A few of today's cars . . .

Here are a few of the cars at Robison Service this fall day . . . .

We've got a Bentley Continental at the end of restoration, waiting on stereo:



Here's a Mercedes with a fried transmission, waiting for some new gears



This Turbo R just arrived to be prepped for painting:



Mercedes G Wagens are rare anytime, but we have two of them here today, a green grey market truck and a black US model:



A Mercedes waits its turn . .



Land Rover master tech Paul Ferreira puts brakes on a Supercharged Range Rover:



Master Tech Bud Orlich puts a door frame into a vintage Rolls Royce



At the same time, a diesel Beetle gets a new turbocharger:



Bosch Master Bob Toti sorts out a tail gate latch in a 2006 BMW wagon. This car proved highly resistant to repair but we prevailed in the end



Jon Miglitz is swapping cam cover gaskets on this Mercedes




This is a neat project. It's a 1973 BMW 2002 that's here for total mechanical restoration and paint and interior. This is going to be better than new when it's done . . .





This one was a little too far gone, and we sold it on eBay for $203:

Getting ready for winter

Is the car you drive every day ready for the cold weather to come? If your not sure, read on for a few suggestions to help you on the way . . .

Everything begins with the battery. If your battery is dead, you aren’t going anywhere. Batteries last 3-4 years in most cars, and they tend to fail without warning during extremes of hot or cold. If your battery is four years old I suggest you replace it because it’s on borrowed time. How do you know its age, you ask? Many batteries are stamped with a date code that your service technician can read. Failing that, you should keep service records, and some motorists can actually lay their hands on such things!

Well equipped shops have battery testers that can warn you of a battery’s impending demise but in my opinion it safer to just change them on a time schedule because I’ve seen batteries that tested 80% fail totally on the next subzero morning. Test technology only goes so far, I guess . . .



How are your windshield wipers and washers? You really need them in winter, so this is the time to replace marginal blades. We’ve had good luck with the new Bosch Ikon blades, which are all-rubber so they don’t freeze and jam like traditional metal-and-rubber wipers.

Washer nozzles can clog (you can clean them with strands of wire) and get bent out of aim. Fix them now, and make sure your washer reservoir is filled with the right washer solvent. Don’t know where the solvent goes? On most cars the washer reservoir is white or translucent and has a pop off lid, as shown. Most washer fluid is light blue in color.

The next item to check is your coolant, which is also called antifreeze. Early cars used water in their cooling systems. Not any more! Newer vehicles use sophisticated chemical blends to achieve the combination of cooling efficiency and corrosion reduction that today’s cars require.

Coolant absorbs chemicals from the engine, and it can become corrosive if it’s left in a car too long. That’s why most car makers suggest changing coolant every three or four years, even if you don’t drive a lot.

For many years there was only one kind of antifreeze, which was green in color. Many of today’s cars use special coolants that have additives to protect the various metals and plastics in modern engines. In our shop, we’ve learned to use BMW coolant in BMW cars, and Jaguar coolant in Jaguars. If you drive a late model import it almost surely takes special coolant. I suggest you follow the manufacturer recommendations in this area because I’ve seen the wrong coolant cause leaks, clogs, and even overheating failures.

The coolant reservoir for the engine usually has a screw-on lid and it’s filled with green coolant in older cars. In newer vehicles the coolant can be yellow, red, or dark blue. Don’t confuse those two liquids!



In the picture above I'm pointing to the washer reservoir. The coolant reservoir is to the right.

How’s your heat? We don’t pay much attention to our car’s heater during summer, but we’ll be needing heat any day now. In a modern car, a weak or inoperative heater is usually a sign of other problem, like low coolant or a stuck thermostat.

The final thing to check is your tires. Where I live we fit snow tires, and this is the time to be doing that. In other areas people use the same tires year round, but it’s important to make sure you have good tread. Remember that a tire can wear unevenly, so it looks good on the outside edge but the inside or center is totally bald. Don’t be fooled by tire trickery!

