Car servicing

Wolfetone

Foster said:

Just ordered all the bits I need to service the van. Oil, filters (oil, fuel, air). Came to £31 delivered.

For shits n giggles I looked at the kwik fit website - around £150! Jesus wept, it's not like they're going to do anything different. You'll be lucky if they actually carry out the work they say they have.

Why would you pay someone 5 times as much as it would cost to do it yourself? I can understand if the car is under warranty but it's not exactly difficult to do is it? 

But at that price the oil's going to be cheap shite, the filters probably sub standard. Is this a van that earns you a living? If it is, feed it with the best.

VimFuego

must be said (well it mustn't but whatever) but the most dangerous work ever carried out on my car was carried out by a main dealer (they hadn't tightened the wheel nuts correctly and they almost came off at 70 on the M way, I managed to stop in time). I was somewhat... curt, with the service manager. 

RaymondLin

The fact is that it depends on

1 - The kind of car that you drive.

I hear horror stories that BMW need their own washer fluid and everything is all software these days.  If you don't have the right software to plug it in, it beeps at you reminding you that your car needs a service.  Cars are getting ever more complicated, it's getting more and more not something you can do at home now.

2 - The kind of jobs that you have. 

Why would you care about saving £100 when you can earn £1,000 a day?  Instead of losing £1,000 in earnings.  It's best to earn that £1,000 and pay someone £100 to do the "dirty" work.

3 - The kind of person that you are.

There is a thinking that goes something like....there are reasons why people have specialties.  Doctors fix you, lawyers defend you, plumbers fixes your pipes and architects design houses.  Mechanics fixes cars, so you pay the right people to do what they are good at, whist you do what you are good at that earn your living.  Nothing wrong with that is there?

4 - That it is a new-ish car.

I might buy a 40 year old classic car that has been self serviced in the last 20 years of its life.  But i would never touch a 5 year old car that do not have any stamps in the log book.  

Of course if fixing car is your hobby then go ahead and do it, but the knowledge to know what to do, what to look for takes time.  I certainly don't have time to learn all that.  Get all the tools, all this learning cost time and money.

 if you have a car that is easy to work on and it is old car that is worth peanuts so paying someone £300 to service it is not economical.  However, the majority of the time, especially in this day and age of leasing, PCP and finance.  Who self service their cars anyway?  Anyone who has a car less than 6 years old would take it to a garage.  

Electro_Ham

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



2 - The kind of jobs that you have. 

Why would you care about saving £100 when you can earn £1,000 a day?  Instead of losing £1,000 in earnings.  It's best to earn that £1,000 and pay someone £100 to do the "dirty" work.

Seriously? What job pays £1000/day?

RaymondLin

Electro_Ham said:

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



2 - The kind of jobs that you have. 

Why would you care about saving £100 when you can earn £1,000 a day?  Instead of losing £1,000 in earnings.  It's best to earn that £1,000 and pay someone £100 to do the "dirty" work.

Seriously? What job pays £1000/day?

I dunno....

Barristers.
Freelance IT consultant.
Wedding photography.

Sure you can on/off days but instead of time spent under the car, time can be spent working or looking for more work.

darthed1981

RaymondLin said:

Electro_Ham said:

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



2 - The kind of jobs that you have. 

Why would you care about saving £100 when you can earn £1,000 a day?  Instead of losing £1,000 in earnings.  It's best to earn that £1,000 and pay someone £100 to do the "dirty" work.

Seriously? What job pays £1000/day?

I dunno....

Barristers.
Freelance IT consultant.
Wedding photography.

Sure you can on/off days but instead of time spent under the car, time can be spent working or looking for more work.

Even if the numbers are off, the principle is sound.

However, there is a reason that the "average" salaries in this country are so misleadingly high.  £1000 per working day would equate to a salary of approx £250k, I have a sneaking suspicion from their purchasing patterns a handful of Fretboarders earn that much, it isn't exactly common but it isn't terribly rare either.

I am sadly not one of them!

chillidoggy

I wouldn't trust my local Ford dealership to fit an air freshener.

