either they love me or hate me

[kaigou]

I just got back from Sears. My little veedub, the longtime trooper, has been having sluggish starts on some mornings. I rephrase that: in the morning, it won't start at all. By noon, or midafternoon, it'll start... sluggishly. Last time I tried, I think I flooded the engine or something, and figured I'd let it sit, then have it towed over to get a new battery. But today, it started on its own (by around 3pm, after a half-day in the winter sun), and I said, oh, hell, I could use some chocolate, let's go to Sears.

Me: I need a new battery.
Sears Guy: *opens hood*
Sears Guy: *looks at car*
Sears Guy: .......
Me: *not paying attention* Y'know, I'm thinking, I can't remember ever getting a battery for this car.
Sears Guy: .........
Me: It's a '96, and I got it in '98...
Sears Guy: .........

This is where I look around and realize there are now six Sears Guys all flocked around my engine compartment. Which sounds really obscene, but carrying on.

Me: Hello?
Sears Guy #1: We don't sell this battery anymore.
Me: You don't? That sucks, because it's been a great battery. I was gonna ask for another just like it.
Sears Guy #1: I imagine it's been the best battery anyone's ever seen.
Me: Hunh? It's a regular Die Hard. Aren't you supposed to change them like, I don't know, once a decade?
Sears Guy #2: *does the math* Or about every fifteen years, in your case.

All the other Sears Guys look shocked. I think some of them even looked positively reverent.

Sears Guy #1: Ma'am, batteries are expected to last about three years.
Me: Really?
Sears Guy #1: Really really.
Me: ...
Sears Guy #1: ...

Everyone else joined in the moment of silence, and then:

Me: Maybe I did change it and forgot.
Sears Guy #1: No, we discontinued this type.
Me: What, like a year or two ago?
Sears Guy #1: Like ten years ago.
Me: Wow. So I really haven't ever changed it.
Sears Guy #1: You're either doing something really right with this car...
Sears Guy #2: ... or really, really wrong.
Me: Can I go with "right"? I like how that sounds.

When I left -- with new battery in place -- four of the guys were arguing over where best to display that positively ancient battery in a good location of honor. I'm not sure whether to be flattered, or worried.

Comments

[kaigou]

I made a single Die Hard battery last for FIFTEEN YEARS, and you dare doubt my ability to psychically kill someone over the internet!? Puny human!

My ability to spell, yes. Ability to kill, possibly via dead battery, NO.

[starscream]

Forgive me, mistress!

[nagasvoice]

Now I'm wondering about what happens to other things placed in your car.

[kaigou]

Well, it's still got its original clutch plate & clutch mechanism, at almost 200K. (The clutch cable broke last fall, though.) It's got a new gear shift box, replaced about two years ago... but most everything else is original.

Although things have been known to be put in my car and then just stay there for months at a time. It's that selective recollection thing -- things left in the backseat tend to stay in the backseat...

[love]

Dude, all I can say is, WOW.

[taithe]

Ahahaha this is fantastic. Too bad they don't make them like that anymore (unintentionally or not).

[kaigou]

Ehehe, no kidding. To make matters worse, the cost ended up being about triple what I'd expected... and then one of the guys, overhearing me exclaim at the price, said: "Well, when you average it out over fifteen years, it's a real deal!"

*grumpgrump*

A'course, that's assuming the car lasts another three years. So it might be moot anyway, but I'd still only about 8K from cracking 200K, and I really wanted to beat my father's record on his Volvo, which made it to 250K. I doubt I'll ever beat the record on my mother's Rabbit, though, which somehow limped along to over 300K.

[kaigou]

No kidding, and the thing is, I spent most of last night, and pretty much all of this evening, with the question in the back of my head as to whether I ever had the battery put in and completely forgot. I mean, there's like a year's leeway, so it could be only nine years old... but that's still three times the, uhm, legal limit.

Any way you cut it, it's pretty amazing, and just adds more fuel to my desire to never let this car die.

[morkeleb]

... *cracking up now yes*

Note, I don't even have a car (or a driver's license) and I don't know that I would even know how to refill the tank (though that doesn't seem TOO hard, but... hidden tricks? What do I know.) But the convo is still hilarious.

[billie]

Only with a veedub, seriously. *laughs*

I love your car stories. Really I do. You're partially to blame for the fact that I've started to tinker with my bicycle (for lack of a driving license or, y'know, car), and that I started to pay attention when my father attempts to explain machine-related things to me.

