10 Tips And Tricks To Get Your Car To 200,000 Miles On A Budget
By Paulo Acoba
5. Learn how to change your timing/accessory belts, water pump, and other more complicated maintenance items with YouTube and online tutorials.
Although your owner’s manual may not explicitly say it, sooner or later you will have to roll up your sleeves, use your brain, get physical and have to change things more complicated than oil such as your timing belt, water pump, brake pads and other hoses for vacuum and coolant.
For example, if we refer back to our scheduled maintenance log from a 2015 Toyota Corolla, you’ll see that at 60,000 miles the first instance of “Inspect Belts” pops up. That means you’ll have to grab a flashlight and visually inspect all exposed accessory belts for signs of abnormal wear and tear that will show up as cracks and tiny rips on the belt itself. If you do find a rip and tear, you’re going to have to swap that belt out.
After you’ve got a replacement part from either your dealership, your local auto parts store or online, you can DIY this repair with a bit of googling to find either an online tutorial or a video. For our aforementioned 2015 Toyota Corolla, the use of a timing chain on its 2ZR-FE engine means that you’ll only have to inspect the accessory belts.
- Here’s a very detailed DIY online tutorial with pictures.
- and here’s an equally detailed step by step video on the 2ZR-FE (although the video says Corolla’s between 2002-2012, the 2ZR-FE was also used in the 11th generation Corolla from 2013-2016 for the North American Market.)
Next: Tires. You're going to have to change them at least 3 times from brand new till 200,000 miles.