rayra
Expedition Leader
The other thing to consider is upping your preventative maintenance and replacement rate. Instead of sweating how long you can keep rubber 'fresh', have and keep spares but USE them more frequently. Change your wipers every year in advance of your rainy season. Change your coolant and heater hoses every 2-3 years, whatever meshes with your coolant replacement recommendations. This way you've got fresher rubber installed and fresher rubber stored.
These parts are fairly inexpensive. Especially if you use something like rockauto.com to procure them. $20-25 every couple years for fresh radiator hoses or $6 for new wiper blades is cheap 'insurance'. Put new stuff on today, keep the old stuff as emergency spares until you get around to buying or affording new parts as spares.
Too, when I got my new-used Sub, the first thing I did was replace its two belts and put the old ones aside as emergency spares, as part of baselining all the recommended maintenance. Didn't have an solid maintenance info on the vehicle, which I bought with 116k mi. So I changed all the rubber and fluids, etc.
These parts are fairly inexpensive. Especially if you use something like rockauto.com to procure them. $20-25 every couple years for fresh radiator hoses or $6 for new wiper blades is cheap 'insurance'. Put new stuff on today, keep the old stuff as emergency spares until you get around to buying or affording new parts as spares.
Too, when I got my new-used Sub, the first thing I did was replace its two belts and put the old ones aside as emergency spares, as part of baselining all the recommended maintenance. Didn't have an solid maintenance info on the vehicle, which I bought with 116k mi. So I changed all the rubber and fluids, etc.