[ds968]

I'm somewhat infamous for neglecting "prescribed" maintenance rules, and more often than not downright ignoring them, whether it's oil changes, or tune-ups, and I never replace a single part until

it breaks down ( yeah, I paid a hefty price once for that m.o. , but I digress.. ) so thought I'd post this latest tid-bit : On Thursday after a brief rain shower I pulled out of my driveway ( in the daily driver Mercedes, not the 968 ) and while lightly touching the gas pedal to get going the rear tires just spun in place with tne stability control light flashing like crazy on my dashboard. No, it's not the massive HP in the MBZ, LOL, so I decided to look at the tires.. First thought : " hmm, interesting, I don't remember buying Hoosiers for my MBZ ". :-). I was essentially riding on slicks. :-o ! Got new tires put on yesterday, but when I pulled the records I realized I logged over 85,000 miles on the previous set

( needless to say I never rotate tires either, so you can only imagine what tne rears looked like,..).

The fronts were also on their last leg, but had about 20 % tread left according to the shop.. Geez, I have to start paying attention to things...

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[Cloud9...68]

Too funny. As "car people," you'd think we would pay more attention than the average person to things like tire wear, but I have to confess, I once had a rental that I drove for a few days, and on about the third day, looked down to notice one of the front tires was almost completely flat!

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[JTP]

Atleast you discovered that slick tire in your driveway and not on the road hydro planing into a tree. Lucky!



I have a recent tale of severe auto neglect. I was working out west for nearly a year using a rental car. The job required me to travel over 30 miles everyday on a dirt road and I as the director brought up the back of the caravan which meant I was eating dust all the time. After a few months I noticed the car was really bogging down but I had no time to have the car serviced and one day it just cleared up. During the 8th month I pulled the air cleaner out and it had collapsed from all the dust plugging it up and the incoming air had been sucking in all the dust on the filter as well as any new dust from the road. I was unknowingly driving a 'dust injection' vehicle. I ended up pulling the entire intake system off and cleaning it before returning the car. I logged over 27,000 miles on that rental. When I brought the car in for oil changes they never bothered to check the air filter so I don't feel as bad for ruining their car.



Don't ever buy an ex-rental car.

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[ds968]

[quote name='JTP' timestamp='1359315545' post='138059']

Don't ever buy an ex-rental car.[/quote]



Why not, we know how durable they are.. after all, if they can survive being thrown from Drive into Reverse or Park at 65mph just to see what happens.. WHAT ?! Like you guys haven't all done that with rentals, LOL ;-) ;-)

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[flash]

yeah - and they all come with the "IOV" feature at no extra charge.

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[DaveN]

DS-The great thing about driving on slicks is there is no wear bar so you are in the clear for neglect! :-P

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[ds968]

Lol, no kidding..there was a slight trace of what once was a tread pattern, but it was definitely not in 3D ; looked as if was just drawn on the tire with pencil :-) Just for the record, I do pay a lot more attention ( in relative terms ) to the 968 , but since NOTHING at all ever goes wrong with either the MBZ or the two Nissans we have, I tend to forget they exist so it's easy to overlook things like this..

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[Rap]

Being the rocket scientist I am as I was coming home late last nite from an English Beat concert, yes after watching Daytona I couldn't help myself and had to drive my car, as soon as I got onto the snowy roads in my development something felt weird. Not going fast but just a quick touch of my brakes made me realize my tires were useless on this road. There is just a slight incline going into my garage and I got stuck for a second. Glad we have very few neighbors as they must have been happy to not only hear my car that late but listen to it roar as I rocked out of being stuck.

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[ds968]

Time to replace the MBZ tires once again , the ones I bought in 2013 ( after the first post on this thread ) , a set of all- weather Michelin Primacy XMV 4 , which also logged just over 80 K miles on them, but unlike that previous set there is significantly more tread left on these. Rather surprising to see how much wear you get out of tires nowadays, I recall days gone by in the 70s era when the expected life of a tire was less than 20 K miles . And doubtful I got even that much with the rear tires on my 440 ' cuda. Wonder why that was, lol .

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[williamoss]

What I find amazing regarding new vehicles. I had to drive cross country and back in about 12 days. as It takes me about 4 days each way it is a lot of driving. my Dodge 2014 was the vehicle I took. I checked the oil and windshield fluids before I left. on the road I did oil changes ever 3,000 miles. I thought I did everything I was supposed to do. But when I got back home I took it to a Jiffy lube for an oil change. And that was when they told me they thought I had a transmission leak. luckily the car was still under warranty.

 

When I took it to the dealer they looked at it, and a seal had broken leaving fluid out. The transmission needed to be rebuilt.

 

That was when I found out the new vehicles do not have a transmission dip stick any more, The manufactures discovered that most people do not know how to check the tans mission level correctly. Start with  the car on level ground, put it in neutral then drive and drive 1,2,3 then in reverse and then to park. So the bird brains eliminated the stick. So if you have a leak that you cannot see you a could be leaking fluid, blow up your transmission and never know anything was wrong. UNBELIVABLE.

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[type968]

I had a car, picked it up, did inspection could see I needed tires soon, drove 2000+ miles cross country, checking along the way, tires were not slicks but looked OK for dry weather. Brought it in to replace the tires, and I guess I had more negative camber than I realized.  I was down to the steal belt on the insides of the tires, both sides in the front...

 

Never doing that again.

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