Archives for 2015

Sep 04 2015

Our tow vehicle repair budget, 2014-2015

People ask me all the time about our experience with the Mercedes GL320 as a tow vehicle. I think half the people who ask truly want to know if they should consider it for themselves, and the other half are hoping I’ll admit that I really can’t tow my Airstream with anything less than a 3/4 ton truck. I probably disappoint a lot of people, because I tell the first group the brutal truth about the cost of Mercedes parts and service, and I tell the other half that it has done just fine towing “that big Airstream” for over six years.

It’s time for an update. The Mercedes now has 107,000 miles. Probably 80% of those miles were traveled with our 30-foot Airstream Safari in tow, so we’ve certainly worked the Merc as much as we can.

When I bought this car back in 2009 I said it had better give me 250,000 miles of service or I’ve made a big mistake. To date, I’m encouraged. It hasn’t been amazingly more or less reliable than our previous Nissan Armada, but overall it hasn’t been terrible. There were far too many instances of “Check Engine” lights a few years ago, but all the bugs seem to have been worked out and lately our visits to the dealer have been either routine maintenance or other repairs that are associated with high mileage or age.

The warranty is long gone now, as is the extended warranty. I pay for all the repairs, so I’m watching the expenses carefully. Here’s what it has consumed (other than routine maintenance like tires and battery) since 2013:

June 2014: Blower motor (for climate control fan) wouldn’t shut off. It was corroded and had shorted out. Replaced at a cost of $539. Mercedes parts ain’t cheap.

July 2014: The air conditioner had been intermittently failing for years. It finally got bad enough to replace the compressor, at a cost of $1,289. Ouch.

October 2014: I tried a shadetree mechanic to save a few bucks on replacing the rear shocks (worn out), right front lower control arm and engine mounts. He screwed it up by failing to tighten a nut on the wheel hub, resulting in a destroyed hub bearing assembly. He also couldn’t get the left engine mount in, so he handed me the part and said, “It’s OK, the right one usually wears out first anyway.” Later I discovered he’d left a wrench under the third row seats, which jammed them until one day the wrench rolled out.

The car ended up at the dealership to finish/correct the work. Between the hack mechanic and the dealer, the total cost for this debacle was about $3,500 in parts and labor. That included a lot of parts, but still, double ouch. I kept the wrench.

February 2015: The front air struts finally began to leak. This is pretty typical around 100k miles on these cars, sooner if they are driven in the city a lot. Front struts were about $2,000 installed. The rears should be good for a while longer, since they get less stress. We also replaced the battery for the first time.

June 2015: I noticed some weird electrical symptoms following a big rain at Alumapalooza, and went hunting. Sure enough, there was a rain leak around the brake lights that was letting water drip on to one of the very expensive computers that run the car (called a “rear Signal Acquisition Module”). I dried it out and protected the area with a towel until we could get it to the dealership for leak testing and repair. The tech found two leaks and fixed them at a cost of $247. Fortunately, the rear SAM survived.

September 2015: During routine service the techs discovered the front propeller shaft (part of the all wheel drive system) had a torn boot and was leaking grease. There was also an oil leak from the engine. The oil leak was fixed by replacing two missing screws, but the propeller shaft had to be entirely replaced. $1,300 for both jobs.

We also finally had to replace the front brakes. They were original brakes! Normally on a GL most people get about 35,000-45,000 miles, so the Service Advisor did a double-take when he saw we had 107,000 miles on the car. It’s because of the towing, actually. The Airstream’s excellent disc brakes do most of the work, saving the expensive Mercedes brakes. The dealer price for the front brakes was $551.

OK, so are you falling over with sticker shock or not? The reality of traveling as much as we do and maintaining this car to a high standard is that there’s a definite cost. We spent $5,328 on repairs in 2014, and $4,098 in 2015 (so far), not counting tires, oil changes, battery, etc. That’s over about 17,000 miles of travel, or about $0.55 per mile. It’s a high number but keep in mind we work this machine hard.

Also, the car is paid for, and we like it. Having no monthly payment compensates for a lot of repairs. Realistically, I couldn’t replace the GL320 with anything comparable or more reliable for what we spend on repairs currently*, so economically it makes sense to stick with it.

