How much mileage is expected?

[Qwerty321]

I've got a BA Fairlane with 420,000 kms on the clock right now and apart from needing new coil packs, she's pretty much running in perfect shape. There are a couple telltale signs of aging though, for example the RHF door wiring loom is shot so I get no sound from that speaker and when closing the door (particularly hard - long story), my mate ripped the entire left door handle off (I've reattached with a lot of superglue for now, hopefully it'll hold).

The thing I find fascinating with this car is the fact the engine numbers match, and it looks pretty much bog standard. There's no external tranny cooler fitted, so I'm going to assume the transmission in there is the original as well (surely if you did work on the transmission you'd fit an external cooler).

Anyway, at what point do these cars actually give out? I got my fairlane pretty cheap and I do like it quite a lot, but I'm considering whether I should bother maintaining it (new coil packs, servicing it properly, fitting external cooler etc.) or should I just run her till she dies, not spend a dime on her, and just buy a BF Falcon with say 150,000 on the clock once the fairlane conks out. That said, if I could expect the fairlane to keep running into the 600,000's then I'll prefer to put in the preventative maintenance and keep her going.

[russellw]

It's almost impossible to say - there are cabs with 8-900,000 on them with largely original drive-trains. Probably the weakest link is the transmission in terms of longevity but the engines are pretty bullet proof unless abused and even then they don't cost much to repair / replace.

Cheers
Russ

[poppa smurf]

maintenance is the key with ANY vehicle......preventative is best.

I've seen BA's with 700,000 Km's and still going and looking strong, I've heard of a million Km's.......

mine, at 183,000 is still like driving a new car, mind you it has had and still receiving a LOT of money and work chucked at it, but I wouldn't worry about the K's too much until it came to reselling it.

[nuthin' fancy]

If you keep spending money in anticipation of things going wrong (or at the first sign) you'll never see the value for what you spend because not much will go wrong.

What is your car worth? How much will you spend on your replacement? I'm in favour of 'the devil you know'.

[GO FURTHER]

Obviously once a car gets to a certain age and has high kilometres it's worth very little in terms of trade in or resale value to anyone else.

When I buy cars, so long as its been reliable and I still enjoy driving it and continues to serves its purpose, I keep it for as long as I can. I never base a car on what its current value is on the market... What it's worth to me is all that really matters.

When you stop and think about it, we all own possessions in our home and life that are worth bugger all from a resale point of view, or to anyone else, but are special to you. A car is no different.

I'd rather drive and keep a car I've had from brand new, where I know the complete history of the vehicle, it's quirks and most importantly how its been treated and driven, than buy a second hand car with less kilometres and play "Russian Roulette". There's a lot more to a car's future reliability than just buying a car on looks and that the log book has been stamped with the regular services.

I think the five things to owning a car like a Falcon / Fairlane that will give you relatively trouble free motoring for 300,000 plus Kms is;

1. Obviously regular servicing and using quality parts, fluids and oils.
2. Lots of highway or country miles rather than stop start city driving.
3. Driving it regularly and for trips that allow the oil to reach temperature and do its job.
4. Not thrashing or straining it and driving it sedately for most of the time.
5. Always warming it up for a few minutes (especially on colder mornings) before driving off.

I also believe in doing things more regularly than the recommended service intervals.

For example in the 18 months and 54,000Kms I've had my FG XR6T, I've done the following;

1. Oil and filter changed religiously every 5000Kms (So its had eleven oil changes with fully synthetic oil), plus three engine flushes.
2. Diff oil changed at 27,000 Kms
3. Coolant drained and flushed at 38,000Kms
4. Brake fluid changed at 45,000 Kms
5. K & N Pod filter cleaned and oiled 5 times.
6. New tyres at 36,000Kms
7. New Optima yellow top Battery
8. CQuartz'd
9. Injector cleaner every 5000 Kms in fuel tank.
10. Fuel filter replaced at 45,000Kms
11.Two cabin filter changes (pollen upgrades)
12. Wheels rotated every 10,000 Kms
13. Two wheel alignments.

