Vehicle Service Record: Fill & Download for Free

There’s no telling, although spark plugs are a safe bet. The important issue isn’t specific parts, it’s how well maintained the vehicle was BEFORE you bought it. If you can get service records from a dealer, that may help you.Personally, as the owner of two BMW 3-series which are 11 and 12 years old, I have great faith in BMW to run 200,000 miles with proper service. I also know that as the model numbers (3 vs. 5 vs. 7-series)get higher, BMW tends to be more technical and more expensive to repair. I do all possible repairs myself.I would recommend a 3-series as a better choice for a young person, but I would urge you to buy a car with a good service record, as that will have a tremendous impact on the future maintenance cost.

Currently operational, and in common use?I would suggest the multi barrelled GAU-8 Avenger 30mm cannon.This gun, which has been used in the USA’s A-10 Thunderbolt ‘Warthog’ tank destroyer jets for decades, can fire over 4,000 rounds per minute and is widely deployed. That means it has been proven to be reliable over the countless millions of rounds fired through it on the battlefield.It’s Cold War rival, the Soviet AK-630, has both a similar rate of fire and comparable long service record.An improved version of this lethal ‘Close-In Weapon System’ (CIWS) is the AK-630-M2 Duet (below). It places a pair of these multi barrelled 30mm guns in a turret on board modern Russian frigates, allowing the bridge to direct 10,000 rounds per minute against incoming missilesEven that pales compared to some prototypes.Take Metal Storm.This weapon - calling something which can send 24,000 rounds of 9mm out at Mach 5 a gun seems somehow incorrect to me - has a theoretical rate of fire of about 1.6 million rounds per minute (180 rounds in one tenth of one second).Although the US Navy planned to add it to their arsenal it has yet to be deployed due to various legal issues and the weight of the thing, aside from the problems of loading, feeding and aiming it.This technology is a potential gamechanger though.We may yet see it scaled down and used in a more practical way to send out far less rounds, such as in a manportable ‘gun’ fed from a backpack in a similar way to the flamethrowers of WWII.Tripod mounted weapons which put up a wall of bullets to stop incoming sniper rounds, invading infantry, or rumbling tanks from atop unmanned vehicles, border posts, or the perimeters of airports would have an obvious appeal.

Yeah. It wasn’t pretty.I bought a 1971 Lotus Europa Type 74in a partly disassembled state. It was mostly complete, but typical “basket case” kind of thing. Various bits of the Ford engine had been cannibalized, some of the suspension and brake pieces had gone missing, but nothing catastrophic.A couple of years later and it’s all back together, and I go to get it registered.At the time I bought it, the title was missing so it was sold on a bill of sale with an affidavit of lost title, and as it came with a bunch of original paperwork, including the window sticker and original service records, I didn’t think anything about it.Off to the Texas Department of Public Safety to get a vehicle inspection, a form that certifies that the VIN on the frame is the VIN on the paperwork. And then to the DMV, where I discover that what I have is a stolen car.The original owner had taken it to a shop for “restoration”. It had been partly disassembled, there’d been a squabble over payment terms and amount, and in the ensuing chaos, the story diverged.The car disappeared. The shop owner claimed it had been sold on a mechanic’s lien to a disinterested third party for enough to cover the outstanding bill. The owner claimed it had been done without due process and the car was stolen, and had filed charges in the podunk-ish town where all this happened, and nothing further was done.Fast forward about a decade and hey! I’ve stepped in it.In the end, I didn’t get to keep the car. However, enough money changed hands that I felt OK about it. The owner got the restored and fully sorted car he had wanted (at admittedly much, much more than he’d anticipated paying). The shop owner got a stern warning. And I got to own a Europa, without owning a Europa.Everyone won.