OEReplacement News

Trade-offs are a fact of life. Since we can’t do everything at once, and most of us have more things to do than for which we have time, we put things off, cut corners where we have to, and muddle through the best we can. If that involves getting a sandwich from the corner deli, rather than making one at home, we’re no worse for wear. But in a car, cutting corners can have serious consequences.

Vehicle maintenance schedules aren’t just made up as random numbers, 3,000 of this, 7,500 of that, 60,000 of those. They’re the result of years and years of experience, experimentation and observation, backed up with science, testing and all those millions of miles cars are driven every year.

There was an era of planned obsolescence in car manufacturing in the Seventies and early Eighties, when it didn’t matter what you did: Your car was going to die at 90,000 miles. That strategy, designed to keep people buying cars every few years, backfired horribly, as imported cars and trucks were built to go hundreds of thousands of miles, provided the owners maintained them the way the factory intended. Remember those Toyota and Volvo million mile stories? They were aimed directly at Ford, GM and Chrysler.

Detroit caught on. Quality will sell a lot more vehicles than quantity, as Ford and Toyota, respectively, can tell you today. Cars and trucks can’t last forever, of course, but with proper maintenance, they can last as long as possible.

Scheduled maintenance intervals are developed because engineers have determined how long car parts can go before likelihood of failure increases. Take engine oil changes as an example. Since the advent of the modern car, it’s been three months or 3,000 miles. But as metallurgy, machining and the oil and oil filter themselves have improved, oil change intervals now stretch out to 7,500 miles for many new cars, after their break-in period.


Filed under: Industry News by Josh Razgunas On: April 9th, 2010