So driving home today I noticed that I’m about to roll 118K miles on my camry. It made me realize that I’ve actually put the bulk of the miles on the car now and not the previous owner. With us purchasing the new civic in September for Nicole it means my car needs to make it for awhile longer. I’ve started to try to take better care of my car by making sure I get my oil changed at a reasonable interval considering I put on around 400 miles a week. This year I even managed to replace my door handle on the drives side so i don’t have to open the door with my little finger.
Thinking that I had been doing a good job I finally decided to go through all my maintenance receipts and put it in a spreadsheet so I can see when I did what and to give me an idea when I might need to do it again. Unfortunately when I did this I realized that I might be in for a rough couple of months as a lot of maintenance is coming due. It’s been about 30K miles since I’ve had the brakes pads changed. I need to look into maybe having that checked sooner rather than later since i need those to stop. Also it looks like its been a long time since I’ve had most of the fluids in my car changed and those should probably be done to. The big ugly thing is it’s been almost 60K miles since the timing belt has been changed and according to some guides I should look into changing that in the next few thousand miles.
It’s not the end of the world and I should get these things done since I want to keep my car going for at least a few more years. One of my concerns is with Brentwood Auto the place that we normally send our cars to get repaired. It bugged me the last time I had the car sent there in April of last year they told Nicole that I needed to get my timing belt replaced already. I refused to do this since I felt like I had just gotten it replaced recently and there was no way it should be up. Based on my records they were telling me I should have the timing belt replaced at least 10K miles before the minimum that any other place recommends. This seems kinda scamy to me in recommending that I get work done on the car that doesn’t need to be done. Overall I’ve felt when my car goes in they often suggest things that it doesn’t really need. On the other hand when nicole has taken her car in over the years we’ve been here they haven’t always charged her to fix stuff and they’ve also told her no it doesn’t need to be changed yet. I’ll have to think about it more. My car may end up going back there anyway even if it costs me more in the long term since at least I’ve always felt that the quality of their work has been good.
