What did you do to your vehicle today?

I thought those radiator things were for testing if the coolant was acidic or not, or are there other things like you describe at your parts store?

 

Acidic as in having enough antifreeze?
Not sure what you mean by that.
Anyways, the setup I'm talking about looks roughly like this

Whereas that would be a tester for your antifreeze

 

Whoa, never seen one of those before (the top photo), and yes i meant that little device. Moreso for checking whether the coolant has turned acidic or not, which coolant does after a few years (the tectaloy red coolant im using recommends replacing every year with new stuff for that very reason)

 

I finally checked the oil change thing on the dashboard dated 2003, and the car had about 900 miles less then than it does now. It went about 900 miles total over twenty years. That’s a great sign. The most recent thing I found in it is from 2006…

 

Hopefully not a sign for odometer manipulation.

 

No, thats not good. You'll find everything will break or need replacing or an overhaul or maintenance with that little to non existing driving, and i mean everything, once you start pressing it into semi daily or daily service. And it wont always be easy stuff like a waterpump or a vacuum choke pulloff...

I learnt this from a very hard, very painful, and very expensive experience


All old cars that aren't driven too regularly will need more work than one thats used at least once a week for a goodly bunch of miles

 

Doubtful. The tires are from the early 2000s, and they have like-new tread, but they're insanely dry-rotted.

 

How bad is the rest of the rubber bits on the car?

 

Not as bad, but still not great. I need to replace all the vacuum lines at some point. They work, but barely.

 

Do the suspension bushes still exist?

 

Uh...
Most of them are in multiple pieces, but they're there, I guess... kind of.

 

So you need to do a full suspension rebuild then right?

Mate i aint gonna lie, this car of yours is going to hurt

 

Yeah.
...in both cases.

 

Does it at least run yet?

 

replaced my completely trashed serpentine belt tensioner so now when my ac compressor turns on instead of squealing and making a funny burning smell it turns the compressor so i get cold air.

Thanks for putting it under the motor mount mazda.,Makes it so easy to get to. Cant wait for this one to also fail 50,000 miles from now.

 

Absolutely not worth the time and effort this junk was, doesn't work above 2000 rpms

 

It's the valiant Again ?

 

That's, like, the only thing he posts about on this thread.

 

I mean , it was unbelievable to me that it's the result of quite some money spent on New parts

 

What does that even mean?