mileage for a used car

kittiej

Thanks to everyone on this thread because you've given me a bit of hope re my own car.

I always thought 100k on a diesel engine to be acceptable, but others don't share this idea.

Could I ask what you would consider to be an unacceptable mileage for a diesel engine - on average, 1)say for a car used mainly for motorway journeys, 2)used mainly for urban driving or 3) a mixture of both?

Hammyman

Hmmm. I've bought them before with 150,000 on but then again, they've been fairly old ones. I'd want to be seeing at least 12,000 miles per year average on whatever I was buying. You can tell the difference between a motorway tramper and a former taxi with the high milers..the taxi interior (especially drivers seat) and controls will be far more worn.

Flying-High_2

All depends on how they've been serviced.... People seem truly chuffed that their car has acheived 100+k miles nowadays... And????... Big deal.

mkirkby

At the extreme I have an old (1991) mercedes diesel that has 340,000 miles on it. Still uses no oil and there are many around the world with over 500,000 miles.

That's from a period when Mercedes used to make decent cars though..

Must modern non-performance (read slowish) diesel cars should be ok to at least 200,000. (non-performance would mean they haven't been thrashed because there's no point in doing so )

mkirkby

Flying-High wrote: »

People seem truly chuffed that their car has acheived 100+k miles nowadays... And????... Big deal.

It's called saving money

Flying-High_2

mkirkby wrote: »

At the extreme I have an old (1991) mercedes diesel that has 340,000 miles on it. Still uses no oil and there are many around the world with over 500,000 miles.

That's from a period when Mercedes used to make decent cars though..

Must modern non-performance (read slowish) diesel cars should be ok to at least 200,000. (non-performance would mean they haven't been thrashed because there's no point in doing so )

Exactly what I was getting at......

100K is nothing but people seem really chuffed that "It's made it"....

mkirkby

Flying-High wrote: »

Exactly what I was getting at......

100K is nothing but people seem really chuffed that "It's made it"....

Ah....point made. *note to self...must read comments properly...*

Lum

Well back in the 80s, and for a petrol, it was an acheivement for some cars.

I remember looking at Mk4 Ford Escorts in scrapyards and noticing that they almost always had around 98,000 miles on the clock, give or take a thousand, which made me a bit nervous for mine, which was approaching that sort of figure.

At around 98,500 miles, my camshaft snapped in half and trashed the engine.

Kilty_2

Triskaidekaphobia wrote: »

So you'd rather a 3 year old 100,000 mile car than a 4 year old 40,000 mile car that cost the same?

I'd hope we'd be talking about a 6-8 year old car, not one just a year older, otherwise the high miler is overpriced.

Red_Cat

Lum wrote: »

Well back in the 80s, and for a petrol, it was an acheivement for some cars.

I remember looking at Mk4 Ford Escorts in scrapyards and noticing that they almost always had around 98,000 miles on the clock, give or take a thousand, which made me a bit nervous for mine, which was approaching that sort of figure.

At around 98,500 miles, my camshaft snapped in half and trashed the engine.

Camshaft snap - that's a failure you don't want to see aliong with crankshaft snap and con rods thrown out the side of the block.