hey swedge
Maybe they should get two of these, and a kayak trailer:
http://www.mcnews.com.au/Testing/Yamaha/WR-2trac/Page1.htm
3 vehicles is our minimum.
Due to our location and jobs combined with lack of public transportation we keep 3 vehicles up and running because if one breaks we still have to get to work. Carpooling isn’t really possible as we both have non firm start and end times and work about 15 miles apart. Daily driving is 100 mile each at a minimum with no errands to run. This is the price we pay to live in Western Mass. In order to live in a quiet country area you have to drive to work.
On the plus side I can make the Deerfield River in as little as 10 minutes depending on what type of river recreation I might wish to enjoy on that day.
Ed
That’s what we’re at now
It was five vehicles for a while; that’s when I decided my 3 were too much to take care of, and wasteful.
Maybe someone in your neighborhood would be interested in plowing that mile or so the county puts at the bottom of its priority list? We’ve had people in our neighborhood do stuff like that, once in a great while. The worst time, someone hired a guy with a bulldozer to plow, pick up, and dump the snow over the sides. IIRC, it cost a few thousand dollars and took 2 and a half days. Household contributions ranged from $50 to $500 each.
More recently, someone plowed the road because they thought the county had done a lousy job.
Buy A Subaru
I have two Subarus.
The first is a 1998 Subaru Legacy wagon. It has over 150,000 miles and has never had a breakdown or a major repair. If you change the oil regularly and follow a regular preventative maintenance schedule you’ll be fine. Changing the brakes is a snap and only requires loosening one bolt.
My second is a 2001 Forester. It has 90,000 miles and also has never had a breakdown or major repair.
I use Yakima racks with 78" loadbars to haul 2 canoes. I’ve had both vehicles loaded to the gills with gear, scouts, etc for excursions to the Adirondacks and Algonquin. You won’t be disappointed with a good used model.
I shed a tear when…
– Last Updated: Jan-09-08 7:25 PM EST –
...my old Subaru wagon died. It was an older one--1987 GL wagon--and though it wasn't "all wheel drive", it did have 4WD whenever I needed to use it. Otherwise, it was front wheel drive, and it was a great boat/gear hauling car with decent mpg (even carried two singles and a tandem on the racks).
I now have a small Nissan PU truck, and while it's also a great boat hauler, I still miss the Subaru. At least I can haul messy/heavy stuff with the truck and not get the cab all dirty.
Melissa
The establlished locals
will come right out and help you when you get stuck but they are uninterested in plowing as the vehicle of choice for most of them has about 12 inches of ground clearance. I have done the road in front of my place and one of the neighbors a couple time so when the plow does come there is less to get rid of at the end of the driveway but I don’t have a registered plow vehicle so further down the road is not really an option.
Ed
Consideration w/new Subaru or Honda
We got a Subaru Outback a year ago December, the slightly upped package with the 17 inch rims, and have been quite happy with it allover. The heated seats and auto-dim mirror that come with the package are pretty darned nice too. However, you should think about the hauling space you need. We went from two Mercury Sable wagons to the remaining '03 Sable and the Outback, and the gear room space is considerably less in the Subaru. We ended up taking the Sable to Maine for our 3 week haul-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink vacation this year rather than the Suby when we gauged the space.
The Honda Element, its nearest competitor in many ways, solves the space issue nicely.
There is something that you should be aware of with both of these vehicles though - as of 2007 all Hondas, and the middle package set of Subaru Outback or Forester (the 2.5i Outback with no further description), have a tire pressure sensor system. There is a sensor in all the wheels that, I have to admit, works quite nicely as a safety feature. It alerted me to look at the tire and find a small impact bubble that I’d normally never have seen so early.
But there is a downside to this one. If anyone other than a dealer takes the tire off the rim, the warranty on at least the tire pressure sensor is voided. I haven’t asked if the warranty issue goes further.
There are some alternatives that I haven’t checked on - buying your own snows and taking them to the dealership to have them mounted, or maybe buying spare rims entirely with snow tires mounted, that kind of thing. I’ll have occassion to confirm this for next winter. But if you live well away from a dealership and are looking at a new Suby or Honda, you probably want to check the details on how that tire pressure system warranty works.
I believe that the tie sensor is
now federally mandated as required equpiment for a vehicle to be sold in the states.
Ed
A tire pressure monitor is required
– Last Updated: Jan-10-08 10:45 AM EST –
but it does not necessarily have to use pressure transducers in the wheels. Some manufacturers use the antilock brake wheel speed sensors to detect one wheel moving at a different speed than the others, of course those that never check their tire pressures won't get much benefit from that system.
Mini rant: Yet another reason why we won't see inexpensive small cars like the Tata NANO over here.
Sensors
Last time I was in Discount Tires, they were explaining the remount procedure to a customer. They evidently have to charge more for mounting.
second that rant
L
hey i would love to try one of those… see how it hangs with my XR… I think it would rock in deep snotty mud!!
Just wait
you are approaching the threshold where the cars tend to get costly. Of course you may be an exception, and I wish this to be the case for you! To me 150k is not a lot of miles, and I’d expect almost any newer car to pull that off with minimal issues.
Far more important than oil changes every 3k (this is actually mostly wasteful) is coolant system maintenance on these cars.
