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.

Apparently ... some vehicle manufacturers take pride in it not being acceptable for certain parts of their vehicles to ever fail: A few weeks ago the transmission in our 18 year old Lexus sedan - with over 195,000 miles on it - failed completely. The Lexus dealer installed a remanufactured transmission in it for FREE after getting approval from Lexus headquarters. That's "free" as in no charge for the transmission and no charge for the labor -> an over $3600 Christmas gift!

I had a college professor who maintained that "the least expensive way to own a vehicle" is to maintain it, and keep it, and use it - as long as possible. IMHO, a complex and expensive piece of equipment such as a personal transportation or recreational vehicle should not be considered as a "disposable item" (... other than we need to soon come up with vehicles that don't destroy the Earth's atmosphere ... and therefore replace a bunch of vehicles on a world scale).