If you do have uneven wear it’s probably a sign your car needs alignment.

The staff at Robison Service are always here to answer your questions and resolve any service needs. Remember that it’s always less costly to maintain your car preventatively that to respond to breakdowns.

We are located at 347 Page Boulevard in Springfield, Massachusetts. Call 413 785 1665 or email service manager Maribeth White at mwhite@robisonservice.com

John Robison

All you ever wanted to know about . . Land Rover V8 Engine Failures

There’s a new problem in the Land Rover world. Engines in Discovery II and P38 Range Rovers are dying, and I’m about to tell you why . . .

The story begins at the foundry in Solihull, England, where Land Rover engine blocks are cast from aluminum alloy. The block is the innermost component of the engine; it’s the foundation everything else is built upon. After the engines are cast the rough holes for the cylinders are bored out and finished. After that, eight sections of steel tube are pressed into place, one for each bore. After being cut off and machined flush, those tubes become the cylinder liners. It’s those blocks and liners that are going bad.

At the plant, the raw aluminum blocks are expanded by heating, while the liners are shrunk by chilling. The block swells to maximum size, while the liners contract as much as possible. At that point, the two are pressed together. Even then, the liners are a tight fit into the block, but that’s what powerful hydraulic rams are for. Once in place, the liners expand for an even tighter fit. They are there to stay, or at least, that was the idea.

Unfortunately, things did not quite work out that way. The liners started moving, and engines began failing. How could that happen? The liners are subject to constant up-and-down forces as the pistons move within them in the running engine. In some engines, the press fit between steel liner and aluminum block just wasn’t tight enough to last.

When Land Rover started making V8 engines – thirty-plus years ago – the tooling was all fresh and everything was spot on. The engineers had calculated exactly how big the block bores should be, and what diameter was needed for the liner tubes. When those liners were pressed in place, they never moved.

Whatever else went wrong with Land Rover engines, the blocks stayed strong. And that was good, because it seemed like everything else gave trouble. Some would say, the vehicles required a lot of tinkering. Such is the British way.

That’s how it was for the first couple decades of engine production. Most engines don’t last that long on the production line, but the Land Rover V8 held on. Other manufacturers introduced more sophisticated overhead cam engines, but Rover stood firm with the old 1960s vintage pushrod V8.

I wish I could say that was a testament to its wonderful design, but the truth is, Rover really didn’t have the money or engineering resources to develop a replacement. The longer it stayed in production the more worn the tooling became. Machines that originally bored holes with an accuracy of a few ten-thousands of an inch lost their precision. In some cases, the tolerances slipped by a factor of ten. The result? Some engines left the factory with tight liners, while others were a tiny bit loose. Those were the engines that began failing.

The designers knew that steel and aluminum expand at different rates when heated. And car engines make the transition from cold to hot every time they are run. So it was absolutely vital that the steel liners be fitted tightly enough that they would never move, no matter hot how the engine got. When the tooling was new, that was what happened. When the tooling wore out, the liners weren’t always so tight anymore.

The block problems were compounded by ongoing engine development. The first Rover engines displaced 3.5 liters and made a little over 120 horsepower. In thirty years the displacement grew by 35% and power almost doubled. The displacement increase meant there was less metal in the block to soak up heat and energy, and the power increase meant there was a lot more to handle.

At the same time, today’s need for fuel efficiency and low emissions has resulted in significantly higher operating temperatures, especially inside the combustion chamber. That puts even more stress on an old design.

Problems began appearing about ten years ago. Mechanics began talking about “dropped liners,” a phrase I’d never encountered before. The constant heat cycling as the engine ran combined with the running motion and caused the liners to break loose. When they did, coolant leaked around them into the combustion chambers, and the engines failed. The solution: a new engine block, and a repair bill near $10,000.

As you can imagine, owners were outraged. To most people, the engine block is like the back seat. You just take it for granted, and it lasts the life of the vehicle. It does not wear out or fail. It’s not a wear item like a fan belt, tire, or spark plug. Yet the blocks were failing, and in large numbers.

