Hey Scotty I just recently purchased a car because I needed a new daily driver. It’s a 1998 Ford escort with only 133,400 miles with a manual transmission. Everything seems to check out and everything works such as ac, Heat, radio etc. Maybe just needs some new rotors and brake pads but my Question is how reliable are these cars? I just changed the oil but is there any preventative maintenance I can do to make it last longer? I bought this bad boy for $1100 and there is no codes or lights on and starts up everytime and shifts smoothly! but it Just seems a little too good to be true. I would appreciate your feedback. Thanks Scotty!
Ford are generally not as well built as a Honda or Toyota. That being said the price you paid makes purchasing the car probably make sense. The standard transmission is a plus as those last much longer than automatic transmissions these days. I would say change the motor oil and the gear lube in the transmission in accordance with regular maintenance intervals and see what happens. You can also check the manual for what the dealership calls a maintenance schedule. If you search "maintenance schedule" for your car on Google you will probably find it. It tells you what needs to be done and when as far as preventative maintenance for your car. Sounds like a good buy at $1100.
Well look at it this way you only paid 1000 bucks for it. So at this point with >150k miles its going to as reliable as you are about taking care of it. Change the fluids and keep the car in good shape it could go 300k miles. You've got it now so just take care of it and see how far it can go but don't be surprised if have to do some major work on the car in the near future cause that cars as old as the hills and when cars are that old lower mileage isn't necessarily a great thing because what that means is that more than likely the car was sitting and not being driven for a long period of time maybe years which not good for cars in general. So just baby it and hopefully it'll last a awhile for ya!
