Wheat-dogg's World

That’s 200K miles, for your metric types. The happy event occurred just before we pulled up to an Arby’s drive-up window yesterday.

I bought this little car just after we returned from South Africa, to replace our Dodge Neon. I needed a commuter car, and the Metro fit the bill nicely. It had about 42,000 miles on it, and was in pretty good condition.

In fact, the car was trouble-free until an incompetent mechanic replaced the timing belt, but failed the retension it. After a few more thousand miles, the belt started to jump off the cogs, fouling up the valve timing. In a very short time, I had several bent valves and a useless motor.

A competent mechanic installed a used engine, and that four-banger has popped along just fine for the last 60,000 miles.

It’s small, but at 35 mpg, I’m not complaining — much.