I wrote an article about the situation a few years ago, and we developed a way to repair the blocks. We used sleeves with flanges on top, referred to as “top hat” liners. The flange kept them from moving up and down, and the problem seemed solved. Unfortunately, it wasn’t permanent.

Failures happened when the engine got hot enough that thermal expansion made the liner loose in the block casting. For most people, that meant liner failure followed what we euphemistically called a thermal incident. In other words, the engines failed after the cars were overheated. The initial overheating could be caused by anything – water pump leakage, fan belt failure, or a blown hose.

The out-of-place liner was a visible evidence of failure, but some engines had more serious problems hidden inside. It turned out that the overheating was also causing cracks in the aluminum block castings. Sometimes the cracks allowed oil and coolant to mix, leading to another engine failure. Other times, cracks allowed combustion gases to get into the coolant, which led to another thermal incident.

When the blocks developed cracks we were stuck. Repair of the cracks required removal of every liner from the block, and costs were prohibitive. Replacement blocks were the only answer, or so it seemed.

The problem got so bad that Lad Rover began supplying warranty exchange blocks to dealers for about $1,000. By doing that, they in effect subsidized the repair of thousands of engines over a period of several years. The problem was, the new engines weren’t any better. They were all susceptible to failures.

However, they were all we had to work with, so we made the best of the situation. The main thing we learned was: Never drive a Rover with an overheated engine! By following that advice and preventing overheats we kept the problem at a manageable level.

Until this year.

That was when we saw our first Rover that had combustion gases leaking into the coolant with no prior history of overheating. And when the motor was torn down for inspection, all the liners were in place and there was no sign of thermal damage. Yet the block failed a pressure test where we applied compressed air to the cylinder to simulate what happens when pressures build up as the motor runs. The air leaked right into the coolant passages. How could that be?

We removed the leaky liner, and made an alarming discovery. The aluminum casting that should have supported the liner had rotted away. The inside of the block looked like a piece of decomposing cheese. It was an ugly situation, one of the only failures for which we could see no repair option. It was like looking at rusted floor boards . . . at a certain point, there is no solid metal left to fix.

Since that time, we have seen a few more engines failed in the same way. The symptoms can be subtle at first. There may be slow loss of coolant, and the truck may develop a misfire as spark plugs become fouled by white deposits from coolant that leaks in and burns.

We’ve been wondering what would cause this new, severe, failure and I think we’ve got some answers.

The first problem is the tooling. As the tooling aged, production tolerances became sloppier and sloppier. We’ve seen new engine castings with actual holes where the aluminum failed to fill in. Overall production quality on the last pushrod V8 engines was a far cry from what we saw at the beginning.

That means the last crop of engine blocks – those made from the late 1990s through the end of production in 2005 – are weaker than the blocks that came before. That makes them more vulnerable to corrosion because there’s less consistency in the metal. Something must have changed, since these blocks have been in production a long time and we’ve never before seen these gross corrosion failures.

That’s where the second issue comes in - the coolant. In 1999, Rover began using Dex-Cool in place of the green coolant they’d used for the previous thirty-some years. There have been some recent lawsuits alleging corrosion when Dex-Cool is used in late model engines, and the revelations of those cases may shed some light on the Land Rover situation.

It appears that Dex-Cool can react with the materials in the engine if there is an excess of air in the cooling system, as happens when the level is low. Dex-Cool can also react with other coolants, something that happens if old style green coolant is added to the system.

I believe those are the issues that underlie the current block failures, but I can’t rule out the possibility that something more is going on. What does it mean for you? I’ll close with some specific tips for any of you who own or service 1999-2004 Land Rover Discovery or P38 Range Rovers.

First, I urge you to follow Rover’s recommendation and change your coolant every 30,000 miles. It’s very important that you use the correct Dex-Cool product. If your system has been contaminated by mixing several types of coolant, flush it thoroughly before filling.

