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REPO Man
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by REPO Man Thu Jul 29, 2021 2:24 pm

How does owning a car in NYC work out? I imagine only people who drive for a living would have a car. I mean, between insurance, gas and general upkeep, not to mention parking, I'd imagine it'd be tiresome and expensive.

That's why I wouldn't bother with a car.
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Gucci
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by Gucci Thu Jul 29, 2021 3:35 pm

New York City consists of other boroughs outside of Manhattan. Four others to be exact, where a car is more necessary. For example: Staten Island is primarily suburban with a literal dot of urbanization at the very northern part where the ferry that takes you to the southern tip of Manhattan is located. A car is generally necessary here. Brooklyn and Queens is quite a bit more urbanized but a car is still very useful in those boroughs (Bronx too as you go closer to what is considered “upstate”).

And while a car is a lot less necessary in Manhattan, I’ll be driving this weekend to SoHo as mass transit is a headache to deal with in general for me during weekend service schedules.
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o.pwuaioc
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by o.pwuaioc Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:15 pm

Gucci wrote:New York City consists of other boroughs outside of Manhattan. Four others to be exact, where a car is more necessary. For example: Staten Island is primarily suburban with a literal dot of urbanization at the very northern part where the ferry that takes you to the southern tip of Manhattan is located. A car is generally necessary here. Brooklyn and Queens is quite a bit more urbanized but a car is still very useful in those boroughs (Bronx too as you go closer to what is considered “upstate”).

And while a car is a lot less necessary in Manhattan, I’ll be driving this weekend to SoHo as mass transit is a headache to deal with in general for me during weekend service schedules.

To add to this, not every apartment is close to a subway line or a grocery store. If you're out in Kew Gardens or Forest Hills, you probably have a car, or at least plenty of houses have a car outside. And then you get out into Jamaica or East New York and you'll be praying for more buses if you don't have a car.

It's a 15 minute walk from the nearest subway stop to the Golden Corral in the Bronx. If you time it just right, you can save a couple minutes by hopping on a bus, but otherwise you'll be waiting.

I'm thankful I never needed to have a car - I always lived close (enough) to a subway stop.
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Ziggy587
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by Ziggy587 Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:08 pm

Gucci wrote:
Ack wrote:
Ziggy587 wrote:My car passed 100k today. Not sure if that's a smile or a frown. Probably a bit of both.

Might wanna get that checked. That's a lot of stuff to come out of your car's bowels.

They used to recommend a tune up at that mile mark. Is that still a thing with modern cars today? I’m at around 125k-130k now. I have a 2012 Honda based on a generation that came out in 2008. I vaguely remember doing something at 100k.

The travel from NYC to Northern NJ used to put 300 miles minimum a week on my car. I did that for roughly seven years. But during the pandemic up until this past July I barely used the car since I worked from home. Not using the car has its own problems of course. I used it during that time but absolutely no where near pre-pandemic levels.


The 100k thing is more of an old man's thing. It's not a bad guideline. But cars will have maintenance spelled out in the owners manual, and specify what you should do at what mile markers. I like to do as much as I can myself, so I've already done some "tune up" type stuff over the past couple of years. Stuff like spark plugs, transmission fluid, et cetera. I should probably thumb through the manual though and see if there's anything I'm forgetting. In fact, I just remembered that I should probably do a radiator flush.

I had a similar commute, I was doing about 350+ miles a week for about 3 years, then closer to 300 a week for another 3 or so years. But then I stopped making that commute in April of 2020, and drove hardly at all for about a year. I filled my gas tank in April just before I stopped making the commute, and I had that tank of gas for quite a few months LOL. I know common wisdom says that gas goes bad, but I didn't have an issue. After I ran that tank down though, I made sure to keep the gas level low, knowing that I wasn't driving much. I didn't have any issues with the car sitting, although I made sure to run it at least once a week anyway.
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by MrPopo Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:26 pm

So my commute has been a 12 minute surface streets drive since moving to SoCal, and obviously with Covid the driving went down even further. When commuting I filled up once a month, now I fill up once a quarter (weekly grocery runs). All the old maintenance targets are much further out now. If you're using synthetic oil then it's 6k rather than 3k miles and you don't need to worry about breakdown over time as much.
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Ziggy587
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by Ziggy587 Thu Jul 29, 2021 7:36 pm

So my car is one of those synthetic only deals (0W-20) and they say to change it every 10k. That sounded extreme to me, so when I first got the car I was splitting the difference and going around 7,500 between changes. But with that commute, oil changes were too frequent for me so I eventually just went to 10k and haven't had a problem. And by "a problem" I mean the oil doesn't look too bad when it comes out and I'm not loosing any, or at least any amount that's significant. But since I haven't been driving the car, I actually didn't do an oil change in over a year now. My maintenance dash light just came out, which trips every 5k. Usually I just reset it and use one of my trips to count 10k, so the next time the light comes on I know to do an oil change. But this time I decided to just do it at 5k since it's been forever. Well, it's gonna be 5k and change because it's just been too damn hot out!
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by marurun Thu Jul 29, 2021 8:43 pm

Typically oil changes and some other maintenance tasks are ever x miles OR c months, whichever comes sooner. I was advised that if I didn’t drive enough miles in my car I should at least have an oil change every year.
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by Gucci Thu Jul 29, 2021 10:30 pm

The only thing I have in my car is a maintenance minder thing — represented as a percentage that decreases. At 15% it’ll spit out a code to change the oil plus some other thing like tire rotation or coolant flush. Apparently it’s tied to mileage.

Honestly the biggest thing I’ve had issues with is battery trouble. I’ve had to replace batteries four times in the last nine years of ownership.
No matter what stuff I put on the connectors, I still get acid issues too. Not sure if it’s repeated to weather, mileage, or the eventual alternator issue.

The most terrified thing that happened to me was my alternator going while driving. I was on the New Jersey Turnpike and it was pouring out. At first, I was trying to accelerate and it wouldn’t go. The car was on and it didn’t feel like the car was stalling. it eventually accelerated normally. Then as I was getting off the TP fearing a bigger issue, the headlights and internal lights were flickering. I got super lucky and was able to park in a hospital parking lot and the car was done.
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by Ziggy587 Fri Jul 30, 2021 7:02 am

What brand batteries are you putting in? Currently I have a Toyota, and for a while now I've been getting most of my parts from the dealer. The dealer parts are almost always more expensive, but I've realized that most parts aren't that much more than what you'd get at Auto Zone or Advance Auto (the two big auto parts chains around here) but are much superior. And in fact, some things are really the same price. So the Toyota battery is only something like $10 or $15 more than the Duralast Gold (Auto Zone) and has a 7 year warranty. If you changed your battery 4 times in 9 years, that's about once every two years. From my experience, two years is really only you should expect from cheap batteries. I've certainly had them longer, but even after 2 years they start to show signs. Like acid build up at the terminals and losing strength for cold starts when the temperature is super low.

I've been in a car when the alternator went. It's definitely weird. You'd think the car would just suddenly not have enough power anymore and then stall. But it doesn't, it's like an alien encounter in the X-Files or something. :lol: That's terrifying though, breaking down on a busy highway. Especially during rush hour. My last car was in great shape, but was old. I got a newer car simply for peace of mind. I couldn't imagine stalling on the LIE during rush hour.
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Re: What Made you Smile/What Ticked you off Today?

by marurun Fri Jul 30, 2021 7:08 am

I have the maintenance minder in my Honda. But that’s not geared for people who never drive, basically. I had an alternator go out on my old Mazda. Car was never the same. The electrical took some damage and every alternator replacement would die within a few months to a year. It was sad.
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