Incidentally, his old VW Passat had miles to the moon and about one or to quarters of the way back by the time it gave out, so here's to a lot more life of your car. :D

[mongrelheart]

Magic battery!

Either that, or some kind of gitch in the space-time-continuum...

[kaigou]

You would THINK that given all the work I've done on cars in my life, I would've KNOWN to check the battery regularly. Or that it should be replaced every three years. But I honestly never even thought about it. If the car starts, what's the problem? I mean, if the battery's dead, then the car doesn't start, so you know to get a new battery. And since my car always started -- or, on the rare time I left light on or it sat in two feet of snow for a week, I got a jump start and then it started fine after that -- it really never even occurred to me.

I'm waiting for my dad to call in from Sweden, so I can pass along the news that I might've beaten his record of putting 250K on a single clutch-plate. (Another feat that had mechanics absolutely scratching their heads.)

[kaigou]

*doffs cap*

I am just here to serve! Or failing that, to entertain!

Yeah, cars and mechanical things are... a constant wonder, when they're not a constant annoyance. And tinkering is good for the soul, and I say that as a pretty devout apatheist.

[kaigou]

I'm going with either a glitch in the time-space continuum, or possibly that the car is simply possessed... and has decided on absolute loyalty considering that when it does need attention, I do everything in my power to give it the best treatment I can afford. That, and I constantly tell it that it's the best car EVER and even if there is a new Honda in the driveway that this doesn't mean anything to me, I still love the little veedub the best.

(Also, I've found that discussing other cars while driving in your current car is a fast-track to something breaking down, mechanically. Cars do get jealous.)

[love]

So... what VW do you have? Doug keeps telling me not to get one because he says they're always breaking down, but you seem to not have that sort of problem...

[kaigou]

Uhm, maybe he's thinking of the old veedub Beetles? Which weren't really breaking down so much as drivers drove them severely and kept them way past any shelf-date.

Me, I drive a '96 Golf GL, with a 2.0 liter engine, gas (not diesel). The more recent VWs have larger engines for greater turbo boost but lower horsepower (and heavier weight), so you probably won't get the gas mileage I do -- which is really a function of car weight + engine, not just engine.

Previously, I had a '92 Fox, I think it was, which was also a real workhorse, except that Fox/Jetta seem to have an incorrigible problem with their belts as they age. Start one of those up, and the belts scream like a stuck pig. It's pretty embarrassing in the early morning, to be honest. Other than that, Fox/Jetta are sturdy cars.

And I learned to drive on an '83 Rabbit, which kept going until it died an honorable death somewhere around 300K or more. That puppy also had to deal with my mother and my sister, who are both vicious on clutch pedals. Honestly, that car was on heavy rotation for clutch problems, mostly because for some reason my sister and mother never seemed to understand the entire notion of using a clutch. Short version: if you test-drive a used VW and there's the remotest chance it was driven by a teenager, DO NOT BUY. You will be replacing the clutch and brakes within the first six months, if they haven't been replaced already (and probably not, knowing most dealers).

Oh, and I had a Porsche 914, which sounds fancy but its engine is really just a VW-4 Bus engine (automatic, bizarrely, given the car itself is manual!) ... and again with the absolute workhorse, went until it finally rusted out in a glorious pile of orange paint and unhappy metal. (It was the New England and Colorado salt-in-winter that really did it in.)

VWs are historically cars that just do not stop. I can't speak for the latest batch, but it's usually pretty hard to find them used because owners simply don't trade them in. And of all the veedubs I've known or owned, only that '83 Rabbit was anything close to a lemon, and that was just its first year of issues. Once those were licked, after that it was a regular energizer bunny.

Honestly, you can't beat 'em for reliability. Gas mileage, though... that's dropped, because of the weight of the cars and the way they're designing the turbo engines now. They're more efficient than they would be, otherwise, but that's not the same as marvelously efficient. If gas mileage is your priority, along with price, then I'd recommend a Honda Fit, instead: it's effectively the same size and reliability as a VW, but better price and way better mileage.

If, however, your priority is the actual driving experience, then you can't beat a VW with a Fit even in a month of Sundays. The Fit just doesn't have the engineering to handle things like really curvy country roads, or tight turns, or really punchy acceleration regardless of speed. The Fit is fast off a stop, as is the VW (and the Fit is lighter, so it's actually a little faster off a dead stop than the VW) -- but if both cars are doing 70mph on the highway, the VW can stomp the pedal and in a heartbeat be doing 95mph... and the Fit will catch up in about five miles. Even with my car as old as it is, it still has better acceleration in the highest gears than our year-old Honda Fit. Since fast-response high-speed driving is of major importance to me, I stick with the VW for driving whenever possible.

