Check CodesĮven if your dash does not show any codes, bring your car down to the auto part store and ask them to read any codes on your car. If you start looking at things like fluids and batteries and you start to see some concerning things, bring it to the shop for them to take a deeper look.Ĭheck over your car with the following list to be sure you feel comfortable taking your car on a long road tip. This list of things can be checked at home or by a shop. If those things are good, go on to this more detailed list. This printable checklist will help you remember the points in this post. These are the things most likely to strand you on your trip. The most important things to check are the tires and the battery. S ee our list of most and least reliable new cars.Print the checklist! What do I need to check before a road trip? In the following pages, we tell you what to expect as your car ages, and how to make sure it becomes a 200,000-mile champ. Whatever your reasons-saving money, the comfort of familiarity, avoiding the worry of new car dings and scratches-it can be a rewarding experience to keep your car going. These days, though, with used-car prices more than 50 percent above pre-pandemic levels and the average new car price over $46,000, it may be especially smart to hang on to what you have. Taking care of and holding on to a reliable car-rather than buying or leasing a new one every few years-is almost always a smart financial move. “That way you know it’ll probably go pretty far if you take care of it.” “It helps to get a good car to begin with,” he says, echoing CR’s long-standing advice to buy models with a strong track record for reliability. If you take care of your car, it will take care of you.”įred Hellrich, who lives in Annapolis, Md., says he has had several cars pass the 200,000-mile mark-and a couple of vehicles that made it more than 400,000 miles-everything from a Chevrolet van to a Toyota Tercel. John Ibbotson, Consumer Reports’ chief mechanic, says, “It’s not rocket science. I also put some effort into keeping my cars clean to protect against corrosion and to make them look nice. But neglecting small repairs and maintenance issues as they crop up is a bad habit that can shorten your car’s life. After all, there’s plenty that can go wrong with a car that could, technically, be ignored if the car still starts and gets you to where you need to go. I always stay on top of regular maintenance, and I take care of even small repairs before they can become bigger, more expensive issues. Now, years later, my job is to research and write about automotive repair and maintenance, but you don’t need to be an expert to get your car to that milestone. I’ve owned a handful of other cars that rolled through 200,000-plus miles since then. That pride remained for me years later, when I was still driving the same Camry past its 300,000-mile mark. It was a silly thing to do, but we felt a collective sense of pride that the car was still going strong with all those grueling suburban commuter miles piled on. We were in the middle of running that afternoon’s errands, but he pulled over to the side of the road so that he, my brother, and I could sing “Happy Birthday” to the car to mark its major milestone. One day during my high school years, my dad got excited because the odometer on his car-a 1983 Toyota Camry hatchback he’d bought used several years earlier-was about to reach 200,000 miles.
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