* For reference, our current repair budget is equivalent to the payment on a $22,000 vehicle financed at 4% for five years.

For me, the key factor is overall reliability. While the car has spent some time in the shop getting replacement parts, those have been planned services. It has never failed us on the road. That’s my personal Rubicon to cross; if the car fails to get us where we are going, I’ll take it out behind the barn and shoot it. I don’t mind maintenance and replacing worn parts as long as it continues to perform as good as new, but becoming unpredictable and unreliable would put an end to our friendly relationship.

Interestingly, none of the repairs we have had in the first 100,000 miles can be attributed to the “stress of towing.” A lot of armchair/Internet experts will claim that towing is terribly hard on a vehicle. Our experience has been the opposite. All the highway miles have only lengthened the time certain parts have lasted (front struts and front brakes in particular), and we have had no repairs that can be attributed to towing.

The engine and transmission have yet to show any significant problems at all despite pulling a trailer that typically weighs about 98% of the manufacturer’s suggested tow rating. I have gained a lot of confidence in Mercedes’ design for this V6 Turbodiesel engine. It will probably be the last thing to fail.

I do expect we’ll probably be buying rear air struts and front suspension components in 2016 just due to age and miles, so the budget for annual maintenance will likely stay around $4,000-5,000. If it gets substantially higher, I’ll start thinking about options for replacement. But for now I’m still aiming to hit 250,000 miles.

Aug 26 2015

Why you might be wrong about everything

This week I bought the Airstream Safari a new set of tires. There wasn’t anything wrong with the old tires, other than being old. The tire industry makes various recommendations about replacing tires—I’ve heard anywhere from 4 years to 10 years, and the length of time seems to correlate with the confidence the manufacturer has in its product.

In this case the tires were Michelin LTX that we installed in January 2010, and although the tires were only used for five years and eight months, they were manufactured in late 2008 and early 2009. Tires begin to age from the day they are made, not the day they are installed, so I considered these to be nearly seven years old.

That didn’t bother me much, but on close inspection some fine “checking” (which is the tire industry term for cracking at the surface of the rubber) was apparent. Since my Airstream, livelihood, and family all depends on safe and reliable operation of these tires, it seemed like the time to swap in a new set.

In a way, the Michelins have been an experiment. Those of you who have read my blogs from 2005-2010 know that we historically had terrible results from using ST (Special Trailer) type tires on the Safari. After years of constantly replacing them because of on-the-road failures, I took the advice of Andy Thomson at Can-Am RV and installed the Michelin LTX instead.

As always, Andy was spot-on with his advice. We’ve never had a problem since. Those tires have traveled over 45,000 miles and the tread is still good. Not one tread separation or flat, whereas I was accustomed to dealing with a problem every few months when I was trying various brands of ST tires. In other words, the Michelin experiment was a success.

So it’s probably no surprise that I ordered up a fresh set of the same tires again (from Tire Rack). It was interesting to note that Michelin has re-designated them. Before they were Michelin LTX M/S LT235/75R15 104/101R. That decodes as follows:

M/S =mud and snow
LT = Light Truck
235/75 R15 = the size of the tire. My Airstream came with a Goodyear 225/75, so the Michelins are just a little wider. R15 means they go on a 15″ wheel.
104/101 R is their weight carrying capacity. In this case, they had two designations. 104 decodes as 1,985 lbs of weight per tire, which means all four had a capacity of 7,940 lbs. That’s a few hundred pounds more than our Airstream typically weighs when loaded. (The “101R” adds a caveat. If you want the tire to go up to 106 MPH, don’t exceed 1,819 lbs per tire.)

The new tires are Michelin LTX M/S 2 P235/75R15 108T. For whatever reason, Michelin is now calling them passenger tires (that’s what the “P” means) and giving them a higher load rating of 2,183 lbs per tire. But that’s really misleading. The industry says that if you want to use them on a truck or trailer you should divide by 1.1, which brings the load rating right back to 1,985. (Isn’t it fun, all the secret codes and hidden rules they have? No wonder people get confused.)

The speed rating went up too: “108T” means now we can theoretically tow at 118 MPH, as long as we keep under 2,208 lbs per tire. Sounds like fun.

