250,000 Miles (Post #570) 1/23/2017

Two hundred fifty thousand miles. You can drive to the moon (238,000 miles), drive around the moon’s equator (6,786 miles) and have plenty of miles left to find a good parking spot with 250,000 miles.

That’s probably no big deal today when you are thinking about cars. I know several Japanese based autos that have clipped that. JagGuy got 340,000 miles on his Isuzu Trooper and has 300,000 on his Mercedes 300CD’s clock. Like I said no big deal for some manufacturers. But for a British made auto from the middle 1990’s that’s a big deal.

How do you get to 250,000 miles? The answer is lots of maintenance. You’ve seen the “tick sheets” for Land Rover maintenance. Most people don’t take their car to the dealership for maintenance after the warranty runs out. You are already paying 400-600$(US) a month to buy the Land Rover why would you pay 2000$(US) for a “service call”?

So after time goes by and those things get neglected suddenly you have a hose pop that should have been replaced 25000 miles ago and that can lead to even more trouble. Or how about a sensor that stops working optimally and starts to damage other stuff? Eventually you have to replace components when they fail.

Major components start to fail and cost quite a bit to repair. How about 2000$(US) for a transmission, or 1200$(US) for a transfer case. Air conditioning components don’t last forever either and are pretty expensive to get repaired.

I have long ago made my “last payment” on my car loan. As I tell my wife when I have to pay for a repair, “it’s cheaper than a car payment.” Indeed even in terrible years when I have replaced a transmission, averaged over 12 months its cheaper than a car payment on a new car.

So I will continue to drive my Range Rover until I can no longer find parts or some moron crashes into me and she is truly beyond repair. I’ll then find another and drive it until I can no longer find parts.

Thanks for reading and Happy Rovering.

2 Replies to “250,000 Miles (Post #570) 1/23/2017”

  1. Hi, I’ve been into your site before but haven’t looked in for over a year. Lack of Range Rover so I didn’t have cause to. The Big Green Pig has been in my garage but the front axle has been away with the mechanic getting rebuilt. He said it may take awhile but I hadn’t expected this! The BGP finally came back to life last month and I’m enjoying driving it again. While it’s been off the road the price of fuel has gone up $2.50/ litre making it a weekends only pleasure.
    I brought a heater control from Atlantic British after reading your web pages and it’s great! Unfortunately after 12 months in the garage the fan motor seems to have died? I’m holding off a few weeks before I return it to the mechanic, he needs some happy time.
    Regards from New Zealand Henry.

    1. Irony of irony. I had to take the Big White Bus back home due to my heater blower motor failing. The white smoke coming up though the defrost vents was disappointing.

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