Cooling system tested in “extreme” Texas heat.

lz33w7 said:

Honestly, kind of on a mission to rid the publics view of bad reliability in these cars that they seem to have.

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These cars were never reliable to the level that top-notch reliability cars, e.g. Toyota, Honda, were at the time they were made and it becomes even worse with neglect. They are unreliable when compared against that level, and pretty much always, but that doesn't mean that they are, or should be, unreliable in sane and practical terms. There are plenty of cars on the road, for decades, that don't hold up to "the transportation appliances" in terms of their absolute reliability.

I had great luck with SRH33576 after her initial "shake out months" and where I thereafter kept fixing "little things" that very seldom resulted in an FTP. The only two FTPs I ever had in her was when the functioning half of the fuel pump went out after I'd had her for several years and when the Lucas Opus ignition decided to give up the ghost at age 35.

These cars "become more unreliable" because they are simply not driven, for the most part. And the obsession with low mileage that, to any informed consumer, means that a car was never used, among a significant part of the RR/Bentley community doesn't help. I had a lot less trouble with SRH33576 that came to me with something like 80K miles on her than I did with LRK37110 with under 30K miles and several years of no use at all.

Sorry, but I have to disagree with your assessment.

The original owners of these cars are in the "money is no object" class and they can easily afford the necessary maintenance on them. That's who I was referring to, not those of us who get these cars on the secondary market often after years of neglect we have to make up for.

One of the reasons my "cut off date" was the SY era is because of how notoriously unreliable the electronics that were used for many things in the cars that came after were. That's the biggest PITA to deal with along with the fact that there is the long period prior to when OBD became mandated (1996 in the USA) and the difficulty in getting the code readers needed.

I agree that parts are obscene if you stick to Crewe Original, and there are some parts that can only be had from them or a dismantler. That being said, most of the common service items like belts, relays, seals, and many others do have "over the counter" equivalents that can be sourced anywhere. I made it one of my missions to compile such a compendium because I was shocked that no one in the RROC-US (at the time I joined) had ever done so. It's insane to pay Crewe Original prices for dirt common parts that are 100% (or close enough to practically be) the same.