I don’t hesitate to recommend these tires to my friends who ask for advice, because I’ve had this very good experience. But if you are happy using some other tire and having no problems, I don’t see a need to switch. Our 1968 Caravel does very well on ST tires, probably because it covers relatively few miles and is a much lighter trailer.

Now, having said all this, I’ve exposed myself to a small controversy. Some people like to debate this subject—and many others, such as tow vehicle choice—and undoubtedly one of them will either get in touch with me to inform me of my poor choice or open a thread on an online forum somewhere to discuss it. I have been intrigued to study the reasons why this continues to happen.

It’s perhaps oversimplifying, but I see two basic groups in every perennial online towing debate.

On one side you have what I’ll call the Rationalists. They look at the numbers and the guidelines. If, for example, the industry says that ST tires are engineered specifically for the needs of travel trailers, with reinforced sidewalls and special tread designs, that’s what the Rationalists will go by. After all, that’s what the experts say—and who are we to second-guess the engineers and the RV industry? They are the ones who made the things! Using LT or P tires is a sort of “off label use,” which might open you up to liability if something bad happens. And finally (say the Rationalists) just because those tires work for a few people doesn’t mean they’re a good idea.

On the other side you have the Empiricists. They look at actual experience, and argue that it has more value. If hundreds or even thousands of people are using LT or P-designated tires with a much higher success rate than the ST tires, who cares what the industry claims? Clearly their claims have been disproved by reality. This brings into question the industry motivations for steering us toward an inferior product (perhaps it was because the RV industry loves a low price? or perhaps to maximize profits?), which leads to deeper suspicion of industry guidelines.

Usually, both the Rationalists and the Empiricists firmly believe they are right, and they’ll often defend their position to the point of spoiling a party. (I used tires as an example, but the real fireworks get started over tow vehicle choice.) The problem is that neither side really has all the data.

The Rationalists don’t really know if the information they have received is correct. They’re just trusting what they see as the most authoritative source, and as we know, seemingly-authoritative sources can be dead wrong, biased by economic considerations, or distorted. The Empiricist can’t prove the validity of experience without a statistically valid survey. They’re just trusting what they’ve learned anecdotally. Neither side can definitively disprove the claims of the other, so the debate never ends.

Both sides will occasionally invoke the mythological concept of “common sense”. There is no common sense related to complex decisions like tow vehicles or tires. You might think that over time, a consensus would emerge from the Internet based on an averaging of real-world experience, but it’s no more reliable than standing in the middle of a stadium and asking everyone to tell you which football team is best.

Another favorite argument is the “laws of physics”. Nobody ever explains which laws of physics (Newton, Bernoulli, Avogadro?) they are invoking. Since there are many physical laws and the dynamics of towed vehicles involve many of them at the same time, I suspect that really the claimants are speaking of an imaginary law that says everyone must agree with them.

Since nobody knows everything, it’s easy for one side to introduce doubt into the other side’s argument, by suggesting possible (and unprovable) reasons why their position has a fatal flaw. Often this takes the form of suggesting a hidden liability or potential negative outcome that has been rumored. This puts your opponent on the defensive, but beware, because both sides can play this game.

Copernicus believed the sun was the center of the universe, altering a 2,000 year-old belief stemming from the ancient Greeks that the Earth was the center. Turns out everyone was wrong, and they were the smartest people on the planet at the time. Elon Musk, a genius at work in our own time, puts it this way: “You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”

So my advice to people who get all worked up in debates about tow vehicles, tires, catalytic heaters, running the propane while towing, and other similar subjects is simple: remember why you got into Airstreaming. I’m guessing it wasn’t so you could argue with other people.

Anyway, you’re probably both wrong. Go camping and forget about it!

Aug 11 2015

Sonoran hot dog test #3

This has been a great summer so far. It started (as it always does) with towing the Airstream up to Ohio for Alumapalooza, and it has been a series of great experiences ever since. Visiting friends in Ohio and family in Vermont, motorcycling through the Adirondack Park in New York, camping in an Airstream Interstate, hiking to ancient ruins in Navajo National Monument, attending the International Rally in New Mexico, attending EAA’s Airventure in Oshkosh Wisconsin … and in between, little TBM activities like The Loft’s “Mondo Monday” and card night with the guys.