Plus the regular 15,000Km services at Ford.

Then i have my weekly routine...

1. Wash car, blow dry, vacuum inside, clean interior and windows.
2. Check tyre pressures
3. Check all fluid levels
4. Check all indicator/brake/head lights.
5. Clean wiper blades
6. Check for error codes using scanner.
7. check for stone chips / scratches and retouch

Many of the things on the above list do need to be done according to Ford recommended service intervals, but I prefer piece of mind, want to keep this car for a very long time (Okay I've got the time, money and I'm an enthusiast ;-) ) .... But best of all it drives as well as the day I drove it out of the showroom, and all this makes it worthwhile to me.

I believe and hope with regular preventative maintainence my car will see at least 400,000 Kms like your beloved BA Fairlane!

[mik]

it is always a hard decision what to do with the old limos, i try to think about what is it going to cost me if i let it fall into disrepair and i have to spend a substantial amount on buying another limo.

[Qwerty321]

Originally Posted by BAXRSIX

Obviously once a car gets to a certain age and has high kilometres it's worth very little in terms of trade in or resale value to anyone else.

When I buy cars, so long as its been reliable and I still enjoy driving it and continues to serves its purpose, I keep it for as long as I can. I never base a car on what its current value is on the market... What it's worth to me is all that really matters.

When you stop and think about it, we all own possessions in our home and life that are worth bugger all from a resale point of view, or to anyone else, but are special to you. A car is no different.

I'd rather drive and keep a car I've had from brand new, where I know the complete history of the vehicle, it's quirks and most importantly how its been treated and driven, than buy a second hand car with less kilometres and play "Russian Roulette". There's a lot more to a car's future reliability than just buying a car on looks and that the log book has been stamped with the regular services.

I think the five things to owning a car like a Falcon / Fairlane that will give you relatively trouble free motoring for 300,000 plus Kms is;

1. Obviously regular servicing and using quality parts, fluids and oils.
2. Lots of highway or country miles rather than stop start city driving.
3. Driving it regularly and for trips that allow the oil to reach temperature and do its job.
4. Not thrashing or straining it and driving it sedately for most of the time.
5. Always warming it up for a few minutes (especially on colder mornings) before driving off.

I also believe in doing things more regularly than the recommended service intervals.

For example in the 18 months and 54,000Kms I've had my FG XR6T, I've done the following;

1. Oil and filter changed religiously every 5000Kms (So its had eleven oil changes with fully synthetic oil), plus three engine flushes.
2. Diff oil changed at 27,000 Kms
3. Coolant drained and flushed at 38,000Kms
4. Brake fluid changed at 45,000 Kms
5. K & N Pod filter cleaned and oiled 5 times.
6. New tyres at 36,000Kms
7. New Optima yellow top Battery
8. CQuartz'd
9. Injector cleaner every 5000 Kms in fuel tank.
10. Fuel filter replaced at 45,000Kms
11.Two cabin filter changes (pollen upgrades)
12. Wheels rotated every 10,000 Kms
13. Two wheel alignments.

Plus the regular 15,000Km services at Ford.

Then i have my weekly routine...

1. Wash car, blow dry, vacuum inside, clean interior and windows.
2. Check tyre pressures
3. Check all fluid levels
4. Check all indicator/brake/head lights.
5. Clean wiper blades
6. Check for error codes using scanner.
7. check for stone chips / scratches and retouch

Many of the things on the above list do need to be done according to Ford recommended service intervals, but I prefer piece of mind, want to keep this car for a very long time (Okay I've got the time, money and I'm an enthusiast ;-) ) .... But best of all it drives as well as the day I drove it out of the showroom, and all this makes it worthwhile to me.

I believe and hope with regular preventative maintainence my car will see at least 400,000 Kms like your beloved BA Fairlane!

