Last night around 22:30 CDT I rolled over the big 100. Barely Christmas but it was still December 25th in Kansas City, so it counts.
And before you ask, I reset my trip meter a few days ago when I reached 99866 miles, on purpose so that I could take this picture:
I've owned her for 2,039 days.
I'm on my 3nd set of brakes and rotors.
2nd set of rear brake pads.
3rd set of plug wires and sparkplugs.
4th set of tires.
3rd fuel filter
3rd fuel pump
I've had 6 recalls (one of them was the fuel pump)
I've done 23 Oil changes
Ive had 1 battle with curb (curb won)
... 1 battle with a tree (I won, it was a sapling, I slid into someone's yard on ice)
Replaced 3 tie rods (because of the curb incident and a leaking steering rack kept ruining inner tie rods)
I'm on my 2nd steering rack (because the curb incident did more than bend some tie rods)
Performed hundreds of car washes
I've had 3 different sets of wheels (and one borrowed 16" for a few months) on her
There's been plenty of swearing and plenty of blood.
There's lots of zip ties, wire crimps, solder, and electrical tape
She's given me 100,000 smiles in 100,000 miles.
I love this car.
Did I mention that aside from the recalls, she's never been in a shop? So far the steering rack was the hardest thing I've had to do to my own Focus (have to remove the entire front suspension and subframe), but I've done a few transmission drops (one swap, a few clutches) on friends' cars that were more difficult.
My 02 focus zx3 rolled 47k on Christmas eve, so far I've had an ok experience with her. As for swearing, well, there's been a lot of that. Fortunately, I have powertrain coverage from Ford until 100k (a blessing I found about when taking it in for an oil change). Let's see:
- I bought her on Feb 29, 2004 with 23k on the odometer
- car just came back from it's third transaxle rebuild in the time I've owned it (revised mtx75 likes to eat syncros) (spent three weeks in the dealer due to incompetence this time around)
- car has had it's clutch replaced for the second time (first time in the time I've owned it)
- Driver's side headlamp lens was replaced under warranty during summer 2004 (florida humidity took its toll)
- car was broken into in April 2004, requiring passenger side quarter glass to be replaced plus paint repair
- car was backed into by a parent while coming in to the office (work at a school) last week, goes in for repair tomorrow, resulted in $1500 in damage
- I hit a telephone pole with the passenger side mirror, snapping it off over the weekend (buying one via eBay next week)
- Car is on it's second set of tires in the time I've owned it
- Car has been up and down the east coast numerous times (Florida to NYC, Florida-Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh-Florida, and numerous jaunts across Pennsylvania)
- Is about due for it's second brake job and power steering fluid change (this is planned for some time in January)
- Is stuck in registration limbo - insured in PA, I'm licensed in PA, but the car's registered in Florida - delays in getting the title from Florida to the bank, and then to PennDOT
This car has been through a lot, and I've had a fair amount of aggrivation with it, have been debating trading it on something new to skip the registration obstacle. In terms of function, the ZX3 was a pretty good car - enough room for everything I needed when I was a field tech in Florida, and plenty of space for all of my worldly good when I moved to Pittsburgh, PA. Joy Joy Joy.
Actually despite your 1337 _|- |< | |_ |_ Z, I think a picture of 99866 would have been cooler. Flip it over. What does it say. Yes it still says 99866.
Didn't know there were any Focus owners over here. I'm actually an admin at focaljet.com which is where I spend most of my time. I also own and run focushacks.com which is basically just howto stuff for our cars. There are lots of little nuances (and nuisances
) with the Focus, I try to cover most of them on my own site. You should check them out and sign up if you get a chance.
Wow I can't believe you have had to do that much work on a vehicle with 100K miles.
In about 4.5 months I'll be hitting 100K on my truck.
I miss the days of 5 digit odometers. It was cool to leave home with a car that shows 99950, and come home with a car that shows 50.