Last weekend I got a bonus TBM activity. Tesla Motors was in town doing a promotion about Tesla owners having driven over a billion miles on electricity alone, and I took the opportunity to snag a test-drive in a Tesla Model S 85. I won’t go into full fanboy raving about the Tesla here, so suffice to say that it was every bit as awesome as I expected. If I had the funds I’d buy a Tesla Model S right now. But I’ll have to wait for the less-expensive Model 3 to come out.

A $2.50 hotdog is more in my price range at the moment. Having been in Tucson on-and-off for several weeks, it was high time to seek out the Sonoran hot dog carts that occupy vacant parking lots along Tucson’s streets.

You see, a Sonoran hot dog is a one of the two excuses I allow myself each year to consume a hot dog. The first instance is at a beach party on Lake Champlain in the summer, when friends bring over quirky variations on hot dogs from their hometowns in New York state. Malone NY, for example, has a dog known locally as the “Malone Red Hot“. Rochester and Syracuse have their “white hots“. Burlington VT is the home of the McKenzie Natural Casing Frank, which is hardly exotic but definitely my favorite. Such a variety mandates that one make a dietary exception and explore the local eats. It is made a far better experience when standing in a cool breeze on the rocky shores of Lake Champlain at sunset with a gang of friends and a beach fire.

The second exception is in the peak of Tucson’s monsoon season, July through September, when the weather gets hot & wild and people retreat to their air conditioned spaces. I like to roam the main boulevards and seek out those hardy vendors who have staked out vacant lots on prime corners, and maintain their position through the scorching summer and torrential thunderstorms. You know that anyone who keeps their hot dog stand going through such a season has something more important to vend than the average fairground hot dog.

These culinary outlets tend to be just a large hot dog cart with a nearby tent, a few chairs and tables, and—if you’re lucky—an old concrete slab from some long-ago demolished house to serve as a floor. Otherwise you’re usually standing on dirt. Traffic from busy main streets is ever-present. There’s no relief from the heat, and only a small patch of shade.

But it’s Tucson, so there’s also a good chance that you’ll have a view of the beautiful Santa Catalinas as you eat, and the guy who serves your Sonoran dog will certainly speak Spanish as his first language. He won’t kowtow to you, he won’t B.S. you, and he won’t give you anything but his best.

In other words, the experience is wonderfully authentic Tucson: real food served in real outdoor atmosphere, no theme-park imitation anything. It’s an ephemeral experience too: vendors come and go over the years, the locations may change as vacant lots get redeveloped, and even the recipes change like language with little flairs and flourishes added by each Sonoran chef.

These days there are at least half a dozen well-established Sonoran hot dog stands around Tucson, and probably another handful that come and go. If I only sample one per year I’ll never get to them all, so I chose two to compare (and brought a friend to help consume them). This year I went to El Manantial at Park and 36th in South Tucson, and Ruiz at 22nd and 6th near downtown.

Sonoran dogs really aren’t all the same. El Manantial (pictured above) tended to put more mayo on the dog, and their guero pepper (served on the side with most Sonoran dogs) was wrapped in bacon and filled with gooey orange cheese. This was like the one I got from El Sinaloense in 2012. Plenty of beans were inside, and lots of diced tomato and onion.

Ruiz toasted the bun to the point that it was just a bit crispy, which added a nice crunchy mouthfeel that I liked. The top of his dog had a fine puree of tomatillo on top that added decoration, if only a little flavor. Apparently Ruiz is a purist about the pepper, since it was just grilled plain without the bacon or cheese. (Still plenty hot, though. My advice is to keep a little mayo on the side to coat your mouth and help deal with the burn from the pepper.)

A “Mexican” Coke in a glass bottle is always available at these places if you want to have the full culinary experience.

These hot dogs should come with a Surgeon General’s warning. The cardiac consequences should be fairly obvious if you include them as a regular part of your diet, but what isn’t immediately apparent is how filling they are. They aren’t large, yet splitting two dogs left me feeling like I wouldn’t want to eat again for a day or two.