Before you drive, always make sure the expansion tank is full to the proper level. Don’t drive the vehicle if the level is low, and don’t drive it at all if it’s overheated.

Finally, if you work on these cars pay close attention to the cooling system pressure. One early giveaway of block failure is high pressure in the system before the engine is really warm. I’ve seen Rovers that pressurize the radiator hoses rock hard while the engine is still cold. That’s a sure sign of a serious internal problem.

Another thing to look for is white deposits on spark plugs. If you see six or seven clean-looking plugs and one or two fouled with white a deposit, that’s a sign of coolant intrusion into the cylinders.

I wish I could close with a quick and easy answer, but I’m afraid there’s no such thing. It’s a serious problem that can be managed but if you experience a failure, the only cure is a new block. And that’s becoming a problem. Three years ago Land Rover sold the tooling to make the V8 engine to Mitchell Cotts, one of their subcontractors.

Cotts made some changes in the production process, including a change in the way the blocks are cast to address the liner problem. They speculated that inconsistent metal thickness in the area of the cylinder bores contributed to the failures, and they adopted a newer technique to remedy that deficiency. Time will tell if it works.

Unfortunately, Cotts went broke in the wake of least year’s economic collapse. As of September 2009, they are shut down and no other supplier has stepped in. At this moment I don’t know when Land Rover V8 engine production will resume, or who will do it. Federal law requires Land Rover to have full parts support for the Discovery line – including engines – through 2014. It will be interesting to see what they do.

In the meantime, a few Rover specialists – Robison Service being one of them - rebuild engines from a dwindling supply of corrosion-free old blocks.

So take care of that engine – it may be the last one you get for a while.

Until next time,
John Elder Robison

Two days at the British Invasion, 2009

This article also appears in print, in the Rover News
Words and pictures (c) 2009 John Elder Robison



It’s that time of year again. Last weekend, I left my Massachusetts home for a trip to the wilds of Northern Vermont, all in the name of British Motoring. I’m a diehard Land Rover lover, but the 2.5 diesel Defender is too slow for a five-hundred-mile road trip and the Range Rover was out of town. And this year I wanted plush. So I climbed into the Big Red Bentley and headed north. I moved out onto I-91 and muscled my way past pugnacious thugs in Escalades and granola-powered Prius drivers. My speed climbed as I approached the border. I tried to hold it back, but there's only so much one can do.

The car had a nasty shake at 85, but it smoothed out nicely over 110. Most cars struggle to attain those speeds but this brute takes them in stride. At the century mark the engine is just above fast idle, at 1,900 rpm. You’ve got six inches of travel remaining in the gas pedal, and 2,500 rpm to go on the tach. There’s a certain magic to five hundred horsepower. I wish Land Rover had a product like this. Perhaps one day I will stuff a Turbo R engine into a 110 County to create one.

We ate up the road all the way to White River, where I took a left onto 89 North. My Beast coasted down as the exit approached, rolling past the Exit 30MPH sign at a smooth 75. I hit the bend and slewed my way around, exiting onto 89 with a subtle trail of smoke. A tip of the throttle and I was back to speed for the final run in to Stowe.

I reached my hotel only to find it was Under New Management, a euphemism for, "I'm sorry sir, your room reservation has vanished." Grabbing the hapless clerk by the throat, he regurgitated the key to 124, the room I have occupied for years, which to his great good fortune was as yet empty. I wandered down the hall, where a wedding dinner was in progress. I shared some fine wine and cheese before being found out and evicted. Afterward, suitably fortified, I cruised down the hill into Stowe.

By the time I arrived the block party was in full swing. I made sure my car was well hidden out behind the hotel before walking over the covered bridge to town. A Beatles tribute band was playing, and an intoxicated female dragged me into a dance as I passed. I tried to extricate myself as two drunken revelers snapped pictures. I was saved by the arrival of a freak in a Chicken Costume, singing at the top of his lungs while swinging a golf club to clear a path to the bar.