Mostly, my suspicion is that outside of some cars with reputations for breaking down (hello, Jaguar!), most "those break down all the time" are due to driver error, not the car's engineering. If you treat the car well, and you take it in for an annual check-up even if it's doing fine -- which for both VW and Honda will run about $300 or so, in most US cities -- then you won't have major issues other than the usual eventual wearing-down of some parts that would have to be replaced anyway. Change the oil regularly -- if you use natural, do it seasonly or about every 3500K, and if you use synthetic, you can go longer, but it's still wisest to change seasonly if you live in an area with extreme seasonal changes -- and make sure you always say "yes!" when the mechanic suggests changing out any gaskets or rubber parts. Lubrication is the heart of the engine, and after that, it's the gaskets that act as buffering.

Oh, and try not to smash the car into anything. That's a major part of making sure it keeps running for a long time... post-accident, it'll never be the same, and even a minute change in body-structure alters the tensions between the parts, and creates new patterns of wear that in turn put stresses where they didn't exist previously. So, no running into anything, okay?

here ends today's reading lecture!

[love]

That was fantastic. *snuggles* Thank you for the advice--I will be looking at VW too! (Right now the Hyundai Accent is the forerunner for sheer price and mpg...)

[kaigou]

Hyundai: cheap to purchase. NOT cheap to own. And its MPG is absolutely ATROCIOUS. I'm talking like 20-24mpg and that's just... WRONG.

My VW gets about 32 in the city, but it's about half the weight of a new VW in its class, so brand-new VW would probably get around 27-29 in the city. The Fit? Try more like 35 in the city!

I won't even go into the total un-driveability of the Hyundais. They're okay if you're doing nothing but inner-city driving, where you never need to go over a certain speed so you just want something that can kind of wiggle in and out (though the Fit would still be better at that) -- but the Hyundai is really bad at staying tight in fast corners, and its turning radius is... well, not so impressive given it's not that large of a car. The Fit isn't the best turning radius -- I think one fo the Nissans gets that award -- but it's still pretty tight. The VW, a hair larger in turning, but that's because it has a wider wheel base, and wheelbase is one of the factors in determining the radius, but it's also what gives the VW a better driving experience, because it hugs the road closer/better.

Hyundais are good at what they do -- in my experience/opinion, that'd be "short distance, stop-go driving, without requiring too big a burst of speed and without making you feel quite so much like you're in a tin can like you would in a Kia or a Nissan"... but the stop-go driving only makes Hyundai's already bad MPG even worse, and if you're talking automatic, cut it down further to about 20mpg. Just FYI.

[love]

... wow. I did not know that. O_o I was going off price and mpg, and it said 26/36 mpg, and I thought, "Oh hey, that's nice." But damn. O_o

Brand new VWs are listing around 20-24 mpg in the city depending on the model. Not all that bad, but not that good either. But I guess all things considered, it could be a lot worse, and when I look at it a little closer, if the Hyundai is as bad as you say, then getting a Hyundai would be a false economy.

*adds Honda Fit to the list of cars she's considering* Do you have any opinion on the Kia Forte, the Nissan Versa, or the Toyota Yaris? The Hyundai was the frontrunner, but after that the Kia Forte and the Nissan Versa are neck-to-neck. Kia's cheaper, but we know Nissan since Domokun (Doug's car) is a Nissan Xterra.

[kaigou]

The Nissan actually ranks higher than the Fit in some things, like capacity, but I think the engine size is smaller. (Don't quote me on that -- I can't recall now, but I think it was the Nissan with an engine size smaller than CP's Harley-Davidson and that's just... all kinds of wrong.) That said, the Nissan got decent mpg, and the interior styling is really thoughtful, but it's also designed (IMO) for someone with much shorter legs than me -- I have a 34" inseam, if that tells you anything. It's a high-chair kind of design, much like the Toyotas, which means you're sitting up higher. If that doesn't bother you, then you might like the Nissan, which has high marks in plenty of other areas including mpg and reliability.

The Toyotas... I couldn't do them, not with their dashboard being in the center of the console. The notion of my passengers knowing how fast I'm going just... well, let's just say my mother would probably never get in the car with me again. There are enough backseat drivers in this world; we don't need to give them fodder by making it possible for them to easily see the concrete details. Otherwise, though, the Yaris is an adorable car and a zippy little city car -- I wouldn't take it on the open highway unless I were really in the mood to rattle in a tin car careening along at a desperate 65, but in the city? It'd probably be excellent, especially if small parking spaces are a bane of your existence. Same, really, goes for the Nissan, though it felt a little more solid in terms of highway, but still rather tin-can-like.