To be fair, I did eat about 2/3 of each one (because my helper was a lightweight) and my grease tolerance isn’t what it used to be, so I suppose a hungry 23-year-old wouldn’t have the same reaction. Still, you have been warned. We wanted to get some gelato afterward, but neither of us could actually make room for it.

OK, so “eat a Sonoran dog” is ticked off my TBM list. Tomorrow marks the end of my Temporary Bachelor Man time. I’m flying back to New England to rejoin my family and watch the last couple of weeks of northern Vermont summer. It’s a short season up there, and by mid August the days are already noticeably cooler. Residents will be frantically working on their summer bucket lists: get in another day of waterskiing, hike another mountain, ride the bike, have dinner on the patio, etc. In just two weeks we will start to see the first hints of fall color in the maple tree leaves, and by September Vermonters will be sighing as the breezes turn cool and the lake begins to get too wavy to leave the boat moored.

We’ll watch the curtain slowly draw on Vermont’s summer, but happily it won’t be over for us. In October we will be taking most of the month to travel back across the country with the Airstream. That’s one of the nice things about this lifestyle—we can extend the season by “chasing 70 degrees” southward in the fall. Summer lasts longer when you’ve got an Airstream. We’re having a great one; I hope you are too.

Jul 27 2015

A week at OSH

I know a few people who read this blog have wondered why TBM hasn’t emerged yet. I made a decision to work intensely for the first two weeks of July because a great event was on the horizon. The formal name is EAA Airventure Oshkosh 2015, but everyone just calls it “Oshkosh” and it’s the greatest aviation event in the world.

That’s no exaggeration. You can mention “Oshkosh” to any pilot around the world and they’ll immediately know you are talking about this event. About half a million people come to visit from 70 countries, and something like 8,000 airplanes fly in for the event, making the otherwise average airport at Oshkosh the busiest airport in the world.

I flew into OSH back in 1996 with Steve and Eric (the same guys who now are my companions on motorcycle trips in the summer), in the family Piper Arrow. It was quite an adventure flying in from the east through thunderstorms, and then camping next to the plane in tents for a few days, something I’ll always remember. Back then we were active members of the Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) and so every days we’d run into fellow pilots and friends who were building their own planes, or with who we’d had many a pancake breakfast in a cold airplane hangar over the winter.

Earlier this year Brett and I found a business reason to come to Oshkosh again, so Brett stashed his motorhome in Milwaukee after Alumapalooza 7 (in early June) to await our return in July. He flew in a day before me to get the motorhome ready (fridge cooled, stocked with food, fresh water tank filled, etc), and then I walked out of the General Mitchell Airport and found him waiting in the short term parking lot with an ice chest filled with refreshments.

That’s a very nice way to be received after a flight, kind of like being met by a limo, and I highly recommend it.

Wisconsin is a great place to visit in the summer. It has a lot in common with my home state of Vermont, with better weather. I like the green rolling hills of corn, the out-of-the-way restaurants with German names, the obsession with cheese, and the oh-so-friendly almost Canadian attitude and accent of the locals. Lots of uncrowded spaces, really good custard everywhere … and did I mention a mind-blowing annual aviation event?

For someone deeply engaged in the Airstream world, Oshkosh offers a substantial side benefit: it’s also one of the biggest RV gatherings in the world. Nobody seems to make a big deal out of that, I guess because the RVs don’t fly and are thus much less interesting to the OSH crowd. But for me it was a strangely thrilling moment to pull up to a few hundred acres of mowed grass and see a thousand or more recreational vehicles all parked together in a giant ad hoc community. If you miss the old days of the really big rallies, this is one of the places you can still find the experience, and under my idea of ideal conditions too: grass, no hookups on most of the field, lots of smiling people, and few rules.

Of course “no hookups” meant boondocking all week. Brett’s motorhome had just 50 gallons of water on board, but we are both experienced boondockers and so it wasn’t really a problem to make it last. For $30 we could have had the water refilled but it became a point of pride not to need that service so we executed our very best “Navy shower” technique every day. Brett rigged up 100 watts of portable solar panels to keep the battery charged, and two or three times a day we’d turn the panels to face the sun to optimize power generation. We managed seven days and we still had some water and full batteries on the day we left. Yes, for those of you who have never tried boondocking, it can be done.

