The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
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Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
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Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
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Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
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Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
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I have driven a mid-2010s Buick sedan for four years. It's been the best car I've owned in terms of reliability and cost of ownership. And I appreciate that it's more plushy than the most basic transportation appliances. I was a Volvo enthusiast for many years, but I no longer have the spare time or patience to do the maintenance that went into that.
I admit that I find Hondas and Toyotas too common/boring to be worth their sterling reliability rating; most modern cars are so much more reliable than what we used to have that it's not nearly as big a deal as it used to be. (I drove a Honda Accord for many years, and got my fill.) I also have potentially irrational biases against Nissans, Jeeps, and most German makes. I like the looks and features of Stellantis products, but I just can't bring myself to trust them.
The wife and I are actually looking at getting her some kind of crossover in the next few months. Budget is 20k, seeking something certified pre-owned of about 3 to 5 years old. Most common brands are on the table. Something cheap and cheerful like a Mitsubishi would be fine with us, or indeed another Buick like an Encore. If we wanted to spend more money on it, we'd probably go for a Mazda. There's also nothing wrong with Ford Escapes and Edges etc.; but I've driven those and just wasn't very impressed by them. (I also drove a jellybean-type Ford Taurus for some years, and honestly I liked it a lot. I have the opinion that Ford has lost its way.)
I am not closed off to hybrids, but I have a local mechanic who I really like and trust, and he only knows ICE technology. I don't drive long enough distances that the gas mileage benefit of the hybrid is meaningful to me.
Actually, now that you mention it, I was thinking of getting a Honda because it might be cheaper than a Toyota, but I always hear that their transmissions are worse and are usually the first thing to go bad. Is that true? Also is it worth learning to drive stick shift? I am thinking it is not, since you lose out on cruise control.
There are many implications to each of these questions.
1.) Honestly, "the transmission is the weak point" is something I've heard about nearly every make of vehicle. They just seem to break more than other components of the drivetrain. Ironically, the only transmission I have direct personal knowledge of failure in was that of my mom's Toyota Camry back in the 2000s. Anyway, the only vehicles I'd specifically avoid for that reason are Nissans. Bear in mind though, this is just my anecdata. You could find hard facts about failure rates if you went looking. My impression was always that Honda made some of the best automatic transmissions around.
I have always gone out of my way to proactively drain + fill automatic transmissions with fresh fluid every 50k miles or so, and have never had a transmission-related problem. On my old Volvos, it was almost exactly the same procedure as replacing the oil, so not a big deal.
2.) I think knowing how to drive stick is a skill worth having. It doesn't take that long to pick that skill up - maybe just one day if you have someone to show you and plenty of time to practice. Additionally - manual transmissions are much more repairable and durable than auto-transmissions, and some people get them just for that reason. You'll be able to drive any vehicle you encounter, and honestly, it's just kind of badass.
I don't like them that much for city driving, though. It's kind of a pain in stop and go traffic.
Manual transmissions are a complete pain for city driving with regular changes in speed and lots of stopping and starting. It doesn't just become a background process in your mind. I say that as someone who drove manuals for years.
They are, however, significantly cheaper on the used market.
Whenever I look for manuals in the cars I'm interested in, they're going for a premium over the automatics. Maybe that's untrue for used corollas or cars like that.
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It's their CVTs that are the problem. Toyota gets around that problem in their CVT models mostly by having a gear for "first".
Honda makes the best transmissions more or less period.
You also get to the point where shifting a manual is automatic- a background process that lives in your head and hand motions that you don't consciously think about. It helps if the transmission isn't terrible; if you have to fight it into gear you're not going to like that very much, but otherwise it's... well, automatic.
Technically, the best answer to this is to buy a car whose engine has enough torque to pull it forward simply by letting the clutch out. 300 ft-lbs is enough to do this to a car that weighs 3500 lbs (250 is only enough on level ground).
According to /o/: The problem with Nissan's CVTs is that they are too small for the engines to which they are connected. Mitsubishi uses the same CVTs, but matches them better with engines, so Mitsubishi cars don't have the same transmission problems. For example, according to Wikipedia, the Jatco JF015E is used both in the Mitsubishi Mirage (76 horsepower) and in the Nissan Juke (122 horsepower).
Seems common with Mitsubishi products. Everyone says their mini splits are better because of the fancy tech, but most of it is that their heat exchangers are massively over-spec for their rating. Just vastly more copper than a Midea unit. (They can only do that because their compressors have such good turndown ratios, admittedly)
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