Hmmm. Half an hour is enough for me with warmed-up oil. I'm not enough of a dinosaur to bother with the next 23½ hours :-) It's about the only job I do on the oily bits nowadays.

You misundertand me Andrew, the object of the exercise is to have a jolly good poke nose at the oil pick up checking for any signs of carbon build up, hence letting it drip for 24+ hrs and hence using a magnifying endoscope with leds around the lens.

Most importantly my mince pies, only one of which is much cop, out of the firing line in case an errant drip drips.

Those 3 litre Toyota Diesels are one of the engines that can suffer with injector blow by, hence every now and again a good look at the pick up mesh which is as good a guide as any.

Even i'm not fussy enough to let it drip overnight for a normal oil change.

However i'm looking forward to changing the Scooby oil next time, because there is a brand new Fumoto quick drain valve sitting in front of me waiting to go in place of the sump bung, the standard Scooby plug is rather large bore and hot oil gushes out at a hell of a rate, hence Fumoto it is :-)

"who are brought up on vehicles with dynamic qualities plus comfort and ease of use we could only have dreamed of "

Hmmm, dunno about the comfort bit - the Jags and Citroëns I used to drive in the 80s and 90s are vastly more comfortable than anything I'd driven in the last 10 years. Plenty of modern cars with dual mass flywheels suffer failure at the 30-50K mark. Other than that I agree, cars have become consumable white goods and drivers mere users rather than motorists in the old sense of the word.

I had a second-hand Morris 1100 which I sold on to a mate at about 70K and it went on to at least 90K,

What, without subframe mountings going, thats unusual, they were reknown for rust and mountings collapsing, a lot used to crab as well where the new mounting plates were not welded in place properly

I lost track of the amount I did in the 70s I owned one myself of which I got caught out severe rust under rear subframe, took a week to weld new panel on it

My father always worked on them, they were a cheap motor for him who had 4 over some years, but the rust beat him on all but one, which some idiot smashed the rear up, but always under the bonnet which was fun for a few years untill you get used to their faults but did find the parts wore out quick on that car

Clutches last 130,000+ miles in my cars. Brakes last ages too, replaced front disks on last car at 80,000 miles.

Clutch life is mainly down to driving habits.

That was my point.

My FiL used to wear them out by resting his foot on the pedal.

He must have been doing more than resting his foot on the pedal (something I do) but actually pressing down, so as to get the clutch near its bite point.

<< Honda has sensors for over level oil and low level and they work but never needed to check water as it's always been spot on. Even electrics are or should be really reliable though that seems to depend on who makes the electrics. >>

Ah yes, the sensors. Again we can come to depend on them implicitly, tho on rare occasions they can misinform. Hopefully that may not be serious, but it should always be possible to make visual checks to confirm. My car still has a dipstick and transparent reservoirs for coolant and brake fluid, which I look at every few weeks despite the start-up 'Oil OK' message. I believe some swish cars don't always help there, and tyre pressure detectors can be irritating too.

Andrew T, your last comment is spot on. I've no plans to do my own servicing but have very good mechanical knowledge. I used to race motorbikes and carried out my own maintenance from oil change to full engine and gearbox rebuilds.

But modern cars are so much better mechanically than the cars I drove 30/35 years ago. Electrical and computer systems are a different matter and I wouldn't know where to start there. I do still check the fluids but it's been a long time since anything needed topping up!

So perhaps people do care but simply don't need to.

I'm the same but health prevents me from doing anything except levels.though I need not check them Honda has sensors for over level oil and low level and they work but never needed to check water as it's always been spot on.

Even electrics are or should be really reliable though that seems to depend on who makes the electrics

I have a 4 month old VW Polo. Within a month the switch controlling the wipers failed. Thus in torrential rain the wipers stopped, leaving me with zero visibility., and that’s no exaggeration. Five minutes earlier and I would have been on the M3 and I can’t see how I would have avoided a multi car crash. A few weeks later the car refused to let me in. I had to walk home and get the spare keys. The emergency braking has gone off twice for no obvious reason, very scary. The radio has refused to turn off several times. When using CarPlay, the infotainment system has repeatedly crashed, though resetting my iPhone appears to have solved that one so VW 1, Apple 0. I suspect that the least reliable cars are those with the most toys, which is why many aspirational brands do badly.