Affordability? At that particular time in my life, money was non-existent.
We're talking about 10 euro price difference per oil change (unless prices in UK differ by a lot).
I remember those days too. As a second year SSEB apprentice I was chuffed to bits to get my hands on my old boys Opel Record 2.0 My old boy wasn’t one for wasting money on cars, and in fact the old Opel had been making him money on travelling expenses as he continued to refuse to accept a company car. So it was pretty well worn by the time I got my hands on it. It had 120,000 on the clock, though that had been faulty in the past so it was more like 140 or 150k – a lot of miles for a car in them days. It wasn’t long before the old thing wasn’t too keen on starting. The starting routine ended up something like this – get the air box off, free of the carb flaps, prime the carb with petrol, wack the starter motor a few times with a solid steel bar, place car in gear and rock backwards and forwards a few times (dunno if that really helped but it seemed to), put the air box back on, get in the car, turn the key and hope for the best. It was frequently bump started and it was always a good idea to park facing down hill.
The battery was pretty much done and eventually gave up the ghost. I didn’t have money for a new one, so I bump started the car, drove it to work, got the battery out and took it to the chemistry department at the Power Station I worked at. There I emptied out the battery acid and then it was filled with fresh strong acid. That got me another two months out of the battery. Every penny counted.
Another feature of that car was it kept running after you turned it off. Presumably cos of the worn out carb combined with lots of hot carbon deposits, at times it would stutter away for a minute or two before grinding to a halt. The gear box eventually was down to 1
st,2
nd and 4
th, and now and again you got some severe valve clatter as the hydraulic tappets were done. It only did 20mpg, but I got some cash from giving folks lifts so that paid for the petrol at 1.50 a gallon.
Oil change? Castrol GTX borrowed from the old boy’s garage. Anyway, MOT time came and that killed it off, so had to cycle to and from work till I got enough pennies together to buy myself something else.
The apprentices we have today, I don’t think they know what skint is, they are all driving new cars on PCP. Back then we all serviced our own cars and fixed anything that went wrong (or ignored it if we could), today they go for a service at the main dealer – all part of the package.
So yeah I know where Mike’s coming from when he says he didn’t have money for bike oil.
Got my bike license on the C90 in 1987. It wasn’t hip, it wasn’t cool, but it was there, it was free and it got me through my test.