Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2001 19:38:24 GMT From: Emanuel Brown <epbrown01nopsamnet> Subject: Re: Toyota in top five again (JD Power....)
On 02 Oct 2001 18:11:42 GMT, davehinznopsamcop.net wrote: >> I don't agree with that. The times I've received the survey, > >Multiple times? I've never even seen a survey from those folks. You have to buy a new car, I think. Both times I received it was within months of getting a new car. > >OK, being that you've seen 'em, and I haven't, I'll take your word for that. >However - is this long-term? Are they asking about 10 year old cars? >Reliability is more than just 3 years/36,000 miles. I think they eventually stop sending them to you if they don't receive responses. With my Honda Prelude, I kept getting them until I moved. The Chevy that was my first new car purchase was sold within a year, and I never answered a survey on that one. > >> I can imagine the skew that Rolls-Royce gets, for instance. Mine >> died on the road recently and I had a devil of the time convincing the >> tow service it was an actual Rolls-Royce because "those *never* break >> down!" (though the official RR term is "fail to proceed"); I had to >> explain that it was driver error, which it was. > >What kind of 'driver error', if I may ask? > Pretty much all of them. The AC compressor in the car seized and stopped turning, eventually causing the belts to wear through and break. The same belts drive the alternator, so the battery stopped charging. I bought the Rolls-Royce in March of this year from an estate - it hadn't been driven in 8 years when I got it. My errors were the following: When I replaced the belts while bringing the car back into service, I didn't save the old ones as spares and keep them in the trunk. Always a good idea. I smelled burning rubber at the last fill-up and didn't investigate. It was the belts rubbing against the non-moving AC compressor, of course. There were chunks on the wheel of it when I opened the hood. I set out on a 500-mile round trip in a 35 year-old car with no tools. I'd taken the Rolls-Royce kit out of the car for polishing up, my Porsche kit was incompatible, and my Sears Craftsman stuff too heavy to bother with. The belts broke 100 miles on the way there. I drove another 150 miles there with the alternator light on, and another 145 *back* the same way. I passed an Autozone TWICE will in Indianapolis and didn't stop in. An adjustable wrench and two GM Matchmaker belts model 36201 would have solved things, or even one emergency belt looped between the fan and alternator. I had the windows down (hey, no AC and it was a warm day). When the battery finally gave out 5 miles from home, I couldn't raise the electric windows. There was a cloudburst within SECONDS of the car dying. I've just finished drying the interior :-) The only things I didn't do was take along a box of nails to sprinkle around the car when I parked it, or play the radio to wear the battery down sooner. Other than that, I was pretty much Forrest Gump's dimmer brother... The real irony - I didn't take the Porsche, which I usually use for road trips, because I figured there'd be lots of RRs there. There was only ONE, a later Silver Cloud. The majority were MGBs, though I saw some fantastic MGAs, Austin-Healy Sprites, 3000s and 100/4s, and a few Jaguar E-types. But overall, the show was a bust for me... Emanuel "Everybody wants a normal life and a cool car; most people settle for the car." Chris Titus http://home.att.net/~epbrown01/1966-rolls.jpg http://home.att.net/~epbrown01/1983-porsche.jpg
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