From the time I was 16 until I was 30 years old, I never had a car newer than 15 years old. All these cars had well over a 100000 miles on em before I got them, many of em had over 200000 miles on them. In all that time the most I ever spent on a car was $700 and I went through 33 of em in that time. Most of them were $300-$400 cars. Some nice ones too.... Road Runners, Chargers, Chevelles, Furys, 4x4 pickups, 63 and 64 Chevys, a 57 Chevy, a couple Cadillacs. Now, someone may have done some work to these cars before I got them, who knows..... but I doubt they all had been rebuilt before I got em. If you could turn a wrench, and do basic maintenence, I'd say you could get close to 200000 miles out of 90% of cars built in the 60's and 70's before a catastrophic failure. At least thats been my experience.

 

Thank you. I'll take actual experience over the anecdotal stuff any day.

 

Grizzly

I guess you don't realize that today's cars go 100,000 miles on spark plugs without needing cleaning because they took the lead out of gasoline.

Same thing with the valves, it was the leaded gas and not the unleaded white gas that burned the valves.

My dad was born in '12 and my first driver was a '29 model A.

Boydie


Grizzly Old Man "And yes, leaded gas did cause carbon build up in the engines but the unleaded 'white gas' at the time would cause more valve wear. It was pretty normal for my dad to use an oxyacetylene torch to clean the carbon out the combustion chamber without removing the heads from time to time."

 

My dad was born in '21 and my first car was a 1958 Rambler American. That one didn't make 100000 miles.