102k miles on my corolla/prism with nothing but front brakes and soon tires.... i love toyota stuff!
ax0n is a, uh, hard driver. By that I mean he likes his cars to go quick and do fun things around a curve, or a parking lot, or the neighbors yard. Ah, except that last one, cause it's likely weather realted... The same for the battle with the curb.
I've ridden up to 100mph with him driving the Focus, and it's pretty solid. Of course, he's one of the very few people I would trust to be with going that fast anyway.
I just found out today that the parking brake cable in my car broke with the parking brake engaged, causing the rear drums to stay locked and eat the shoes. It's gonna cost $800 to replace the cable, both rear brakes completely (they were metal-on-metal), and flush and bleed the brake fluid. Merry f--king Christmas!
I tend to post occasionally on focusfanatics from time to time. It's an odd group there, that's for sure.
That's no joke. This car sees 7,000 RPM's daily, and pretty much has ever since the engine was broken in. I test drove it with single digit miles on the odo, put it good into the double digits on the test drive, and picked it up the next day, which was May 27, 2000.
Did my first oil change with motorcraft 10w30 (recommended) at 1,000 miles, did my second one at 2,000 miles, then at 5,000 switched to 10w30 Mobil-1. I go 5,000 miles on a change, and I've had my oil lab tested a few times to make sure it's satisfactory to do so. I switch to Mobil-1 5w30 in the winter time.
I do a lot of hard accelleration, hard braking and a hard cornering. I chew up tires and brakes like no other. It has proven to be capable of almost 140 MPH on an airport runway, and I stretch her legs out into the triple digits at least once a month (safely, mind you). Without the chip, the car is limited to 108 MPH. Some foci ship with S rated (112 MPH) Tires. I had a set of borrowed nitto 555's on when I did my speed run. They're up to those kinds of speeds. My Sumitomo's are H Rated to 130MPH but I don't dare travel that fast on public roads.
You've gotta pay to play, especially when you're playing hard, so yes, I have done quite a bit of wrenching on the car. Really the only repairs I had to make to it were because of the curb incident and then there's the soldering, due to some crappy wiring under the hood. I'm sure that high underhood temps from running her hard had nothing to do with that
Far more work has been put into the aftermarket stuff on the car. As far as "ricing it out" goes, my ZX3's pretty tame. From the outside, it looks pretty much stock except for the 15" wheels I got off a friend's mercury cougar, the shortened stock antenna (WTF were they thinking with that 3' long thing!?) and the Magnaflow cat-back exhaust. It's not stickered out, tinted, or lowered.
From the invisible-on-the-street department, the Superchips Custom Tuning chip programmed by FocusSport made the biggest difference. Installing the exhaust woke it up even more, and the underdrive pulley (which was the first "performance" thing I did) also added a bit. The NGK Iridiums and FocusSport plug wires helped true up the idle a bit and made it run a bit smoother, but I don't think there were any gains made from them.
On the inside, the electroluminescent guage overlays spice up the night time driving experience (they have variable brightness from all the way off to way-too-bright) and the Blaupunkt MP3 Player (stock in some Foci) keeps me jamming with 12+ hours of tunes on a disc.
For the $12K I paid brand new for this, I can say it's far exceeded my expectations. At the time I bought it, it was easily the most refined car in it's class.
Ouch! What car is it?
See, it would cost about the same if it happened to my Focus. But the cable for my car is $70 (both cables and the brake balancer to the park brake handle) and the drums and shoes are about 130 for everything. The rest is all labor.
BTW Iantm, most of the people on FF are way immature. Too much drama there. Focaljet has it's share too, but at least there's some actual knowledgeable people there. My co-sysadmin is also in Philly (I am the sysadmin for FJ), but his Focus is no more, he has a TSX now.
I can defiantly understand the hard driving thing. When my truck was in the shop for a warranty repair a few years ago, I had a loaner Mazda Protege that was a fun car. In the 4 days that I had it I must have put 10,000 miles worth of wear on it.
I am thinking about buying a new daily driver sometime in mid 2007. The Focus is pretty high up on my list. Though by then I am hoping that the Smart car will be available in the U.S. If so I am planning to buy a Smart Roadster.
