[V8] TCO - Running the Numbers

[Etdmail at cs.com]

Greetings All -

This is a great subject to revisit, I feel. TCO and other measures of costs
associated with transportation is growing increasingly complex and can
be quite exhaustive (pun inserted) when considering administering a
large commercial fleet or trying to guide prudent public policy.

It is very true, that recycling cars, houses, any material possible is 
more efficient than producing these materials from any new sources.

I think Bastion's approach is a good user friendly way for the average
owner/enthusiast to get a reasonable handle on running costs. That is 
making a line item for all normal running costs and maintenance.

Some will be (roughly) fixed pricing for all, a good example are Audi brakes.
Want to make a mechanic smile .. Tell him you have an Audi & need brakes.
$1000.00 + being the market price in most places, from what I understand.

Also in our case (especially true of the 3.6L cars) the timing belt at 60,000 
mile replacement intervals are less than most and the cost once again is 
on the upper end of the spectrum .. This early v8 line item alone - makes 
the cost of [v8] more than most cars. (If paying $2,000.00/60,000 miles.)

Chains do last longer and tend to be less to replace .. The belts do run a 
bit quieter though. What's your price for that? Seems the engine designers
have already made this decision pre-hand.

Tires? The V8's were known to go through them in quick order. I remember 
some of the new car tests for the V8 models reported having difficulty with 
tire wear and them holding alignments. How long do most of us drive on a 
set of tires before they hit the dumpster? 30,000 miles? Have an extra set 
for the snow season too?

A popular tire shop in my area charges $25.00 more to align a V8, than it 
charges for a 200TQ the last time I was there, so I asked for the TQ align-
ment! Yes, it was the LAST time I went there! How often do you align?

Engine Oil Changes - over $100.00 with the good stuff! .. How long do you 
run it? How far do you drive to get it changed? .. It takes just as long to 
stand there and watch, as it does for the guy to do the draining (but this is 
just another after thought).

This is the easy part really, from here, things get more varied, more 
complicated.

It takes 2 quarts of water to make the container to hold the quart of 
syn-oil. 
Same for the plastic, that bottled water comes in, takes 2 Qts. to make a 
one quart bottle.

It takes 6 gallons of pesticides to grow the cotton for the T-Shirt the 
delivery 
guy will sweat through while drinking the bottled water to bring the load of 
it 
to all the local stores ... Just something to think about.

For Ethanol it takes 4 gallons of water to make one gallon of (seed based) 
Ethanol. Now that this is a mandated ingredient in our fuels - they are busy 
building out new fields and processing plants all throughout the corn belts. 
Which are built on top of already depleted underground aquifers .. Are we
all needing to learn new rain dances? 

Someone had mentioned $16,000 for his projected total fuel costs over the 
next couple years or so (if that is possible), for his V8 alone! .. Which is 
more 
than the total income for whole families for 8 years in many 3rd. world 
countries!

This is where it all gets really, really complicated ....

Best,
-Ed

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