When I was a kid something we did prior to actually being old enough to have a car, was we built model cars. My favorite was the above pictured ’72 Dodge Challenger R/T (road track). Not in that color scheme for god’s sake. I would have chosen royal blue with slot magnesium wheels. By gawd that was a car. It came in everything from a 6-cylinder I believe to a 440 CID V-8. That’s when cars were cars. You could kill yourself at a very high rate of speed, and look good while doing it.

Then real life hits you in the face and car care is up to you. Not having any formal training, my car knowledge is what I picked up from friends, family and tidbits from mechanics and the counter guy at the parts store. So some real crap amongst the gems. I was invariably paying huge sums of money to replace water pumps and heater cores. Well guess what genius? If I would have drained and refilled my coolant every 2 years, I probably would have avoided all that (now coolant lasts 5 years). I also would have avoided rotten hoses and the like. Fresh coolant lubricates your water pump and protects the innards of your heater core and radiator.

Everyone knows you have to change your crankcase oil, but you also have to change your differential oil, your transmission fluid, power steering fluid and brake fluid. If you do those roughly every 2 years, you prevent thousands upon thousands of dollars in parts replacements. Car mechanics count on you not knowing that. They’d rather charge you $2,500 for a new transmission, then change your transmission fluid and filter for $150. The best guy on YouTube that makes child’s play of all this is Chris Fix. If you’re like me, you can read the procedure on how to do something, but a picture (video) is truly worth a thousand words.

If people (me) had just followed the maintenance schedule in the Chilton’s manual to the letter, their cars would last 2 to 3 times as long. Easy. There is even a Rust-oleum product called Rust Reformer that makes rust inert! You just brush and wash off the loose stuff then spray this on! Truly a miracle product. You spray on rubberized underbody coating on top of that and your  car is set for life! Its all about changing fluids and replacing filters, replacing brake pads and lubing the hell out of metal.