Sassafras

Electro_Ham said:

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



2 - The kind of jobs that you have. 

Why would you care about saving £100 when you can earn £1,000 a day?  Instead of losing £1,000 in earnings.  It's best to earn that £1,000 and pay someone £100 to do the "dirty" work.

Seriously? What job pays £1000/day?

Unscrupulous mechanics, by the sound of it.

Foster

Wolfetone said:

Foster said:

Just ordered all the bits I need to service the van. Oil, filters (oil, fuel, air). Came to £31 delivered.

For shits n giggles I looked at the kwik fit website - around £150! Jesus wept, it's not like they're going to do anything different. You'll be lucky if they actually carry out the work they say they have.

Why would you pay someone 5 times as much as it would cost to do it yourself? I can understand if the car is under warranty but it's not exactly difficult to do is it? 

But at that price the oil's going to be cheap shite, the filters probably sub standard. Is this a van that earns you a living? If it is, feed it with the best.

My van is just for pleasure - it's why I kitted the back out with a bed, desk and leisure battery (all made from wood that used to be scenery from the pantomimes i've been a part of). If I use a vehicle for work I pick an available one out of the yard and pray it works, the older ones are "maintained" by a local garage which I wouldn't take a wheelbarrow to. They're the kind of garage that leaves tools under the bonnet and makes more faults than they repair.

As for it being cheap shite, I've looked on amazon and the same set came to £46.43. Regardless of who I buy from i'm saving £100 which can go towards something else. If it takes me a day to do the job then that's fine, the lab is shut anyway and it'd take me just over a day to earn the £100 that I'd be paying someone else to do.

Foster

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on

1 - The kind of car that you drive.

I hear horror stories that BMW need their own washer fluid and everything is all software these days.  If you don't have the right software to plug it in, it beeps at you reminding you that your car needs a service.  Cars are getting ever more complicated, it's getting more and more not something you can do at home now.

A quick google will usually show you how to reset a service light. For a BMW E90 it's put the key in, push the brake down, hold down the trip button to access the menu, find the service icon, press a button on the indicator stalk.

One pain in the arse job is changing brake pads on a car that has an electronic handbrake - you need the right software to tell the calipers to unwind fully (sometimes you can get away with it using a clamp on the brake hose and a caliper rewind set* but you have to be careful not to confuse the car)


*g-clamp and a bit of wood can sometimes suffice

celentium

At least it's being done to be fair. I know drivers that don't get their cars serviced at all after a certain age.

Corvus

There's a right lot of old lady stuff in this thread.

Shell isn't cheap shite. 20 quid for a 4-5 litres of oil is perfectly OK. The kit can be cheaper than individual bits because of their massive buying power. There's only so many oil refineries out there. Branding works the same as other fields. The only oil I'd really avoid is the super cheap recycled stuff, except for breaking in an engine where it gets changed very quickly and you want things to bed in anyway.

I'd be annoyed if it took me over an hour to do oil & filters & fluid checks. £150 might well include some other checks but if not that's steep.

Loads of independent garages get parts & consumables from ECP.

There's nothing illegal about using a recycling centre - they (should) have a tank where you pour your old oil, and another for the oily containers. Mine goes straight into a catch can that either gets emptied at the tip or goes into an old container. Then oil & container both go to the tip at some point.

The idea that only garage servicing makes a car safe is just ... I don't know even where to start with that one.

sticker

My Honda had it's 1st service earlier this year  , they send you a link to a film recorded by the mechanic doing the inspection taking you around the car and showing what (if anything needs to be done) . if you agree they do the work and send another film showing the work done and final inspection .

I'm clumsy as hell and the only tools I own are for guitar maintenance . I wouldn't know where to start with servicing a car but then I wouldn't expect a mechanic to have the skills that I have .

That's partly why people still hire bands for weddings , if they could do it themselves they would !

randella

chillidoggy said:

I wouldn't trust my local Ford dealership to fit an air freshener.

