Not servicing a car?

Has anyone ever done a test of the effects of not servicing a car? I know most of the people here will service their cars as per the schedule, but a lot of people don't even bother with oil changes.

Reply to
Doki
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"Doki" gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying:

Oil change != service.

Most of the work I had to do to the (18yo, c.170k mile) Saab when I got it was to undo the deterioration caused by neglect of cooling system maintenance.

Neglect of brake fluid changes very commonly leads to failure of calipers, wheel- and master cylinders. Assuming, of course, it doesn't lead (together with neglect of suspension maintenance) to the car being written off.

Reply to
Adrian

An acquaintance of mine years ago used to change his car every three years and not do a single thing to it in the meanwhile (apart from breakages, of course). He reckoned that it did not lower the price he got. I wouldn't have wanted to buy the cars from him, tho'.

Since then cars have become more reliable and oils have got a lot better, so I doubt if the cars will have deteriorated so much. OTOH, people are more keen to see a service history nowadays (which didn't really exist in booklet form in those days), so lack of is likely to be a negative factor on s/h price.

Rob Graham

Reply to
robgraham

Not a test as such, but on one of the NG's I subscribe to (here?) there was someone who had an old Volvo with 100K on it. He decided to run it without servicing, and was still going strong after 200K. (I'm relying on my decidedly shaky memory here, so perhaps someone else will have better recall!)

I worked with a South African guy who bought a Punto as an ex- demonstrator. When he found out how much the first service was, he simply didn't bother. Last I heard, he was still abusing it at 60K, and it hadn't missed a beat.

My son is a notorious abuser of vehicles. He ran a Transit to 120K miles before selling it. It hadn't been touched by a spanner for the last 50K, although a few bits were dropping off it by then.

I always look after everything I own, vehicles and otherwise. My attitude is that if something does go wrong, there's lots of things you can immediately eliminate. I also think it's the socially responsible thing to do where vehicles are concerned; the biggest part of the service schedule of modern cars is safety related.

Chris

Reply to
Chris Whelan

I already know that. To a lot of people, a service is just an oil change. IME a lot of people do tend get bits and pieces fixed as and when they go wrong (ie, engine getting hot, pads wear down to metal), but never fork out for servicing. But what I'm interested in is whether anyone's actually found out how long it takes to kill a car by not servicing it, and whether it's cost effective or not.

Reply to
Doki

I used to service expensive cars I owned. These days, I buy £400 cars and don't touch them unless something goes wrong, bar maybe an oil change if I feel keen. I currently have S reg Luguna I paid £500 with 120k on it, its now done

150k and been trouble free for 18 months, having had a wheel bearing and one oil change. So say £600 total cost or 2p a mile if it died tommorrow. If i'd serviced it properly I would probably be looking at double that. Also, if you service a car more regularly it becomes a money pit, if this one fails tommorrow I bin it and start again - if I spend £130 on a service I more likely to feel I should spend £200 on a starter if that went - and thats halfway to a new old banger.
Reply to
Blah

In message , Doki writes

Friend of mine did, serviced his Mondeo to about 60k and then stopped altogether, he just paid out to fix the bits that fell off or broke (the usual Mondeo bit's you'd expect from wear and tear, nothing 'unusual'). It's still running five years after he got rid at 110k but obviously no idea of what's been done since or how many miles it has done..

Reply to
Clint Sharp

My job often entails long distances at short notice, usually in the middle of the night... I dont have any RAC etc breakdown cover.

I choose to service my cars at least as often as the maker suggests, always with a trusted village garage that has been in business for 3 generations. I do an extra oil change inbetween. 99.5% of the time this maintanance is just routine.

I have never had to replace a clutch, starter motor, brake caliper or similar part in over 500k and 5 cars, the current work hack has done 130k and is 12yrs old [1] I would happily jump in it *now* and drive anywhere and be confident i'd get there and back.

Tim. [1] s70 t5.

