engine longevity?

valhalla360 wrote:

T18skyguy wrote:
When I was in engine school, about when electricity was introduced, we we're taught that engine wear is most proportional to the amount of fuel that's put through it. The number of miles is a very loose metric. Plus throw in the number of cold starts. All things being equal, a V10 in a motor home will probably have more wear on it at 100,000 than a pickup truck, just by virtue of the fact that the motorhome uses more fuel. Then if it sits too much, all bets are off and anything can happen.

Problem with this theory is even most passenger cars go to the junkyard with functional engines in the modern world.

It's other things failing and then it's not worth fixing...if you have a 20yr old car that needs $2k in suspension work, you are usually better to put that $2k towards a newer used car...same thing with RVs.

It is very much the oddity to "wear out" an engine, so it really isn't a consideration.

I agree. If reasonably taken care of with oil changes at proper intervals along with maintaining the oil level, the basic engine is the last thing to "wear" out. It's everything around it that goes first, and corrosion (rust) accelerates the life of most everything else.

The only exception to my comment would be a neglected cooling system failure. Running an over-heated engine for too long of a time will fail at any age with any mileage.