As i read these post I see that a lot of you folks are doing proactive maintenance. I use to be that way but I dont do it any more.

I learned a valueable secret....

for example, you decide to change the vacuum pump gasket on a working vacuum pump. You get it off, things go well until you put it back on. Then you tear the boot and now your in trouble.

It always works like that on these old cars.

A friend of mine is always breaking his car and it sits for days because he is so proactive. Prime example is the oil cooler lines look old. So you decide to change them. You strip the tread on the oil cooler and now your getting another one.

Your better off to just let the thing break whatever it maybe and then just repair it. I bet there is a lot of you who have learned this lesson.

if it ain't broke don'y fix it.


oil cooler lines, though?.....

flame suit there cowboy

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Proactive maintenance is well proven as a major way to reduce wear and tear on your car and prevent major problems. Businesses that own Fleets of vehicles have studied and continue to study and update there maintenance procedures because it saves them money.

A leak in an Oil Cooler hose can only leak more if left alone and member have reported that their hose/s gave out and some unexpected time on the road.

I also lost some threads off of my Oil Cooler when I was going to change the hoses; but it was much better to deal with it in my driveway than on the road somewhere. I am not sorry that I changed the hoses (in my case I decided to change only the hose itself not the whole hose assembly) as it was going to need to be done anyway and the threads were going to strip if I did it later anyway.

The good news is that if you take sometime and search and read through a bunch of Threads on the job you are about to do before you start the job you can plan for some of the problems and plan more time to deal with them.

In the past I earned my living as a Mechanic and even with a bunch of tools, training and technical resources available jobs can still go sour.

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

This is a contentious area -- how often to do certain kinds of maintenance, etc. It might be safer to start another oil thread!

The challenges we face are almost all due to the fact that we are working on 20+ year old cars that have not had maintenance in some areas ever before in their lives. Some parts will be frozen with age. A follow-up frustration is that we, the current owners, will probably never have to do that particular maintenance step again on that car (so anything we learn will not help us, although it may help someone else).

Some maintenance projects are inherently riskier than others. Oil cooler lines are one of the better examples of a risky procedure because of the metals that are used. If the lines aren't leaking it's probably better to leave them alone; if they are leaking, it's better to deal with them on your time and in your own garage than try to squeak out a few more miles and get stuck along the road somewhere.

Other items are more open for argument. For example, every time you change glow plugs, there's a risk of the old plug being stuck. Do you minimize this by disturbing the glow plugs as few times as possible (by changing only the bad ones) or do you change all of them at once?

Are there ways to minimize the risk next time? Anti-seize on threaded connections? Proper choice of replacement parts? Substitutions? This is why we have the forum, so we can discuss these things and learn from each other.

Jeremy

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"Buster" in the '95

Our all-Diesel family
1996 E300D (W210) . .338,000 miles Wife's car
2005 E320 CDI . . 113,000 miles My car
Santa Rosa population 176,762 (2022)
Total. . . . . . . . . . . . 627,762
"Oh lord won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz."
-- Janis Joplin, October 1, 1970

I guess I fit in proactive category. Buying parts and then replacing them as I either do them myself or pay to have others do what I can't or am unwilling to do. Much nicer doing things in home area than broken down on road trip halfway across country. Things need to be replaced to have the car as nice as when it was new or close to new condition. I had one indie tell me how much to do something but he ordered parts, I found another who lets me order parts and he just charges labor, I'll go with second guy , because I figure anything I replace needs to be replaced and any new part is better than the old wore out part now on car. Have no problem with where I've gotten parts in past. As stated, some of these are 20 or more year old cars and things just need to be replaced, much easier on mechanic to replace something than to fix something, much less labor involved.

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86 300SDL

If you have a Mechanic do the work for you buying your own parts saves you money.
Shops mark up the parts they sell at lest 15-20% and in some shops the mechanic gets a percentage of the part sales. Also, shops sometimes do not get a good deal on their parts; meaning the cheapest parts available as they buy from who they have an account with.
I will give NAPA as an example. The one place I work bought from them wholesale for resale on the repaired product. Yet often we got parts that cost more then I could have bought them for at the local Auto Parts store. But NAPA delivered the parts and they could buy them on credit and the Bookkeeper did not want to deal with and keep track of several different accounts.
The result was that the customer paid more for the job

Some negatives to buying your own parts.
If you bought the wrong part and the Mechanic tries to put it on. You would have to pay him/her for the time used to try to install the wrong part.
If something goes wrong later the Mechanic might blame the part you bought instead of the work he/she

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84 300D, 82 Volvo 244Gl Diesel

Proactive maintenace is how I am able to drive a 21 year old car as reliably as a new one.

OTOH you can't go out looking for problems.

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2016 Corvette Stingray 2LT
1969 280SE
2023 Ram 1500
2007 Tiara 3200

Next time you're taking off in a 737 would you rather be in a plane where the airline was proactive...........or reactive?

I work with industrial production lines that run 24/7. They're all maintained on a PM (Preventive Maintenance) schedule. If they just waited for things to fail and then reacted it would be a total disaster.

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'81 300CD - 180K, cannot be killed by any conventional means
'99 Ford Escort - good MPG

this thread is over

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sometimes it pays off
sometimes its a waste of money

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