Reply to
Tim..

Yes my mate has on a 2L Vectra TDI he bought with 100,000 miles on.

End result is that although the engine survived to 250,000, mainly due to a constant change of oil because of a leak, not a lot else did. Suspension was completely bollocksed(bushes etc), brakes kept giving him grief and he went through at least one fuel distribution pump.

Oh and it broke quite a few times - all from things that would've been spotted in a service.

OTOH, it was quite impressive how the engine kept plodding on.

Reply to
Conor

By the time damage caused by lack of servicing becomes an issue, the value of the car will be far less the the money you spent looking after it.

Most cars are scrapped due to corrosion or needing a part that people wouldn't think twice about replacing if the car was relatively new.

Reply to
Shaun

Same here from about 60k. I do oil/filter , air filter, spark plugs. Flushed coolant out just once, need to do again. Car is 16 year old Saab

9000 CSE LPT done 165k. Fix car as required. I once discovered that an official service didn't change air filter. When I confronting the dealer, he said it wasn't required. So what's the point of dealer service?
Reply to
johannes

On Fri, 10 Jul 2009 10:28:11 +0100, Doki whimpered:

Years ago one of our fleet Vectras at JnJ went to 160k only having the oil topped up when it needed it. It was a perverse experiment by the fleet manager. It never had anything else other than tyres, pads and the odd bulb, and it got treated as pool cars usually do

When we got rid, it was no more vile than the other vectras we had that had been serviced on the button.

Mike P

Reply to
Mike P

Just wondering; why do you subscribe to uk.rec.cars.maintenance then?

Chris

Reply to
Chris Whelan

Aye, I remember it being mentioned - think the guy was Stuart somethingorother.

There was a bloke one here once that posted about his company buying two dual-fuel Vectras from new, and running them both to the same mileage (it was either 120k or 200k, can't remember). One was serviced bang on schedule, the other never serviced (but still had the oil/coolant etc checked regularly and topped up as required). I think both engines were stripped down after that time and found no discernable wear on the "neglected" one.

Reply to
AstraVanMann

Wheras I've seen a few Vauxhauls where the oils not been changed & then the cams stuck & snapped.

Reply to
Duncan Wood

I think the key is that they were run on LPG all their lives.

Reply to
AstraVanMann

To pass one this pearl of wisdom, whenvever asked. Why do you?

Reply to
Blah

Nah, someone crossposted to a group I follow, so I followed the thread here, and have been just browsing out of nostalgia for when I did care about servicing cars. Way back when, I used to strip and rebuild *everything* and about the only thing you really learn is that "if it works, leave it alone".

Reply to
Blah

I think that very unlikely!

I've seen more than one VW with snapped cams due to the bearings picking up, lunched GM 2.2's due to blocked oil jets, BMW 6's with jammed vanos units, and many more with black sludge under the cam covers, ALL of which were on 'longlife' oil change intervals. ALL of those had well less than 100k on the clock.

Tim.

Reply to
Tim..

My only experience with this was a fire service Astamax- a H plate 1.7 diesel. Manufacturer's service interval was quite short, and most fire service vans were OK for this, as they were used as a station runaround, and the servicing regime was set up accordingly.

However, I was part of a team looking after radio and turnout equipment, and we covered a lot of miles in this heavily loaded astramax: it was our on-call vehicle and covered the whole county, plus it went to someone's house every night- and a couple of guys had a long trip. It was literally in use all day and often for some of the night too.

It did many, many times more than it's schedule without an oil change, and got ragged everywhere. It got very very clattery, and eventually expired on me on the way home on a friday night- I managed to coast it onto my drive, and got it recovered (I had to steer it on the end of a tow-pole back to the workshops).

It turned out the cam had seized, and snapped into 3 pieces. It got rebuilt, but it was never right. I actually saw it about 3 years ago in private ownership, so apart form an expensive engine rebuild it can't have been too bad.

Reply to
Chris Bartram

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