Hell no. I had to take mine in to Uncle Henry's local branch for a recall. On collecting it I was given the ten-minute hellfire and brimstone lecture about the state of my car, backed up with a piece of paper liberally decorated in red ink and words like "critical". Of course they were available to do the not inconsiderable work required to bring it up to snuff. 

A bit of diligent reading and it turns out it needed a litre of oil and the rest was 24-carat bollocks. 

This is far from the only nonsense I've had from a Ford franchised dealer. 

As for the rest of it, I've used the same local mechanic for years. He has a reputable garage and the staff are courteous and knowledgeable. If work needs doing they do it, and if it doesn't they tell me. 

There are mechanics and there are mechanics.

chillidoggy

celentium said:

At least it's being done to be fair. I know drivers that don't get their cars serviced at all after a certain age.

Yeah, I stopped that nonsense when I got to 50.

boogieman

randella said:

chillidoggy said:

I wouldn't trust my local Ford dealership to fit an air freshener.

Hell no. I had to take mine in to Uncle Henry's local branch for a recall. On collecting it I was given the ten-minute hellfire and brimstone lecture about the state of my car, backed up with a piece of paper liberally decorated in red ink and words like "critical". Of course they were available to do the not inconsiderable work required to bring it up to snuff. 

A bit of diligent reading and it turns out it needed a litre of oil and the rest was 24-carat bollocks. 

This is far from the only nonsense I've had from a Ford franchised dealer. 

As for the rest of it, I've used the same local mechanic for years. He has a reputable garage and the staff are courteous and knowledgeable. If work needs doing they do it, and if it doesn't they tell me. 

There are mechanics and there are mechanics.

Depends entirely on the dealership in my experience. When I lived in West London my local Dagenham Motors branch were terrible, on the other hand their Epsom branch were great. For instance, Epsom offered me a loaner car when I booked the service, I didn’t even realise this was supposed to part of the service cost; the other branch had never mentioned or offered it. The West London lot also tried to load the bill with unnecessary “essential” work (like changing the plugs at 24k miles, when the Ford service schedule said they didn’t need replacing until 60k) and once they tried to bill me for a job that I had already refused beforehand. Right bunch of chancers. 

menamestom

m_c said:

p90fool said:

lustycourtier said:

I work in vehicle warranty and servicing. I thought like you until I did this job. Here do you dispose of the old oil and how do you transport it? How do you stamp your service history? 

Really? I think some people inhabit a different world to the one I'm in. 

From a legal stand point, once you drain oil, it becomes hazardous waste, which then means you should have a waste transfer license to move it, and dispose of it in an approved way.

That only applies to businesses or commercial operations.  You don't need a waste transfer licence to take a small quantity of car oil to the tip.  

Sassafras

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



There is a thinking that goes something like....there are reasons why people have specialties.  Doctors fix you, lawyers defend you, plumbers fixes your pipes and architects design houses.  Mechanics fixes cars, so you pay the right people to do what they are good at, whist you do what you are good at that earn your living.  Nothing wrong with that is there?

That's the whole problem; finding the 'right' people to do the job.
Not every doctor, lawyer or plumber is as competent as we would wish.
Exactly the same case as mechanics. I've known some truly appalling 'mechanics' and some excellent ones. Unfortunately the excellent ones are in the minority.

Nitefly

The thing all the nay-sayers are forgetting is that @Foster ;is a Yorkshireman.  Just sayin...

  

RaymondLin

Sassafras said:

RaymondLin said:

The fact is that it depends on



There is a thinking that goes something like....there are reasons why people have specialties.  Doctors fix you, lawyers defend you, plumbers fixes your pipes and architects design houses.  Mechanics fixes cars, so you pay the right people to do what they are good at, whist you do what you are good at that earn your living.  Nothing wrong with that is there?

That's the whole problem; finding the 'right' people to do the job.
Not every doctor, lawyer or plumber is as competent as we would wish.
Exactly the same case as mechanics. I've known some truly appalling 'mechanics' and some excellent ones. Unfortunately the excellent ones are in the minority.

That is a completely different debate entirely worthy of its own thread but the point is people specialise in a field for a reason (in principle).