My last car got hit by a falling tree branch and sustained a dent and a shattered rear window. Unfortunately the window I needed was really hard to find. I tried for 3 years off and on to find a replacement but struck out and finally decided it was time.

We happened to come across a Dodge Grand Caravan for sale in the neighborhood and decided to buy it. It had 124950 miles on it and looked like it was holding up pretty well. The price was right so we snagged it up.

I never thought I’d ever drive a minivan but my favorite kind of cars to own are cars that are fully depreciated but still have a lot of life left that I can drive into the ground. When you buy a car for $6000 or $7000 bucks it won’t lose much more value very quickly but may still have 2/3rds of its life left. At that point you’re basically getting to put miles on a car for free, at 200,000 miles I should be able to get $2000 or $4000 bucks back out of it, but usually that’s not how things go. Usually I end up sending them to the crusher.

This van has 7 passenger seating, fold flat seats, a sporty v6 Pentastar engine which is the same engine used in the v6 Dodge Challenger and many other Mopar (now Stellantis) cars including Jeeps and Fiats.

It can fit a full sheet of plywood in the back, and has tons of room to cart around all kinds of stuff. We plan to use it mostly for those days where we need to go for a longer road trip.

My first order of business was to run some fuel system cleaner through it. I used Seafoam but I hear that the best options to use now are Techron or Royal Purple so I may run another tank of treated gas through it. Already, the van seems to idle smoother and run a bit cooler but we’ll see.

I’m also going to change the oil, serpentine belt, transmission fluid, brake fluid, and the power steering fluid. After that, I’m going to replace the hoses and thermostat, flush the radiator, and put new spark plus in.

The tires are OK but the rotors look like they’ve seen better days so I may clean them up a bit or just replace them. They’re a little rusted.

If I do this maintenance now I think it’ll probably go another 100k no problem, maybe 200k. I really only drive about 6k miles a year, maybe even less so it should last me quite some time until I’m ready for something new.