A short while later I was joined by my friend Dave Rifken with his 1997 Defender 90



Dave and I headed to the Blue Moon Grille, where we were seated and fed immediately, thanks to the economic collapse. In better days they’d have taken a reservation for next weekend, if they fed specimens like us at all. I ate grilled scallops as Dave texted his kid, who was lost somewhere on the highways of rural Vermont.

I remember being lost like that myself, years ago. In my case, it was a result of eating mushrooms. I don’t know what Dave’s kid’s excuse was. Thirty some years ago I found myself hungry and deranged in Rock Island, Quebec, where the border crossing had apparently closed for the night. When I chose the self-service option and took the old 88 through I was rounded up and detained by bad tempered Customs Agents for almost eight hours. By the time I got loose, the mushrooms had worn off and my money was gone. All in all, that was one bad trip.

Our reverie was interrupted by flashing lights and sirens. We saw Police outside the restaurant, and we slouched low in our seats. We didn’t think we’d done anything arrestable in Stowe but you never know . . . Sometimes the Natives get greedy, and invent laws to extract revenue from sweet innocents like us. My mind went back to the Shamokins of rural Pennsylvania, who rolled boulders into the highway so they could stop motorists and rob them. At times like that I regret leaving my preacher outfit home.

Fortunately, the cops were merely clearing the riffraff from around the stage. No one was after us. When we emerged from the Blue Moon, we refrained from song, and our refined and upright appearance made us seem the farthest thing from rabble. We passed unmolested. As the shouting subsided to the snick of handcuffs we slipped back up the hill. Our rigs were safe, surrounded by British cars in all the important colors: red, white, black and most of all, green.

We awakened to a crisp, cool Vermont morning. The fires from the previous night’s bacchanalian debauchery had burnt themselves out, but the smoky smell lingered in the air. It was a pleasant odor for anyone whose house or car had escaped destruction, and I was pleased to be part of that group. We cranked up the Rover and the Bentley, and headed for the Invasion.




We arrived at the show field early, but the scene was already mobbed. Hundreds, thousands, maybe tens of thousands swarmed through the gates on Weeks Hill Road in Stowe. We parked our machines among others of their own kind, and set out to wander the field.



Within minutes, three Guardsmen showed up in a Series III Air Portable, parked near Dave, and emplaced a heavy machine gun to survey the field. I ducked and passed as they shot off a test burst or two. Everyone was well behaved after they arrived. I was lucky to pass when I did, because I heard they began collecting tolls from passerby but I didn’t pay a cent.



Their actions reminded me of some City Parking Lot Attendants who worked a lot down the street from me when I worked at Pink Floyd's sound company in Long Island City back in the nineteen-seventies. After watching them all one summer, I was surprised to arrive at work one day to find them gone, and the lot chained up. It turned out they had not been City Employees at all. Instead, they were Enterprising Lowlifes with Bolt Cutters who had seen an opportunity and seized it. I wondered if the same thing might be occurring today, but I declined to mount a challenge.

Land Rover was well represented at the show. In fact, one 1959 Series truck actually won the concours, something I have never seen accomplished with a Land Rover. I don’t know if the judges were drunk, bribed, or what, but there was some heavy competition out there and they putted away with a trophy. What a sight – an old Series truck sandwiched between a massive Rolls Royce limousine and a dainty Morgan roadster in the winner’s parade.

The Guardsmen also won an award for the tailgate picnic, but it’s not clear if they earned it or merely menaced the show’s managers with their weapons. Either way, though, they exited as winners. And I don’t want to give a false impression – they were not thugs. Far from it; they were clean and very well behaved and their heavy machine gun certainly had a calming influence on every rowdy who exited the beer tent. Robert Heinlein said it very well: An armed society is a polite society.

There was a good field of Land Rover entries, starting with some Series trucks from the late fifties all the way to the current Range Rover Sports. Series trucks made up the biggest contingent but the P38’s made a good showing this year too.