The fairlane's done a lot of highway warm km's and it's definitely been well maintained. It racked up most of the mileage as part of the government VIP fleet (Got replaced with the Beemer 7 Series diesels a few years ago), so that probably has a lot to do with it. Got passed on to my neighbor who used it for a couple months then basically garaged it for the next 2 years. I bought it off him for 1.5k (Our families are pretty close, so he sold it to me cheap) and have done 12k since purchasing it. Apart from being bad on gas (It's a 4L LWB sedan that weighs 2 tonnes. Can't say I'm surprised!) I have no complaints. Would love to keep the car going for ages.

[383hq]

Holy thread mine - 18 months later, what did you end up doing out of curiosity?

I would think your desire for a new/different car will likely occur many years before the life of that car expires if you look after it.

Like for like, I would prefer a 400k km highway car with service history over a 150k km city falcon any day of the week.

Whilst preventative maintenance is good, reducing service intervals brings with it, it's own risks - any time something is undone or re-tightened, we increased risk of failure.
Like life its a compromise.

When you are uncomfortable you will sell, I sold my mondeo at 194K km's purely because of the potential repair costs,- I don't have that issue with a falcon, it is simply over engineered to deal with Australian environments, unlike some euro focused designs.

Note that I did travel 120,000 km with the same brake pads in the mondeo, so even though braking cycles were much reduced, I couldn't help but think things do eventually wear out. The problem was, these were expensive things. You do not have that issue with your car.

[Qwerty321]

Originally Posted by 383hq

Holy thread mine - 18 months later, what did you end up doing out of curiosity?

I would think your desire for a new/different car will likely occur many years before the life of that car expires if you look after it.

Like for like, I would prefer a 400k km highway car with service history over a 150k km city falcon any day of the week.

Whilst preventative maintenance is good, reducing service intervals brings with it, it's own risks - any time something is undone or re-tightened, we increased risk of failure.
Like life its a compromise.

When you are uncomfortable you will sell, I sold my mondeo at 194K km's purely because of the potential repair costs,- I don't have that issue with a falcon, it is simply over engineered to deal with Australian environments, unlike some euro focused designs.

Note that I did travel 120,000 km with the same brake pads in the mondeo, so even though braking cycles were much reduced, I couldn't help but think things do eventually wear out. The problem was, these were expensive things. You do not have that issue with your car.

Still going strong. Have a Volvo daily now but keep the Fairlane up in Auckland as a roadtripper for when I'm back from uni. Saves driving up and down the length of NZ multiple times a year.

So far I've fitted an external cooler, machined the front discs, replace a coil pack and replaced a cracked radiator but apart from that runs mint. Fun story I replaced the stock cracked radiator with a new ADRAD one and 3 weeks later one of the fans disintegrated and mangled the radiator beyond repair. Had to get a new radiator once again and new fans which was an unfortunate and costly endeavour but it is what it is.

So far the cars cost me somewhere around 2 grand in repairs over the past 3 years and I cant really ask for much better. My Volvo with 50,000 odd kms has cost me 1.6k in repairs his year alone! Fords a shocker on gas around town sure, but right now it only really sees highway miles and it's somewhat efficient on that, really comfortable and tonnes of grunty low down torque makes it amazing to drive so I'd say it's worth the bit of extra gas

[Swordie]

Keep it and look after it. They don't cost much to service and repair. Taxi drivers love the Fords for reasons such as cheap to repair, reliable and nice to drive.

I have g220 and love having a Fairlane.

[Tassie f100]

I guess it depends on whether you like the old car or like new ones better.Probably $2000 year to keep the old one up to scratch vs $5000 per year in depreciation on new cars but hopefully not too much down time compared to the older car.

[stock1991]

how much is a years worth of worry free driving worth? say your car is in good order and it costs $240 for a service, by skilled tradesman. maybe a trans service $120. so $360 to drive your car .. + rego *insurance
air fresheners and floor mats and tyre rotation wheel balance and alignment