500,000 miles on my Yaris.

[bad]

Trini, did you ever change the spark plugs or battery?

[nookandcrannycar]

Originally Posted by bad

Trini, did you ever change the spark plugs or battery?

He changes his spark plugs and his serpentine belt every 100,000 miles. He also runs synthetic oil and changes his oil and filter every 5,000 miles.

I can't find the post, but he had a guarantee on his Wal-Mart battery that by 2010 was no longer offered. He was getting his battery replaced every year for free by Wal-Mart (I imagine that he took the battery to Wal-Mart each year and the quarantee must have allowed free replacement if not meeting a certain benchmark). I don't think I've ever seen a battery warranty duration of longer than 5 years, so I imagine that warranty is no longer in place (assuming he replaced the OEM also at 1 year). IIRC, he does all of the repairs and
maintenance himself.

[bronsin]

Originally Posted by nookandcrannycar

He was getting his battery replaced every year for free by Wal-Mart (I imagine that he took the battery to Wal-Mart each year and the quarantee must have allowed free replacement if not meeting a certain benchmark). .

Why would a battery wear out in only a year?

[Kal-El]

Originally Posted by bronsin

Why would a battery wear out in only a year?

He seemed to maintain/replace things prematurely. Like replacing his synthetic oil every 2 weeks. Total waste of money. If you're driving 5,000 highway miles every 2 weeks or so, you could run synthetic for 15,000-20,000 miles and it would come out nearly as clean as new.

[iA_b4_07HB]

I think the filter quality might be the limiting factor. An OEM Toyota filter was "designed" to go 7,500 miles between oil changes (because back then Toyota thought 7,500 mile conventional oil changes were ok). Now it's not certain what filter life Toyota has in mind - on older models with 5k intervals, I'm sure they didn't lower the materials or specs on their filters. Then again on newer models with full synthetic specified - with resultant 10k oil change intervals - I doubt they redesigned the filters upwards.

So in short I think between 7.5k and 10k with full synthetic should have been fine.

But why experiment extending the oil change interval when gas is (relatively) expensive and jugs of full synthetic from Walmart are (relatively) cheap.

What's funny is the "leftover" jug oil (or "quart" bottle oil, for that matter never goes to waste. For me, it's hard to store because I only drive about 8k per year. For him, pouring the leftover into one of his jugs will fill it up...before I even get to my next oil change. Amazing.

Originally Posted by Kal-El

He seemed to maintain/replace things prematurely. Like replacing his synthetic oil every 2 weeks. Total waste of money. If you're driving 5,000 highway miles every 2 weeks or so, you could run synthetic for 15,000-20,000 miles and it would come out nearly as clean as new.

[nookandcrannycar]

Originally Posted by bronsin

Why would a battery wear out in only a year?

CTScott has posted re the technical aspect of the effect of temperature on batteries. I imagine the effects in South Florida (where Trini lives) would be similar to SE Texas. My Wal-Mart battery only lasted about 16 months.