You find many kinds of car enthusiasts at the Invasion, but the ones I love the best are the Rover owners. One of them lounged behind her rig,



while another handed me a beer



after opening it on his back bumper. Two Canadian females at the next Rover fed me kiwi fruit while extolling the virtues of cross breeding strawberries.



All the while, the sound system played vintage tunes from the Kinks, Pink Floyd, and Jimmy Buffet.

Who wouldn’t identify with that?

With 650 British vehicles on the show field, there were some noteworthy non-Rover entries. For example, some deviant with a welder had shoehorned a blown Hemi into a yellow MINI Cooper. The idea seems shocking at first, but upon reflection, you realize that’s exactly what every MINI dreams of turning into, when it grows up.



I saw a genuine Elva, yellow with a red stripe, parked near a fine red TVR. Out behind the cars, revelers sat, drank, and told stories, and I stumbled and bobbed my way through their midst. At one point, I encountered a six-hundred-horsepower supercharged Aston Martin, an authentic Morris Moke, and two Norton Commando motorcycles.

I left as the bikers were fighting over tent poles for the Motorbike Joust. I did not get to see how it turned out, but I’m sure the details appeared in the town Police Log.

We dined at the Olde English Pub, where I had Bangers and Mash followed by a Spotted Dick washed down with tea. All in all, a respectable British feed. Alex had a problem with the concept of Spotted Dick, but I introduced him to Patrick O’Brien’s excellent writing, including his cook book which includes the Dick, and he calmed.

The next morning dawned colder and clearer than the one before. Tops on the day’s agenda was the backseat driving contest. In that competition the driver is blindfolded, and the navigator guides him over a complex route from the backseat. When someone told me the course started on the show field and ended at the Lake Champlain Ferry I decided to get out while I still could.

Until next time . . .

How much for that alternator?

How much to put an alternator on my car?

I hear questions like that all the time. Rather than pick a number out of the air, I counter with a question of my own. “Why do you think you need an alternator?

There are two common reasons a motorist would ask that sort of question. The first is that someone said their car needed an alternator, and quoted a price that was shockingly high. The second possibility is that the car has a problem like a dead battery, and the owner has decided an alternator will fix it.

In the first case, there could be several reasons for the high price. The motorist may simply be out of touch with the true cost of car repair. The repair may have been quoted with a top quality alternator, when the motorist can only afford something cheap. Finally, there may be a complication to doing the job, and the garage quoted additional time and material to cover that.

All of those situations are best resolved by a customer and repair shop that collaborate to reach a solution. A price shopping motorist is not likely to obtain a good result, because there’s more to a good repair than the lowest bid.

I’m always happy to explain the reasons behind the probable cost of a repair. Do we have to take parts off for access? If so, it makes sense to service them, too, but that costs money. Do we have choices when it comes to replacement parts? Much of the time you get what you pay for, but there are times when aftermarket parts can service the purpose at lower cost.

Motorists will do much better working through those questions with one shop, where they know the person and the vehicle. Taking a quote and simply price-shopping by phone is very unlikely to get a good result because the questions that need to be answered are not strictly those of cost.

What about the motorist who just decided he needs an alternator? Some shop owners would say, the guy asked for an alternator. Sell him one! Who cares if he needs it? I’ve never really subscribed to that school of thought. If someone thinks they know what the car needs, I say, If I put the alternator on, and the car still has the same problem, how are you going to feel?

Few motorists consider that possibility, but in my experience, it’s very real. It’s amazing how many people will think it’s my fault if the car still has a problem, even though they made the diagnosis.

Once again, the best answer is to find a mechanic you can trust and discuss the problem with him rather than make an impulsive decision on your own.

So that leads to the biggest question of all: How do you find a mechanic who is capable, trustworthy, affordable, and all the other things you want? That is the subject of another post . . .

Fix that old car or trade it?

