
like points and condensers used to require periodic replacement.
One less thing to worry about. Several less things, actually.
Tires also
tend to last much longer now — 40,000 miles or more —
if you don’t drive like a Nextel Cup driver.
Mufflers rust
out and fall off much less often. Most new car will go their entire
lives with the same exhaust pipes they left the factory with. Etc.
You save hassle,
time and money — making up (at least somewhat) for the higher
buy-in cost of new cars.
Here are some
others, in the category of easier — and less often:
Drive
belts last longer, there’s frequently just one —
and it’s (usually) a snap to replace.
If you’re
old enough to remember cars built before the 1990s, you may remember
car engines that had a single belt for each accessory — power
steering, AC, alternator — and how each one had to be individually
tensioned by prying on a bracket while tightening an adjuster bolt.
It was a pain — multiplied by the number of belts your particular
car had.
Most new car
engines, in contrast, have a single “serpentine” belt
that drives all the accessories. And instead of having to set the
tension via a tedious process of leveraging a bracket while tightening
a bolt, then checking to make sure it’s right — now
all you need to do is slip the belt around the pulleys, then over
the idler/tensioner pulley — and release. The tension is set
automatically — and you’re done. Some cars
have screw-in adjusters, which are slightly more bother —
but infinitely less so than leveraging old-style brackets one-at-a-time.
Even if you
don’t do this job yourself, you won’t have
to pay someone to do it often. Serpentine belts are much
longer-lived than the old-style single belts — usually lasting
50,000-plus miles or more before they ought to be replaced —
and failing before then far less often.
Brake
pads — vs. shoes.
Most new cars
— even economy cars — now come with four-wheel-disc
brakes. In the past, many cars — and most economy cars —
came with drum brakes on the rear wheels — and sometimes,
all four.
July
1, 2013
Eric Peters
[send him mail] is an
automotive columnist and author of Automotive
Atrocities and Road Hogs (2011). Visit his
website.
Copyright
© 2013 Eric Peters
Republished with permission from:: Lew Rockwell