I needed more than just drums and shoes. Both rear brakes were completely cooked, as in, never going to work again. Shoes and drums were just part of the list of parts required.
When I picked the car up today, it turned out that the rear brake lines had rusted solid and needed to be replaced, so the total came to about $1k parts and labor. They wanted to replace the rear ABS sensor, but wanted $200. I can live without ABS for the six months or so until I sell the damn car and buy a brand new one.
What kind of car is it Doc?
1995 Chrysler Cirrus LX. It's a good car, don't get me wrong, but the money I've been putting into it lately would be better spent on something new. I've been eyeing the Mazda 3 or new VW Jetta, but I still have a lot of research to do.
I had a Blazer once that I watched climb toward 100,000 miles, so the night that I knew it was going to turn the big 10k, my wife and I went driving through town and I brought my camera, and when it just got to the big turnover, I pulled over to the sidewalk to take the pic, but it just so happened that we were in a short stretch of one of the shadier parts of Honolulu, and a young dealer couple came over to the window to sell us some dope, and after waving them off--they looked completely puzzled what we were doing--I took the pics of the odometer with the camera and flash, and while I was flashing away inside of the car on the side of the road in a no-parking area, a cop drove slowly by investigating with quite a scowl and just stared and stared until I smiled and carefully rode off toward 100,001.
My favorite case in point - I paid $8500 for my brand new VW Golf in 1985. Since then I've spent probably over $10K on repairs and parts-replacements, but then it has traveled over 819,000 miles so far. Try and work out how much it would have cost me in total if I had bought a new Golf every 2 or 3 years instead. Include as well the cost of insurance please!
Do the math. One can practically completely rebuild one's older car every couple of years and still come out waaaay ahead of the game. I say a 100,000 mile milestone is just a very good start of a beautiful relationship.
dan k
I'll see your broken handbrake cable and raise you a trailer towing experience:
My dad used to own a 1988 Ford Ranger 2.0L 4cyl that developed 80bhp at the flywheel. We were camping one weekend in 2000, and my dad set the handbrake for the first time ever since he bought the truck in 1988. The cable was fairly badly rusted, and it got stuck, permanently engaging the rear brakes.
So, fast forward 2 days. Its Sunday afternoon, and we all have to get back to the city for school/work the next day. We load up all our gear into the Ranger and go to pull away, only she won't move. After a few attempts Dad remembers the parking brake is engaged. He releases it, but to no avail. He gets out and looks at the cable, which is rusted onto the chassis.
We've gotta get home (and take our stuff with us), so we try different things to get her rolling. Finally, Dad drops the clutch in 1st gear at about 5000RPM and the Ranger (with the trailer in tow and the quad in the box) lurches forward a few feet. We then used that momentum and kept the rig rolling.
However, the Ranger didn't have enough power to go past 3rd gear (on a 5spd transmission). It was fun driving down the highway at 60km/h.
Interestingly enough, there was no damage to anything after that. We had to replace the handbrake cable, obviously, but the brakes, transmission and clutch didn't seem hurt at all. Go figure.
Cheers,
The Czar
Focaljet.com also has a mazda 3 forum, as it's much the same as a Focus (same engine and transmission as the US Focus, same frame as the European Focus and up-and-coming Worldwide Volvo C30). I know quite a few people with Mazda 3's. You should hop on over and check it out.
VWVortex.com is pretty much the place to get info on the Jetta.
The parking brake on my Mazda B3000 (Rebadged Ford Ranger) sometimes sticks in cold weather. Usually if I put it in gear and goose it up to 3K RPM or so it will pop loose.
I hate doing that in parking lots because as it releases I come flying out of the parking spot.
Hopefully it still has plenty of life left in it. My 280Z has over 260,000 miles on it and is doing just fine.
One way I was told about at the auto parts shop is to reach behind the rear wheels and jiggle the cable with the brake released. On some cars/situations that can get the cable to move.