As the economy worsens, people are cutting back on spending everywhere. Where do you look for savings? For many families, car expenses eat up a big chunk of the budget. It’s important to make the best choices, even more so today when every dollar matters. After all, the last thing you want is to undergo an involuntary conversion from motorist to pedestrian.

The news today is full of stories about our collapsing auto industry, and how consumers need to buy new cars to get the economy restarted. Maybe that’s true – I’m not an economist – but I can’t help but wonder if over-exuberant spending was what got us into this mess in the first place. Maybe we should all drive our cars a little longer as we work our way out. I’d like to offer some tips to help you do that.

People face tough car decisions every day. There’s not a week that goes by without someone asking me a variant of this same question:

My car needs $2,000 of repairs. That’s as much as the car is worth! Should I trade it?

Those words are music to a car salesman’s ears, but a salesman isn’t exactly the best person to turn to for advice in that situation. The first step in answering your question is to put it in a more realistic perspective. Trading your car is not a cost saving alternative to a repair. When you trade your car, you get a new vehicle, but you also get years of payments, usually totaling tens of thousands of dollars. The new car’s costs may be hidden, but they are almost always massively greater than any repair.

When you contrast a $2,000 repair with $20,000 in payments over a few years, things look a bit different. Is a costly new car really a wise move, given our current economic situation? My old Land Rover has 150,000 miles on the odometer, and it still drives like new. It’s paid for, and it’s solid, and it’s still a nice-looking rig. Would I abandon it over a repair bill? No way.

The salesman will say, Your old car is worth nothing! Look at the value in a new vehicle! Value indeed. One of the fundamental problems with automobile credit is the harsh reality that most three years old cars are worth less than their loan balances. There’s no value there – just a big debt. By the time your new ride is paid off, it probably won’t be worth any more than the car you have today.

One way to get a different perspective is to ask what would happen to your old car if you traded it. Will it go to the junkyard? If so, perhaps trading it is the right answer – your old car is just used up. But if your car is like most, the answer is different: Someone will fix it up and drive it a few more years. Who comes out ahead when that happens? The car dealer, certainly. And maybe the fellow who gets a few good years from your old car. Who’s the loser? You, in most cases.

You get some instant gratification from the new car, for sure. But it may come at the expense of added stress as the new payments get added to your budget every month. Is that a good trade – debt stress for new car smell and some gadgets? Only you can decide.

Today’s cars last a lot longer than the vehicles many of us grew up with. The lifespan of a typical car is now approaching 15 years. High end cars like Mercedes or BMW last even longer, with nice 20 year old vehicles being common. If your present car is less than ten years old, it’s probably got a lot of life left in it, at fairly low cost.

Cars of that age may not have much cash value, but they provide excellent transportation value for their owners. That’s especially true once they are paid off, when your only costs are fuel, insurance, and upkeep. Excise taxes – over $1,000 a year on many new cars – have dropped near zero. Insurance is cheaper too, in most cases. The only thing that costs more is maintenance and repair.

When you factor in all the various savings an older car offers, the occasional high dollar repair seems like a small price to pay. And if you’re going to drive the same old car a few more years, why not keep it in good shape? It will certainly be more enjoyable to drive if you do.

Once you make the decision to keep a paid-for older car on the road, the tradeoff of repair cost and cash value becomes meaningless. The cash value of your car does not really matter if it’s paid for and you’re keeping it a few years. As long as the repair costs are less than the costs of a replacement vehicle, you’re ahead of the game.

What happens when there’s a really big failure? What if the engine fails, or the transmission blows? If the rest of the car is in good shape, repair may still make sense. Situations like that are best discussed with a service professional who really knows your car.

In my next column I’ll offer some tips to help you avoid those big repairs, and handle them better if they occur.

Meanwhile, visit me online at www.robisonservice.com or on my blog, http://jerobison.blogspot.com

Summertime means cruise nights

You know it's summer when the Monday night cruise nights begin. Yesterday Cubby said, "Let's head over to Atkins," and we did. Here are a few of the cars . . .