500k
 

My '88 Escort reached 500,000 miles Friday morning. I also gave it a treat Friday a fresh oil and filter change with it's 50,000 mile Slick 50 treatment. My new goal is 600,000 miles. Really didn't know which topic to post this under but since the engine is original I figured engine performance was suitable.

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Engine performance sounds good enough. We should all take advice from you.

About the only advice I can give is keeping the oil and filter changed and making repairs when you know there's something wrong. Most people say there's nothing to Slick 50 and such products and there may not be, but I have given it a treatment every 50K miles since it had 150K miles on it. I also use it in all my other cars. I learned over the years that letting a problem go unattended usually just causes more problems. Oh, by the way this is on convintional motor oil, it's never seen a drop of synthetic. I am also now trying a product called LC-20 you add 1 oz per quart of oil at oil change and 1 oz every 1K miles and they claim you can run the oil for 10K miles without causing any damage. I've been using it now for 25K miles and only changed the oil twice and it hasn't had any effect on oil consumption. I thought a car with this number of miles on it was a good one to test different products on before I started letting my good cars go for such long oil change intervals. I also tried another product called Xado that they claim will repair worn metal parts. I tried it about a year ago and checked the compression on the engine before using it and all the cylinders were 125 psi or less. I rechecked the compression a couple months ago and to my surprise all of them were at or above 150 psi. I would have never beleived it if I hadn't seen it for myself. Both compression tests were dry tests. I never added any oil to any of the cylinders on either test and they were both done at normal operating temperature. I am not selling either of these products nor am I affiliated in any way, but I am going to put links to them in case anyone else in interested in trying them.

https://www.lcdinc.zoovy.com/product/...20_Gallon.html

https://www.xadowest.com/default.asp

If anyone wants to try either product I know there used to be people on eBay that sold the Xado cheaper than it is listed on the site I linked but I haven't checked lately. I don't know if anyone else sells the LC-20 besides the company site or not.

Slick 50 does work, when I was a poor, starving college student in the early 90's my Buick had oil pressure problems. The oil pressure light would come on under 30 MPH. I had the oil pump replaced several times, but it never resolved the issue. Faced with the prospect of trying to either replace the car or the engine (which I didn't have the funds to do either) I decided to dump a bottle of Slick 50 in, and just drive it. I drove that car for 2 years, and over 30,000 miles with the oil pressure light on before I could afford a new engine.

I don't know if the Slick 50 helped (I remember back in the day when it was a MLM type of product, never trusted it because of that), but it sure hasn't hurt. Hard to beat a properly taken-care-of Ford for longevity! (Although I've seen a few Hondas and Toyotas that had over 400k in junkyards, and a couple Geo Metros with over 300k...)

Drat. I saw some Slick 50 on the discount shelf at WalMart yesterday, I should have gotten it...

Besides dealing with compression and lubrication and fixing problems when they arise, what else do you do differently from normal people to keep the car as a whole running for so long? I think a lot of (maybe most) cars go to the junkyard not because of an internal engine failure related to oil or compression, but rather because their monthly repair bill (wheel bearings this month, CV joints last month, ignition components before, heater core before that, etc) is more than the monthly payment on a better-running replacement.

I'm sure that doing most repairs yourself helps, but how do you avoid having enough various things wear out / fail / rot every month to make it worthwhile?

I think living in NC helps alot. I've never gotten rid of a vehicle with a bad motor. But when there is not enough vehicle to hold the motor up, it's done.
My parents just got rid of a 87 dodge caravan with close to 400k, but they washed it every time they drove it in the winter and kept it in a garage.

That's one of the nice things about living in Southern California. I have a friend who moved out here from Detroit in 1968. His first impression of California was that people out here were poor because they drove so many old cars. Eventually he realized that people drove so many old cars because they didn't rust away in five years here.

The car also has lots of Auto Zone lifetime parts, front brake pads, rear brake shoes, right & left tie rod ends, right and left control arms (ball joints), steering rack, right and left front axles, clutch, pressure plate, throw out bearing, ignition module, front and rear struts, fuel pump and water pump, plus there may be others I can't think of right now. I also use salvage yard parts sometimes especially it's something like an electrical sensor that usually lasts for years anyway. So as you can see just from the lifetime parts I've covered a large percentage of the normal wear parts.

501,000