The Uno lives, will it make 250,000 km?

When you own a fifteen year old car the six monthly Warrant Of Fitness, road worthiness inspection, means a little apprehension.  Anything major means the sums don’t add as the repairs rapidly exceed the value of the car!

The Mighty Uno, now at 239,950km, got thru it’s 240k service & WOF with nothing more than plugs, oil & filter and a hand-brake adjustment. Barring accidents (or Lotto wins), seems I’ll be pedalling it for another six months at least…

It deserves a present so maybe I’ll fix the recent small windscreen leak properly, taped till now, and maybe even go crazy and fit a seat cover to the rather tired looking drivers seat…

When I got this car it had 1 previous owner and 55,000km on the clock. To date I’ve serviced it as scheduled which has required;

• Scheduled items at recommended intervals;
  • Spark plugs
  • Fluids & Filters
  • Cambelt
  • Brake pads
  • Tyres
• Non-scheduled items;
  • 2 Distributor Cap & Rotor ($45ea)
  • 2 x Vacuum Adv. Unit ($85) (ignition parts seem to kaput about every 80,000 km)
  • Rocker cover gasket ($15)
  • L/H Lower Suspension Arm ($124) – Picked up as “steering play” in WOF inspection but given it was only one side probably my fault…
  • 2 Set front discs ($55/set) & 2 brake hoses ($35)
  • 1 Battery ($90)
  • Alternator belt ($16)
  • Minor Rust Repair to L/H sill ($150)
  • 1 Muffler ($150)
  • 1 Frustrated “Ernst the Bavarian BMW Mechanic” trying to find things to fix (Priceless!)

Everything else is what came out of the factory in Italy. Not bad for close to 250,000km total, 184,950km of my driving. It’s hardly heavy on fuel, about 500km round town on a 31 litre fill ($49) fill, extends to about 600km on the open road …

So much for Fiats being un-reliable & expensive to run…

Tags: Uno