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Originally Posted by Brucelee
You have no way of knowing how many of those cars have had engine trouble in the past.
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That is very true. However, without any specific information they could just as easily be on the original engine as not.
Moreover, with high mile cars, advertisers usually go out of their way to highlight if the engine has been replaced and is carry significantly fewer miles than the chassis. Ya know, odo shows 130,000 but new engine fitted 40,000 miles ago. This is common in the UK at least. None of the ads I looked at mentions replacement engines.
I suspect if any of cars had engine replacements it would have been a good while ago as these cars have long since ceased to be economical to repair should the worse happen.
The other point to note about the anecdotal observation that nearly all engines failures happen at relatively low miles is that you might also conclude that the higher mile engines are the proven good ones. So if you do see one with 100k up on the original lump, you know it's a goodun'.
Frankly, I don't know if that's true. I just don't really follow Mr Raby's contribution in this thread. His comment seems to be a clear attempt to infer that these lumps don't seem to last beyond 100k, but he seems unwilling to come out and say that. If that's not what he is inferring, then I'm not sure what we are supposed to learn from his comment.
Personally, I think these engines probably are prone to many, many more failures than an equivalent, say, BMW six-cylinder engine. But that doesn't necessarily mean it's terribly likely you'll experience the worst yourself. Exactly what the chances of actual failure are in a well maintained engine I think is super hard to judge. If you read enough of these threads you might come away with the impression that it's 50/50. I doubt it's as bad as that. But I guess we will never know.