Very few people really understand oil, and for them I recommend the following read:
http://63.240.161.99/motoroil/index.html
Before the Subaru zealouts go off on me let me say that I own one now (wife’s), and have owned four since 1979, have a friend who retired well after owning a Subaru only repair shop, blah blah…
They are fine machines overall and represent good value and capability.
car options
Seriously, it sounds to me like your entire fleet of cars is fairly unsuited to your conditions. You’d save a fortune if you each drove a gas sipper to/from work. Seriously, how much of the year involves lots of heavy snow? A fairly small part. Then, for those times when you’ve gotta deal with the snow, get yourself a winter vehicle or two.
Something old with a good engine (who cares what it looks like, right?), good ground clearance, and some awd or 4wd system that actually works. Old pickups work well and so do old jeeps. Yep, when you do drive these to work in the wintertime, you’ll burn lots of gas, but they’ll be used sparingly the rest of the year and the gas sippers will get the nod when it’s nice.
I’ve driven lots of little cars (85 Dodge Omni, 88 Toyota Tercel EZ hatch, 07 Honda Fit Sport), a sedan (91 Dodge Spirit), and a 2wd pickup (98 Ford Ranger). The worst car in bad weather was the sedan. The tercel was AMAZING in the snow. It was so small and lightweight that it went right over the top of everything. Even the 2wd pickup wasn’t too bad. I managed to drive it out of my unplowed neighborhood in Michigan in 2ft of fresh snow to get onto the plowed city streets to get to work. The Honda came with some fancy street tires, and this winter has been exceptionally mild, so the verdict is not yet in on this car’s winter handling.
My experience is that it’s much more difficult to get traction in the snow in a car with an auto tranny. If you’ve got a manual, it gives you a huge advantage in that you have more control over the power given to the wheels. The tercel, ranger, and fit have all been manuals. The omni and the spirit were autos.
FYI, I got 35mpg in the Fit with a canoe on the roof going 65-70 between Baltimore and Pittsburgh. I have achieved as high as 37mpg highway still with the Thule rack on top. I usually average about 32-35 in suburban driving. It’s got more cargo space in back than my wife’s Jeep Liberty. It can hold 4 (healthy non-overweight) adults fairly comfortably, but if you want to fit 5, it’ll have to be 3 small kids in the back seat b/c the back seat is a bit narrow.
Actually the fleet is quite well suited.
The only problem we have is that we want to get her a car to drive when its crappy. The area we live in, about 900 feet msl, has snow on the ground from november-december to around april. 5 minutes away the roads are bare. If she would only start sleeping in her car on the side of the road I wouldn’t have to find her a car to climb the hill. Presently the fleet average is about 25 mpg, which isn’t bad when you consider all the crap that I haul around on a daily basis.
Ed
Should be rare occurrence on either. . .
. . . that one would need to replace tires on a vehicle w/ less than 36k miles on it. After that, the warranty is dead anyway, so not much of a problem . . . .
OK
one more question Do YOU have problems driving to the clear road? or is it just her? hey somebody had to ask the question… Or does she just have the “New car disease” L Now in my line of thinking i figure if only SHE has the problem, then she will probably STILL have the problem no matter what vehicle you get. OTOH if she is working and just wants a new car, she can go out and get what she wants, as HER opinion is the only one that really matters right?? and you know she already has some foofoo AWD sedan picked out. L So if you have to get a FOOFOO vehicle try to talk her into an 08 EVO Lancer… or an Impreza WRX STI… L
Other reasons to change a tire
There are reasons to change a tire other than it wearing out. The impact bubble was likely hitting a huge pothole just around the corner from me a while earlier, left over from the city’s water main repair. The same pothole took the wheel off a car the day after I found it. It’s not frequent, but I’ve probably had a pothole-caused tire issue every three years up here usually from springtime car-eating potholes on local roads.
For winter in the northeast, I have typically had full snow tires mounted in the fall and pulled them off each spring. I haven’t done it yet with the Subaru because of the 4 wheel drive and the quality of the tires it came with, but my travel expectations and the wear of the tires will probably have me starting that cycle this coming fall. And most new cars suggest ongoing tire rotation - don’t know if the tires come off the rim for that but it’s a possibility.
The warranty is another factor. As the cars have gotten increasingly loaded with electronic components that cost an arm and a leg to replace, we’ve found that the more extended warranties have made financial sense.
Impreza
– Last Updated: Jan-11-08 4:28 PM EST –
Great little car if her car doesn't have to be big stuff hauler. My sister's family lives on the worst road, with the worst driveway, in a town in Vermont that is already defined mostly vertically. They've had heavy equipment that came up when they needed a new well dug literally fall off their driveway in the early spring, a number of four wheel drive cars have ended up in the sumac bushes - they finally created a parking spot halfway up for things like utility trucks so that people can get to the place to do any work. And they still all come with large chucks to put behimd the wheels. I may be the only person other than her husband who has managed to get a two wheel drive car up that driveway every time without incident, though I don't even try beyond 8 inches of snow and I've asked him to get it back down again more than once when I saw ice.
They have had two Imprezas, and they have been great little cars for the conditions. You may want to take a hard look at this vehicle since you are really looking for a commuter car.
Not just her. Her car.
The first time she couldn’t make it home I went down to rescue her. Gave her the truck and told her I would drive the car home. You know typical macho man attitude, I can make it. No, I couldn’t. I went around (a long way around) and through judicious use of the throttle made it home. She and I haven’t bought a new car in a very long time. She bought one in 1991 and I bought the truck in 2002. All the other vehicles are freebies from people that didn’t want them and couldn’t get anything worthwhile on trade.
Ed