Hey Fabs...

[fabsroman]

Jabba,

You aren't that much older than me. I started driving in 1987 when I turned 16. Here are my list of cars.

1. Used 1980 Cougar previously owned by an old lady with almost 15,000 miles on it. It ran great for the 2 years I drove it, but I gave it to my brother when I bought a 1989 Mustang GT. I didn't have to do anything to the Cougar other than changing the tires and shocks.

2. New 1989 Mustang GT. I drove this car for a year and I still love it. However, after getting a couple door dings at college, I decided to garage it. It currently has 33,000 miles on it and the only problem has been the thermostat. I then started driving my dad's 1980 Ford Fairmont.

3. Used Ford Fairmont with 100,000 hard miles on it. When I got the car from my dad, I gave it a tune up and broke three socket wrenches and one extender bar trying to remove the spark plugs. I also used a couple of cans of Liquid Wrench to remove the spark plugs. Thankfully, the tools were Craftsmen and were replaced without any questions. This was before I owned a compressor and pneumatic tools. Remember, I was just in college at this point. The Fairmont lasted me 8 years and 135,000 miles. It was 18 years old and had 235,000 miles on it before it blew a ring the week I graduated from law school. It saw me through college and law school and the two years of work between the two. At this point, it was a POS, but I still wanted to pull the straight six out of it and put a 5.0 in it to use it as a beater car, but I just never got around to it. Didn't have time to do the work because it was exam week and the bar exam came up a couple of months later. Now, even though the car lasted quite a while, I did have to do a ton of repairs on it. I changed the alternator and starter so many times, I could do it in my sleep, but this is probably because the replacement parts were crap. The rear end blew up on me and I picked one up at a junk yard for cheap. Did the same thing with the gas tank when it rusted out. Changed the fuel pump and shocks too and put new springs on it. With that said, 250,000 miles out of my cars and trucks is my goal.

4. New 1998 Taurus because I didn't have the time to fix the Fairmont. As I said above, this car has been good to me, but I have also been very good to it. I rarely ever take it above 2,500 RPM and I always follow maintenance to a T. I use Mobil 1 in it along with the $10 Mobil 1 filter and it is doing pretty good on oil consumption with 132,000 miles on it. If I get another 7 years and 120,000 miles out of it, I will be happy as can be.

5. New 2003 Ford F-350 with the 6.0 liter diesel. Can't really say much about this truck because it only has 3,800 miles on it and most of them have been easy. However, I love the truck like I love the Stang. Just don't have a garage to put it in.


At the end of the day, I completely agree with my dad about buying somebody else's headache's when you buy a used car. Not everybody agrees with me, and my brother thinks I could save a lot of money if I buy used cars since I know how to fix them, but I just do not want the headache.

So, that is my experience with Fords and a Mercury.

By the way, my brother and dad are really hard on cars. My brother killed that Cougar in a little over a year. The fact that I got an additional 135,000 miles out of that Fairmont is amazing and the fact that my brother's F-150 is 10 years old with 90,000 miles on it is utterly amazing. Of course, it doesn't run great and it looks like crap, but it does still run. Then again, I have done some work on that truck too (e.g., replaced the rear end, the oil pump and oil pickup, and the H pipe).

I also agree with you about the 390. It seems utterly crazy to have the intake run through the valve covers and it makes no sense to have the pushrods come through the intake. I am having a hard time seeing how that could possibly work.