There were a few Airstreams scattered around the field, but not as many as I’d hoped for. Perhaps someday we’ll organize a gathering at OSH. I know there are a lot of pilots and ex-pilots in the community.

Airventure is huge and features everything that flies. We saw seaplanes & amphibs, ultralights, warbirds, current military jets including the remarkable F-22, the Goodyear blimp, helicopters, gyrocopters, vintage aircraft, homebuilt, passenger jetliners, executive jets, drones flying in a dedicated UAV demo cage, powered parachutes, and gliders. There were hundreds of vendors, dozens of workshops and demonstrations, amazing airshows daily, and so much more that I can’t do justice to it here. Two days are barely enough to scratch the surface; after seven days we still had things on our list to do.

So perhaps it’s just as well that our original plan didn’t work out. Instead of working the show on one particular project as we had expected, we had time to explore for new opportunities—and found them. We ran into Airstream friends from both coasts and spent time with them. We found new products that might make the cut for the Airstream Life Store. We had time to talk about the next Alumafandango, which will be in northern California in September 2016.

After a few days we fell into a routine that started around 6:30 a.m., once the sun was pounding at the windows too loudly to ignore. We’d slather on the sunscreen and walk to the bus stop to catch one of the school buses that served Camp Scholler. We’d roam the exhibitions, checking out the aircraft of our fantasies (a HondaJet or perhaps a Velocity homebuilt) or talking to vendors about their products. One morning we took a free workshop and tried our hands at TIG welding.

Around noon we’d head back to the motorhome for lunch and an afternoon of watching helicopters fly overhead. At 6:30 p.m., the ultralights would take over, buzzing directly over us in the traffic pattern. You can’t go to Oshkosh for quiet. You have to love the sound of aircraft because there’s rarely a daylight moment without something roaring, buzzing, screaming, or pounding overhead—from drones to the new Airbus A350 xWB. I happen to enjoy sunny days with the awning out, parked in a grassy field, with a warm breeze and the sound of flying machines, so I took the opportunity to make the helicopter periods my siesta. Very relaxing.

There are a lot of “only at Oshkosh” moments. For example, only at Oshkosh would you find yourself picnicking under the nose cone of a B-52 while listening to Gary Sinise & The Lt Dan Band. Only at Oshkosh will you get to try your hand at welding and then flying a drone helicopter in the same day, and think that it’s nothing unusual. It’s the kind of event that people cherish so much that they have been coming for decades, and pass the tradition to their children.

We got some great ideas for next year’s Alumapalooza while we were here. We had already planned to make a full day of music during next year’s program. Now we are thinking of developing another full day of hands-on workshops, where participants will be able to actually try basic repair and maintenance techniques using their own hands and tools we supply. Very different from prior Alumapaloozas, but I think it will be a lot of fun, especially with some contests and prizes.

So it turned out to be one of the better business trips Brett and I have had, and a great TBM activity too. I highly recommend a week of Oshkosh for anyone with an RV. Maybe I’ll see you there in a future year?

Jul 12 2015

The standard to beat: 1948 technology

I don’t know if it’s a matter of getting older, but my perspective on modern stuff continues to warp to the point that I am starting to despise all new consumer products. A trip to Best Buy still gets me a little excited about all the shiny new gear, but at the same time I have a mental reservation because I know that most of that cool stuff will fail far too soon, or be technologically obsoleted in just a few years.

My Vizio television doesn’t just turn on; it has to “boot up.” Periodically it tells me to wait because it’s downloading a software update. Sometimes it “crashes” like a computer, spontaneously shutting down and re-booting. My Sony Blu-Ray player will hang occasionally if it is connected to the wrong type of wifi network, even though I don’t actually use the wifi features.

I’m lucky to get three years out of a cell phone before it goes wonky or the battery ceases to hold a charge. Microwave ovens: maybe 4-5 years before they cook themselves. By adding electronic control panels, manufacturers have even managed to make it likely that a traditional oven or a washing machine will need a $200 repair after a few years.

