There are things you should do that aren't listed in the owners manual. You see the results in cars that have low mileage per year. Mostly change your fluids occasionally. Examples.
1) I have a Mustang bought new in Nov. 2004. Now has about 65K miles and I did the brakes a couple of months ago. Decided to flush the brake fluid. It was opaque and discolored. Probably full of H2O. Cost (since I did it myself), maybe $10.
2) This made me think of anti-freeze. Drained and refilled it. It was discolored. Don't know if it would be a problem but I might have spent $30. Cheap compared to:
3) A friend has an A/M DB7 from the 90's. It had about 30K miles on it when it died in a small city about 1K miles from home. He didn't want a local guy to touch it and paid to have it shipped home. Here, a bunch of "car guys" including a very experienced British mechanic got into it (how often have you worked on an Aston Martin?). The head gasket was blown. Fixed it. The mechanic suggested that time, not miles, degraded the anti-freeze to the point it got acidic and ate the gasket. Can't say he's right but he said he replaced ALL fluids every 3-5 years. An aside, what does an A/M head gasket cost? Well, A/M Britain offered him one for ~C$2200. One of the "car guys" pointed out to him the engine in his car was Jaguar. The local Jag dealer brought one in for ~C$190. For a typical Ford/Chev/whatever it would have been ~C$30. Still want an exotic car?
Of course, with cars, YMMV.
