seattle.politics

On Tue, 14 Aug 2007 08:44:39 -0700, "Gattman"
wrote:


>It would be interesting to see what kind of environmental footprint is
>involved with keeping older vehicles running rather purchasing
>newly-manufactured ones every five or ten years. (even if the new ones are
>more efficient.)

I do that, and the Total environmental footprint is somewhat less than
purchasing a new one.

There are bits and pieces, here and there, that are different.

I have a fourteen-year old pickemup as my usual car. It gets
reasonable mileage for a pickemup -- mid 20's. I keep it Very well
tuned, so its air pollution index is low as well. (We have catalytic
converters mostly for those vehicles that are Not well tuned on a
regular basis.)

A new truck wouldn't get appreciably Better mileage, and the effluents
from the engine aren't appreciably different either. It does have
some Slight blue smoke at startup from awl leakdown through the valve
guides -- which I will have fixed when the Datsun is available for me
to drive. Till then, it's a minor and predictable problem. A valve
job will handle the entire thing quite nicely.

It doesn't require New plastic for the interior, doesn't require a lot
of heat to melt and cast/forge metals and engine block.

Its overall cost of repair remains low, mostly because I prefer
Preventive maintenance over Crisis maintenance.

Best of all, however, is that it doesn't fiscally depreciate any more
to any great degree. And I don't have car payments!