Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 I posted several years ago that my Daughter had moved far away from home.

Left front tire. This is the worst one. But it's not down to the cord... yet. 

That meant that her car was also a long way from home.

She now lives much closer, and visits us more often.

This is what happens when you don't keep an eye on the condition of the tires. They do have to be rotated on a set schedule. 

I detailed my previous struggle with the problems of a failing battery on her Mustang.

It's easy for me to blame my daughter for this situation, but again, I'm not immune from criticism.

I had planned to take my '06 mustang out to put some miles on it.

I also needed to keep an eye on it's tires. I knew that the tires were worn, but I let them go for too long. I found that the left front tire had worn along the inside edge down to the cord. 

Now I can't drive the car. 

Which I needed to do in order to decide if I want to keep it. 

I don't want to spend a lot for a good set of tires. Maybe I'll buy just one used tire?

But let's go back to my Daughter's car.

Rt. Front tire.

Rt. Rear, not too bad.

Left rear, even better.

I'm not saying that these tires are like new, you can see the wear bars, but ideally each tire should look as good as the last picture. With even wear across the tread. The car's suspension is still in good condition, but the inner fronts are prone to wear faster, unless you're doing burn outs! 

All it takes is paying attention and having access to the car. I don't think that my Daughter will start to pay attention to the tire's condition. Even I, forgot to monitor the condition of my '06's tires, and it's in my garage! 

But this is what happens when you have too many cars. Unless you are a super organized person, which I am not. I have managed to get a handle on maintaining my car's battery's. I keep a clipboard with the dates that I put the cars on the charger. Maybe I can put off expensive battery replacements for as long as possible.

It's much easier to keep after your daily drivers. I just had the oil changed on the Flex. It just passed 60,000 miles. It had approx. 6,000 miles on this oil. Later I reset the oil mileage readout and it still indicated 25% life left. Even on my dailys, I only put five or six thousand miles on them in a year.

After all this thought about tire wear I decided to check on the Flex's tires. They were all still pretty good, but the inner fronts were a bit more worn than the rears. So I rotated them. These are 20 inch tires, and I imagine that they will be expensive to replace. I think I will tie in the tire rotations with the yearly oil changes, that might help me keep track of them. 

It's a struggle to keep the costs manageable, but that is what happens when you think that you're the poor man's Jay Leno!