The Kia is like the Hyundai in terms of false economy: cheap to buy, expensive to own. But its interior design (at least in the smaller slightly older ones I've driven) is incredibly well-designed, possibly one of the best I've seen since the mid-90s VW Fox. And it's rather plush feeling, for being otherwise economy, and can handle quick pickup at low speeds & dead stops. Not a car for the highway, again, but if you're doing mostly local driving, it might work for you.

The Hyundai, Kia, and Toyota all seem to have much looser play in their steering wheels, from what I recall. Honda, not as bad; VW is among the tightest you can find. In other words, from a quarter-turn in the Hyundai's wheel is the same as a tenth of a turn in the VW's wheel. That's just one of those things that you have to go by what you personally like, y'know?

Plus, if you're used to Nissan, then chances are you already either know a good Nissan mechanic, OR you've dealt with the local dealership and can say whether you want to keep dealing with them. (One of the reasons I didn't push for a second VW was because our city's VW dealerships are absolutely rotten, one of the rare complete wastes of space among the so-many VW dealerships I've known... and that was enough to make me lean away from a new VW, especially given CP was liking the Fit.)

So if you already have a good Nissan relationship, then when you toss everything else up into the air, that long-term relationship is plenty justification for putting more weight on Nissan as a possible. That's what I'd say, at least, because you can buy a car that's more than decent, but if you hate your mechanic or you can't find a good mechanic, it doesn't matter what you bought. You'll find yourself dragging your feet on the annual check-ups, and next thing you know, you've got a car that isn't half as good anymore, due to wear and tear without enough care. But if you like your mechanic and feel respected as a customer, it translates to being more willing to take care of the car, and it may not be the deciding factor, but the long-term awesomeness I've had with VW dealers in, uhm, five states! was a big part of the car's upkeep. I could catch things early because I felt like, when the car did misbehave, I could stop by the dealer/mechanic and say, "it's doing this! help!" and I never felt like I was just one big dollar sign to them.

But! If you're really far from enthused about the local Nissan options, then my suggestion would be the Honda Fit, pretty much hands-down. It drives tighter and cleaner than the rest, it's not tin-can noisy like the Toyota or Hyundai, it has better pick-up and more spunk than a Kia, and more than almost any other car, it will keep its value a lot longer, and it has almost the top for reliability for any make or model, really. Hondas are this generation's VW bug: they go and go and go. Plus, just about any mechanic anywhere will have Honda-experience, because they're so ubiquitous.

Otherwise, my suggestion would be to compare the Nissan and Honda, if you'll be doing any regular highway driving. If you're all city, then toss in the Hyundai and the Kia, because those are at least decent in-city cars. The Toyota... I dunno. A little too high off the road for me, a little too tin can, and of course there's that whole "middle of the console" thing that's really hard to adjust to. You don't realize it is, until you're driving it at night and look down and after years of the dash always being right there, suddenly THE CONSOLE IS DARK. At least three times you will probably panic at having lost all your lights, before you remember to look over to where the radio is.

Frankly, I get the economics of the design, but I think it's also the stupidest thing ever. We have conventions in cars, and you mess with them at your peril... but if it's a convention you're willing to put up with, for some other benefit, then that's the call you make.

Not sure how much help that is, but there ya go.

[dragonhand]

Ah, don't over-think it. You didn't last time. ^_^ Leave it to karma and instinct and you're golden!

[love]

Wow. That was INCREDIBLY helpful. *hugs you* ♥ I will talk to my husband about whether he likes the Nissan folks, and we'll go from there. And OMG THANK YOU. ♥

[dejla]

There's a story in that somewhere...

[kraehe.livejournal.com]

I remember K's story about taking the wheels off your 914. The bearings had turned to dust.

You truly have good car karma -- the wheels should have FALLEN OFF.

914 Wheels bearings

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,
It was my garage where those wheel bearings poured out on to the floor when I removed the spindle nut, bearing washer and outer bearing race. It was the right side wheel and the outer roller bearings had disintegrated. The races were still intact. I took the car for a test drive before pulling it into the garage and it was ...mmm... a bit wobbly in a left turn.
The wheel would not have fallen off at that point because the nut, washer and races were still there. If the car had continued to be driven the spindle would have eventually failed and THEN the wheel would have fallen of.