My friend gifted me a 1998 SW2 with 231k miles on her. I named her Stella. Sunburned and with a questionable front bumper, She isn’t the prettiest girl on the block, but she is the cutest.
Any advice on what I need to maintain immediately? What are things I can learn to diy? I was told to top the oil every month. But she gets cool and runs fine and is a great girl
I think we can be together for a while.
My friend of a few years is selling his little beater. I am looking for a little kickaround to drive to the other side of Boston and back every now and then. I work near where I live so non need to commute. Here are the idiosyncrasies he shared with me: Okay here's the quirks list!
-The car has no trouble locking but I avoid using the key to unlock it because at some point I was worried that the lock in the door was getting worn out and I wanted to preserve it so I ended up just never using it lol.
- the trunk will lock and unlock but sometimes it gets stuck unlocked and there a little thing back there you need to click back in place.
-like a lot of old cars it slowly burns a bit of oil over time (no leaks) so when im doing a lot of highway driving or just every once and a while i check the oil level and top it off if I need to. I keep the right oil just in the trunk back there.
-currently I need to replace the left turn signal but I bought the right bulbs and have them in the car
-the hood doesn't close all the way to the very bottom but it goes down enough to click into place. My old mechanic gave me a bungee cord that I just have down there to be 100% it's secure. Every mechanic ive taken it too passes its inspection without issue except the last time I went in to a random shop for inspection he rejected it because I left the bungee cord on there like a dummy so he noticed that and was like "the hood doesn't shut all the way so we need to fix this" and I was like nah son I've been driving it like this for 6 years it's fine. but because I wasn't really driving it a lot the last year I never bothered to get it reinspected
- and the last thing is I need a new back windshield wiper lol
I just put a new battery in it and the tires should be great for many more years. The brakes are in solid shape but in the next year it couldn't hurt having someone do a free inspection of them to avoid wearing through the pads into the rotors. Whenever that happens they'll probably say that the front rotors are slightly warped and that will cause faster wear on The pads so you should replace the rotors. But they simply are not wearing down the pads at a faster right so don't let them upsell you on that