All of this technology has a short life span, and we just accept it as part of the rapid pace of consumerism. We aren’t really buying tech anymore, effectively we just rent it by virtue of our expectation that it won’t last. Thinking that any technological device we buy today could be handed down to the kids as an heirloom is a laughable prospect, even with high-end kitchen appliances. Instead, we are encouraged to buy extended warranties to perhaps eke out another year or two before the device heads for a landfill.

The idea that once upon a time you could buy an electric appliance and use it for decades is probably bewildering to most people born after the era of Compact Disc. Why wouldn’t you want to toss that old dinged-up thing after a few years, and buy the latest version with new programmable features, for a cheap price?

Ah, but what they don’t know is the heartening feeling of a trusted old tool, whether in the garage workshop or the kitchen. Eleanor’s Sunbeam Mixmaster Model 9 is a great example. Originally owned by her father, she has owned it and used it as long as I’ve known her. That wonderful old machine just keeps going and going, because the Mixmasters were made in an age when you had to build a product that lasted, if you were going to convince people to spend money on it.

What a strange philosophy in today’s world, eh? Mercedes-Benz used to be that way—I remember the parents of childhood friends who bought a Mercedes at considerable cost back in the 1970s and justified it because the car would last longer than what was coming out of Detroit at that time. It did too, until the Vermont road salt finally consumed it. Now people buy premium cars for reasons other than longevity, because hanging on to a car implies you can’t afford a new one. Many buyers ditch the car at the end of their lease, so the manufacturers have less incentive to build a car that lasts longer than the average car payment.

A few months ago Eleanor’s Mixmaster seemed to be running a little warm. After 67 years of use, it had a right to, I suppose. We were concerned that the motor might burn out, so I suggested she switch to the other vintage Mixmaster I bought back in 2013, while I disassembled the Model 9 and refurbished it.

As part of this, I offered to completely clean up and repaint every component of the Mixmaster. I would even source replacement decals, so the finished project would look like a brand new 1948 appliance. But Eleanor didn’t want me to go any further than cleaning up the dried bits of dough that were stuck to it, and I immediately understood why. A “new” Mixmaster wouldn’t look like the trusted old family friend she’s known for decades. Losing the patina would be like erasing memories. The value of the Mixmaster wasn’t how good it looked after all these years, it was how worn it looked.

Now, I could probably find another Model 9 out there in good working condition for fifty or sixty dollars. They aren’t particularly rare, and they don’t have a ton of market value. But this was the one her father touched, and which they used together, and that provenance gave it sentimental value. Sentimental value trumps market value every time.

Some parts for the old Mixmasters aren’t available anymore, so I bought a working donor for parts. I bought a new power cord, and found a guy who sold the old service manuals so I bought one of those too. Then I took the Model 9 apart, ran out of time, and put all the parts in a box. Eleanor’s Mixmaster sat there for months, disassembled, until last week when I finally had time to tackle it.

The service manual was a strange thrill all by itself. Typewritten pages, only two sketches, and meticulous instructions on how to diagnose, repair, lubricate, and adjust every little mechanical component. I could imagine some engineers in a post WWII office, writing and revising the manual in longhand before finally handing it over to the secretarial pool to be typed up and proofread. You just don’t see manuals like that anymore for most products, because they’re not worth fixing.

The interior of a vintage Mixmaster is a brilliant bit of design, almost like a watch, with dozens of carefully crafted bits that work together in mechanical harmony. Part of my motivation for taking on this project was to learn; inside the Mixmaster are spinning governors with breaker points, a resistor and capacitor, calibrated springs, carbon brushes, and gears—none of which I understood before I removed the first screw. I was fascinated to delve into the world of 1940s engineering and see how it was done before integrated circuits and microprocessors took over.

What really impressed me was the incredible durability of the design. This thing is old enough to collect Social Security, and yet once I had it apart I found no significant wear on any of the components. I felt faintly ridiculous for having bought a parts donor; all the Model 9 needed was some ancient dough cleaned out from the air vents, a new power cord, fresh grease, and a minor adjustment to the “armature thrust screw.” It’s now re-assembled and working as good as new.

Good for another sixty years? Perhaps so. All I am sure of is that it will turn on instantly every time we twist the dial, and it won’t ever need a software update, and it won’t report what we’re mixing to any social media sites or the NSA, and it will never be worthless. Manufacturers of modern technology: there’s your standard to beat.