Practically Used Homestead Wheels

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4. Treat your car or truck as you should any tool and take care of it. Especially, keep it in tune—so that the correct gas and air charge gets a hot spark to detonate inside the engine at the right time. Hire it done for $50 if you must, better to get a book, wrench set, feeler gauges, timing light, and tachometer and learn how to keep your car in tune in your own garage. Go to Instant-Lube or buy ramps, grease gun and a drain-pan and change engine oil and filter and lubricate from one end to another each 2,500 miles or two months. Inspect, clean and gap spark plugs and points, change air and fuel filters every three months. Change all lubricants, points, plugs and distributor cap and adjust valves each six months. Perform all other routine maintenance twice as often as repair manuals direct (at half the recommended mileage). Replace all belts, ignition wires, fuel pump and coil every 20,000 miles or two years, all hoses and water pump every 40,000 miles or five years and replace battery six months short of its recommended service life.

After investing less than $250 for tools and then an hour's work and $50 every month after that, you will have a good-starting, reliable, clean-burning vehicle and preempt 99% of problems before they happen.

Checking Out An Older Used Car

The old saw "Buying a used car is buying another driver's problems" needn't be true. As much of the old iron has been well maintained as abused. First, decide in advance not to believe a word from an owner or used car salesman. Even the most honest will gloss a "unit's" bad points and exaggerate the good—if he/she knows them; auction vehicles at used car lots come as is without any history.

A few quick checks will give you an idea of the vehicle's life story. Walk around the car. Kick the tires if you want, but also check tread for degree and evenness of wear. Scalloped edges or worn shoulders indicate suspension problems. Push down hard on one rear fender; if the car bounces more than three times it needs shocks, which is minor, but suggests neglect.

Look underneath. A rusty muffler and exhaust can be replaced easily and a rusty gas tank or broken spring with effort, but a rusty or fractured frame can't. Unless wrecked at some time, the frame will be even and straight in all dimensions. It can have no deep, flaky rustcalled rot. Doors, trunk, and hood should mate well with body; if not, it may have been wrecked. Go around the body, tapping. A dead THUNK! means rust or a wreck that's been patched with fiberglass and resin (Bondo) that won't last. Patchwork paint tells that body panels have been replaced.

Wear of (original) seats, floor mat, and pedals will indicate age. Look under trunk and floor mats and dig under bubbly paint for hidden rust. Light surface rust can be ground off and filled in. Fenders, doors, trunk, hood, and floors can usually be re placed. But, it can be nigh impossible to repair deep rust on any visible part that can't be unbolted: where water pools around windows, in angular dents and crevasses, in compound curves in the top or main body shell. Look hard under chrome trim, rubber gaskets, gas fillers and rings around lights. You can have sections cut out of junkyard cars and welded into yours, but it isn't cheap. Find your vehicle in the body-parts section of JC Whitney or a special interest car parts catalog: rust on any parts they don't sell may be terminal.

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