Avoid unnecessary costs from car dealerships.

Car dealerships’ main source of profits, other than markup on the sale of vehicles, is the service department. Very often manufacturers prescribe unnecessary items, that while harmless to the vehicles, are often the creation of marketing and sales efforts and have nothing to do with mechanical needs of the vehicle, are completely unnecessary, generate excess waste in the environment and cost you money.

Frequent brake fluid changes are unnecessary, and expensive. In recent times some vehicle brands recommend brake fluid changes every 15,000 km on their new vehicles. Brake fluid in most vehicle brands recommend changes at the 60,000 + km mark or 3 to 4 years. Even those change intervals are conservative. Brake fluid is in a closed system and is not exposed to oxidation or moisture contamination. With passage of a lot of time or heat cycles (mileage) it may get discoloured and eventually need changing – at intervals of over 60,000 to 80,000km.

8,000 – 10,000 km synthetic oil changes. While frequent oil changes is a healthy luxury for engines, changing synthetic oil at 8,000 km is a waste of good oil and creates excessive waste (bad for the environment even if recycled). According to Car and Driver magazine (they do many live race track and lab tests), synthetic oil can last upwards of 16,000 km or more depending on driving conditions. The only way to really tell the condition of engine oil is a lab analysis. And while some oil manufacturers claim their oil can last much longer than 25,000 km, car dealerships push back very hard on this issue as it threatens their profits. If oil is being used for more than 16,000km, the filter should be changed at these 12,000 to 15,000km intervals to get rid of any engine wear debris in the filter. Having said all of the above, we still need to change the oil at approx. the intervals (plus 2,000 km say) stated in the owner’s manual – simply to make sure they don’t have an excuse in case there is any issue with the engine during warranty period.

Dealership Inspections – Usually called Maintenance Inspection A or B. Pure money in the dealership’s cash register. These simply mean someone walking around below the car and quickly checking the boxes on a page. These inspections can cost upwards of $200 to $300 for a 10 minute walk around. With today’s very heavy laws on vehicle safety design and very sophisticated factory quality control, any critical part that can cause a safety issue will be designed with special lock nuts and other fail safes like lock pins etc to prevent something falling off the car and causing an accident. There is no evidence that doing the inspections on a new vehicle will make it any safer since there is no evidence that they are needed in the first place. Also, anything obviously damaged beneath your vehicle will be pointed out to you anyway without a formal paying inspection.

“Winterizing” – with a 15 or 20 point inspection yada yada – is nothing more than checking your windshield washer bottle to make sure it is filled with anti freeze wiper fluid which you can do yourself if you can hold a bottle of fluid. There is no part of your car that works differently during winter or summer! Also we should note that every 8 deg Celsius drop in temperature, the tyre pressure drops by 1 psi and vice versa. So in winter you will need to add pressure as the temp drops, and in summer, you will have to release some air as temperatures go up.

Choosing a Mechanic after the warranty period

We know that maintenance of cars after the warranty and as mileage goes up past 80,000 km – gets super expensive at dealerships so many of us like to choose an independent mechanic. Your cost saving should equal the extra overhead, dealer markups and “OEM premium” of using the dealership.
It is a good idea to develop a good business relationship with a mechanic you can trust. So how do you choose a mechanic for doing things like changing sensors, suspension parts, brakes, etc?

• • Choose a mechanic that allows you to see what he’s doing! As long as you are reasonably dressed with closed shoes and normal street clothes, (if anything else is needed the mechanic should say this) the mechanic should not make excuses such as insurance requirements etc to prevent you from looking at what he’s doing provided that you can do so without getting in the way. He should also answer your questions without hesitation or BS.
  • The mechanic should have proper tools all reasonably laid out on his reasonably organized work cart.
  • When preparing to raise your car on his lift, he should bend over to check that the contact points of his lift go in exactly the right place so he doesn’t damage the underside of your car.
  • When he removes parts that will be reinstalled, he should lay them out in a neat manner on a clean table. The more parts and complexity, the more organized should be the lay down of the parts. All parts to be reinstalled should be cleaned, dried and re-lubricated if necessary, before reinstallation.
  • When he has completed the job he should ask you if you want to see the old parts that were changed.

It will be rare to find a mechanic with all of the above, but Items 1, 2 and 3 are very important.