Contour Enthusiasts Group Archives Forums General General The million mile car

There was an interesting article in the Washington Post about two months ago that talked about a 94 Honda Accord EX that went over one million miles.

The prevailing view was that engines run longer when they are always running. That way everything stays lubricated and materials that might clog parts otherwise stay suspended and don't settle to cause problems. In other words, there weren't too many cold engine starts in the million miles.

This makes me wonder about the motor oil test that Consumer Reports ran on a fleet of New York City taxis that I read about in the CEG posts. Their results were that most motor oils work the same. I wonder if there was very little difference between most of the oils (including dino vs. synth) because of the fact that cabs are constantly running?

I believe that most other engine tests are usually done the same way (with the engine constantly running). Hmmm.....

Makes you wonder about the validity of all of these tests and their comparability with the real world.

There's a guy out there with an older Volvo P1800 with over 2 million miles on it . IIRC he is the original owner of the car and all of the miles were put on by him . I just couldn't imagine putting 2 million miles on anything , let alone one car . Having owned several old Volvos , I can say that I can see how the car went that long , those drivelines are great . You've gotta keep up with the bodies though , they rust like a mad-dog if you don't stay ahead of it .

I saw that wasn't it on Car and Driver or something?

I remember the first to hit a million miles on a passenger car was a 1960's Mercedes diesel. He bought the car new and had every intention of breaking a mileage record with it, and he installed a "hubodometer" on it like the trucks have. This avoided the problem the Honda had with its factory odometer breaking, and provided solid proof of its mileage.

That 2 million mile guy and his Volvo was on the Tonight Show a month or so ago. He lives on the East Coast somewhere like New York maybe and he'd take off any time he felt like dinner in New England or whatever. Any excuse to drive somewhere and he'd do it. That's the life.

Karl

Ive meet the Volvo guy when I used to work for Volvo,as a matter of fact I believe it was his car I did an oil change on.Volvo paid for it .Its a POS but it runs.