What's in major service.

If you add up the cost of plugs, oil, filter, cambelt and add a couple of hours for labour to do it, then £100 sounds very reasonable. You could do it at home for less - but not much less, and you'd lose a few hours of your time.

It's also unlikely you'll be having a cambelt done with the car less than a year old, however. But £100 for a service from a main dealer sounds pretty good to me.

antony stevens"

You can turn off the insp. light for nothing, but since you don't consider servicing worthwhile then why not just put a bit of black tape over it? Obviously that is all you think the dealer will do.

I look forward to the day that servicing and repairs must be done by professional organisations, there will be less breakdowns on the road, the old wrecks will be off the road, the tightwads will be walking, possibly less accidents , less vehicles in general, aaah bliss.

MrCheerful

That's very cynical.

However, with the OPs car going into it's 2nd year, then a dealer service is the only option if he wants to keep his 2nd and 3rd year warranties..... even using cheap labour, the cost of parts is a fairly significant proportion of the £100. You couldn't do it that much cheaper at home.

With regards to timing belts, I have to agree that chains are better for long life - however, replacing a chain is likely to cost several times the cost of a belt change - so it works out roughly even over the lifespan of a car. Chains are also pretty noisy and unrefined, something which is a major consideration when designing a car to pass EU noise standards.

My Nissan Almera 1.6 GX has chain timing and can hardly be called noisy. I can hardly hear the engine on tickover. It has 47500 on the clock I would expect at least 100000 without major problems I bought this car second-hand and declined any worthless dealer guarantees apart from a free three month warranty. Last time I changed a timing chain was on a Ford Anglia - but I guess it might be more difficult these days :-)

Terrt D.

A belt will easily last 48k miles these days - but I'd be looking to change a chain at anything between 100k and 150k miles. Budget several hundred pounds for a service with a chain swap - you end up replacing a lot more than just the chain - hydraulic tensioners etc.

If you're dealing with relatively simple engines, then a belt is easy and cheap to swap, though.

Hopefully I'll have another car before 100K, so I won't have that problem. I sometimes dream of the days when it was possible to replace a valve or an exhaust gasket after work and still be in time for Coronation Street. Usually though, I wake up in a cold sweat thinking of those horrible old death-trap cars, which you could almost hear quietly rusting away on the drive -:) Then again, it was all good fun and I did learn a lot.

Terry D.

Didn't the Daewoos come with 3 years free servicing :)?

Ahhh, yes. Which is why all the pikeys bought 'em ;-)

'look mummy, poor people'

How do you stand running a supermarket :P?

Could be there are items that need attention every year regardless of mileage? Have you looked at the service log book? On my car it gives details of what is done at each service. The dealer also supplies a check list at service time with the required items ticked off - you could ask for a blank one.

Changing a cam belt is 'hardly anything'? Have you ever done this job or similar yourself?

Well, BMW were one of the first to go back to chains, and have *no* recommendation for changing them mileage wise. I ran my last 525 24 valve to nearly 140,000 miles and the chains were still quiet in running. Some cars would have had half a dozen cambelt changes by then - or indeed a replacement cylinder head after one had broken. As regards noise, a chain is normally totally enclosed in an aluminium housing rather than the tin effort with most belts, so I doubt the contribution to overall engine noise is significant. If it was, I'd guess makers like Rolls Royce would have changed to belts years ago.

Clearing the INSP warning is easy. Hold down the trip reset button whilst switching on the ignition. After a few seconds the display should change and you can release the button.

But if you're going to pay a garage to "service" your car then you need not worry about this as they will do it. As I service my own car, obviously I need to know this.

I'm not sure that there is anything wrong with people servicing their own cars in general. I do some work myself, but anything complicated I will leave to a professionaly garage. There may be a case for requiring major work to be inspected, but this would be difficult to enforce.

The professional outfits aren't always so good either - I had to take my Escort back to the garage three times after they did some work on the brakes.

Robert

Hi Terry,

That's exactly what happened - thanks LOOKERS! It smelt like a bonfire inside the car as oil had been spilt over the engine and not wiped off. It passed the MOT which was good news, but doesn't feel ANY different!

Well that's normal as removing the filter will spill oil all over the place. Even if it's wiped, a film will be left which will burn off in a couple of minutes max. No biggie

?? WTF should it feel any different? What were you expecting? An extra