One Lady Owner

AMurphy

re; She's probably had the car since new, never had it serviced, looked at tyre pressures, brake wear, changed the oil etc... Most women drive a car and unless there is smoke billowing out the exhaust or the thing won't start, they just keep on driving it, regardless of a maintenance & service schedule ..."

I also assumed the point was the sellers/dealers that quote such... should be horsewhipped or have their head examined, not that women are inherently mechanically inept. A lot of guys are pretty bad also.

Eitehr way, there may be something in the statment.
eg, "The Ma" again, very capable woman behind the wheel of anything. Taught me how to drive, passed 1st time and still between the ditches (touch wood... no, no stay away from the trees).
Religious about observing maintenance schedules, etc. I did most of it anyway, so.
However on one occasion when the water pump sprung a leak,... drove till it overheated and stopped. Then when it has cooled down, drove the rest of the distance home, where it stopped again and remained stopped till we rebuilt the engine. So I got a little more maintenance work that time.

If it had been an oil light, she would probably have driven home and informed me "the oil light was on all day".

I think there may be an attitude difference. ie, getting home saftely may be important than an engine.

Generally I would put no great importance in the statment, "lady driver", not any more than I would on high or low mileage, Though you'll have to admit the statment "teenage male driver" is one you'll never see on the banner.
Inspect the object

Victor

One comment I had from a mechanic was that "little old dears" never, ever do their own maintainence and always go to a mechanic, hence it hasn't been Gunthered by some guy who thinks he knows how to maintain things.

DubTony

Capt'n Midnight wrote:

Worse she could have it serviced several times a week .. One lady owner always reminds me of..

And I'll bet she's burnt out a few clutches in her time.

Tony

greglo23

serious generalisations going on here. as a mechanic with more than 30 years experience i can safely say that men are far worse at maintaining their cars than women. my female customers would ring me or call if they thought something was`nt right with the car whereas the males tended to drive on until the car stopped. as for little old ladies i blame the car salesmen, all of whom i would`nt believe if they told me they were lying, who should be pointing them at autos. look at how much cars have changed in the last 30 years . most older people drove anglias or morris minors with heavy clutches. you could rest your leg on the clutch all day and do hardly any damage. iv`e seen cars come in to me with no disks left, and i mean gone completely and the guy says i thought the brakes were a bit poor. i saw a renault 5 one day with 2 pieces of wood holding the pistons in the calipers and i had to stop your man from driving it away. the basic problem in ireland is a lack of proper driver education and lazy cops who only want to hand out speeding tickets instead of enforcing the rest of the rules of the road. rant over!!!!

AMurphy

Oh, nothing like a good quality rant to start off the day.
However, this morning I passed a Jeep (doing about 55~60) with a very-very wobbly minature spare on the rear.
Odd, I thought, never seen one wobble like that before, as I got closer, a quick inspection revealed the wheel to be on inside out. (nuts too maybe).

Male driver.

magpie

Mind you thats not always enough, years ago I was listening to Gay Byrne radio show which featured a young woman who was driving round with a dash light showing, she did'nt think to wonder what it meant dispite seeing the thing on all the time the engine was running then one day she heard a grinding sound which became deafening and then the car stopped in a smelly cloud of smoke...yep the oil light had been showing for a week and she wrecked the engine.

I either know that girl, or someone that did the same thing. :rolleyes: Her replacement car then lost the drivers door after about 2 weeks when she opened it in the path of an oncoming bus. Some people just shouldn't drive.

AMurphy

This was told me by a coworker of many moons ago. She decided she'd check and top up the car fluids, (an old Mini at the time).

Anyway, after several buckets of water to top up the coolant, her brother became suspicious and decided to check out why it needed so much water to top it off.
Engines would take about 5 gal of water when you put it in the crank case.

Fortunately draining/replacing the oil immediately prevented any damage.

otoh, my Mom's car got a puncture, so some helpful men assisted in changing the wheel, but did not know enough about cars to install the nuts tapered side in. Fortunately she did and reversed them.

Re, opening doors. Cannot remember exactly what the wife of a former boss did... something like reversed out of the garage with a door open, or drove in with a bike stuck on top.... not a good thing to do with the Hubby's Porsch.

My wife managed to bang her vehicle off both mine and my brothers reversing out of the garage. Nothing serious, but did manage to drive my car in front of a "boat" with no brakes about a week later. That snapped off the front wheel and bent the chassis beyond repair... Beat out the wing with a 2x4 and a mallet, fitted a scrap wheel and strut and it ran for another 2 years that way. Hardly NCT approvable,?
The "boat" got written off.