Iqbal Taher

Short answer Ask one question Not one of the eleven services below is on a normal maintenance schedule at the mileage it gets sold. One sentence at the counter sorts every line on the estimate: is that the manufacturer's schedule, or your recommendation? The prices are here so you know what each answer is worth. There are plenty of lists of services you don't need. Car Talk has one, Consumer Reports has one, Haynes has one, and they're broadly right.

Start with two numbers, because everything else follows from them. Ford’s 1.0-liter three-cylinder EcoBoost has a timing belt that runs inside the engine, bathed in oil. For most of the engine’s life, Ford told owners to replace that belt at 150,000 miles. Thanks for reading Iqbal Publication! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Federal investigation records put the average mileage at which these engines are actually failing at 70,000 miles.

Short answer Judge the failure, not the number of complaints High mileage cars to avoid are usually picked by counting complaints, and that counts buyers. We measured what share of each model's own complaints describe a four-figure failure instead. On that measure the Chevrolet Equinox, the Nissan CVT cars and the Kia and Hyundai four-cylinders sit at the top.