My golden girl

[sfcrusscanter]

Bought my wife's Aveo new in April of 2008. 217,500 plus miles on it, manual transmission. My wife get about 29 mpg, and I get about 35 mpg with her. So far I've replaced the timing belt once, and two sets of valve covers and spark plugs. I do an oil and filter change about every three months, with an air filter every other oil change. The car is hard on tires, even though I rotate them at every oil change. Replaced one O2 sensor. I have to replace the plastic bumper that a piece broke off when a tire shredded on the highway. I've got one, just need to slow down and get the time to take the old one off and replace it. The alternator died a couple months ago and since the youngest boy is at the local vocational college for auto tech, I decided to let him have the honors of replacing it at school. I'm getting tired of working on cars... I prefer my Piper to work on when I have spare time. Anyway, the car is doing pretty good, as long as the wind isn't screaming across the hood. We are in Kansas, so, go figure...

[dannyew]

2005 145,000 mile on car my drive is 85 miles round trip a day with 5 stop signs. I change oil every 5000 mile, timing belt every 50,000 mile, water pump every 50,000 miles(only because I am all ready in there) rotate tires every 5000 miles. Changed the plastic t stat housing to the metal one. I do all my own work and the only reason I use the 50,000 miles and 5000 miles marks is it is easy for me to remember. I do use the car to pull a teardrop trailer 550lbs and a 15' 750lbs sailboat. On problems to report at this time. no speeding never in a hurry

[BrassBallsInc]

Your experiences sound similar to my own. The thermostat housing, tire wear and alignment troubles - all the same on both of ours. One thing I have to stress is the absolute requirement to change that timing belt on schedule.

At my mileage the engine seems to be consuming oil and I suspect the valve stem seals not the rings. The cat is clogged and I am likely to replace that at last in spring when I do the timing belt and the valve cover gasket which always seems to leak no matter what I do. At that point I will do wires and plugs, and flush the radiator since the water pump is part of the timing belt scenario.

Does anyone have trouble with throttle surging or maintaining idle RPM? My car does on occasion and requires my foot to be on both the brake and gas simultaneously to keep the engine from stalling when I come to a stop and as it idles.