Sold the SD1 last saturday. A few hours later we signed on the dotted line for the C1. The car was the one in the showroom, but has had a few extra bits fitted for us during the week and we picked it up at 5pm this evening. Then at about 10pm I sold the 106 so that's now gone. Got £550 for it, which is £350 more than the part-ex value, and pays the deposit and servicing package on the C1 with a wee bit left over. So all in all a pretty damn good week.
So he's the new addition sitting next to it's predecessor:
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Looks massive compared to the 106 from that angle - probably because it is wider and taller. It is a bit shorter though. But so far Nat is very pleased. I haven't driven it yet, but we're gonna put a few miles on it tomorrow, although with only 14 miles on the clock we wont be giving it too much welly. The dealer said it didn't require running in, but better to be safe for a few hundred miles just in case (or am I just being a little old fashioned??).
And on Sunday I'm off to possibly pick up some fully adjustable Leda shocks for the SD1 that came off a Thunder Classic SD1. 2 days with the C1 and it'll be getting filled up with dirty car bits hehehe ;)
So change the oil and filter after 1000 miles and stick then to the maintenance-procedure. Even on a modern engine the first 1000 miles are running in and these miles will determine how your engine behaves for the rest of its life.
Engine oil and its filter are cheap as chips, so why not go for the added protection?
Our company cars get new oil and filter every 10.000 km, on my personal cars - this is overkill- every 5000 km or 1 year (which ever comes first). The plane's Lycosaurus gets new oil every 50 hours.
My 1992 Honda sports now around 185 kkm, compression and power are measured once a year: no compression differance from new and powerreadouts are identical within the tolerances of the rolling road.
The engine in my previous BMW 525 - the first 24 valve one - was better than new after some 160,000 miles. Having only had the makers service intervals adhered to. And BMW were at the forefront of extended service intervals.
By all means chuck money away - but I've yet to see any firm evidence that early oil changes have any effect on an engine's life or condition.
Plenty have had oil analysed at change time and found it ok, though.
Define "Better than new" because I live by numbers. Did you do regular powertesting, kept track of fuel consumption, test top speed regulary etc?
We've had such a person with "better than new"-statements recentely. His Volvo, better than new, pushed out 82 HP instead of the orginal 165HP. He even went so far as to rubbish our rolling road because to him it drove excellent.
The Volvo topped out at 155 KPH though.
So you claim... but we have done those evaluations on a professional basis (read in paid service). The first 1000 km-2000 km of an engine is where running in takes place and yes: we had oil examined and found about ten times more metal deposits in it than at the 5000 km-change. Once over 10.000 km the levels of contamination due to running were close to nill.
Secondly we still conduct tests for customers when they evaluate to buy an expensif not-new vehicle (price above 50 kUP). Before any roadtesting takes place, a sample of the rad's water, oil, gearbox and dif-oil are sent to Shell's specialised lab near Rotterdam. It has happened that the outcome of those tests diminished the selling price of the car by 50%.
Yep : I like to chunck money away. The 1000 km-oilchange on a new car carries the enormous bill of 15-20 UKP. Indeed a very hefty sum compared to the worth of any new engine.
In aero-engines the 5 liter oil change each 50 hours represents an enormous expense, not to mention the aircraft spec filter (7 UKP!!). AvGAs is at 2.14 Eur per litre while the engine itself is around 20.000 UKP for overhauling. The cost of in-flight engine-failure is quite often counted in corpses.
So I pay an aircraft mechanic's wage to change the oil, its filter and to cut open the discarded filter to look for metal residue.
WHy are our company cars get frequenter oil changes than the carmaker specifies? Because on one side all of their running is in town, often quite heavily charged (200-300 kg tools are no exception) or pulling a trailer; on the other side the actual cost of the oil change is as stated before peanuts. Let me also state that our company cars are bought, not leased. It is not neccessary? Well it certainly doesn't hurt.
How many drums of the best synthetic oil (state the make you want) may I=20 deliver for 10 UKP/l (so you've got 20% profit?)
FYI: NSX uses 5W30 full synthetic 9.05 EUr /l Porsche uses Mobil 1 full synthetic 9.35 Eur /l Elise uses Mobil 1 full synthetic 9.12 Eur / l Company cars use I don't know which oil but the price is around 6 Eur/l
The plane uses Total Aero Oil (Ashless) 10,4 Eur /l
All above prices at offical dealerships (VAT included) Honda hour rates=20 are "normal", the 2 other makes are -ahum- a bit more pricy. No one=20 counts more than 15 minutes for the oil and filter change though.=20
If I buy the stated oil in 60l drums, I will get it around 50% less=20 expensif.
Price new 2.0l 16V-engine =3D around 5000 UKP Price new 200 kW-engine =3D around 15000 UKP Price new 400 kW-engine =3D around 40000 UKP
Price of an Ferrari/ Aston Martin / Lambo -engine: you don't wanna know.
Kept track of fuel consumption and pushed it hard every day. You soon know if performance is dropping off. Or rather I do.
Perhaps that says something about Volvo owners. I dunno. What prompted him to have a rolling road test?
Are we talking abouta 'running in' oil change or routine ones?
So an expensive car has been poorly serviced. Doesn't surprise me.
You must run really cheap cars. The oil for mine costs 12 quid a litre plus. Of coursed if you're using poor quality oil it makes sense to change it more frequently than the maker's spec one. Personally I'd use the quality recommended.
Ships never have an oil change. Your point being?
Nice that you've qualified the need for extra oil changes in your particular case. If you'd said that in the first place I'd not have commented. But then most makers give guidance on servicing for arduous use in the driver's handbook.
Although sometimes I do wonder, going on some stories of non-servicing I hear. Like someone on here that bought an old Volvo and literally put about
200k on it, never doing any actual servicing (I presume it got new brake pads and such like), just topping up the oil, and it refused to die. And a car at a garage Tim Kemp knows - an E270CDI that only goes into the garage when something breaks (i.e. zero regular servicing) and is on about
400k.....
Yep, I thought that he was stating the price per gallon or so.
I see 3 interesting cars in your sig. Do you think it is perfectly OK to=20 run yours cars for 50k and only top up oil?=20
The aircooled Porsche might survive it as it uses quite some oil (so=20 topping it up would be often and generally keep oli quality acceptable)=20 The EVO is dead certain to die a lot earlier... as for the RX-7 we've=20 both know what carbon lock means.
Your explication concerning servicing might be a partial explanation why=20 older (< 1995) cars in the UK are often sold for the amount of money=20 that 1 service would require.
Heh. I had that problem as well when buying oil...
No, I certainly don't - but all of them get serviced regularly (well, the Volvo hasn't yet because I wanted to ensure that I had fixed a problem I had "inherited" when buying it before going through the rest of the car). What gets me is that the Volvo (which is a turbo model) looks like it has had a replacement turbo not too long ago, but the oil is still as dark as a coal mine at midnight. And it's not like I'd need to use Mobil 1 or other expensive stuff on that, but it looks like I'll now have to use some flushing agent first.
Indeed, even though the RX7 does still use a noticeable amount of oil, it'll still kill it.
One thing I started noticing a lot recently is exactly what you mention here - you can buy a decent enough car over here for peanuts. Over in the US the floor for something that isn't mainly held together with Duck tape is a lot higher (I'd say 2k-3k) but at least most folks over there change the oil religiously. Heck, even the wife does unless she forgets... But even assuming purchasing power parity (ie $1 = GBP1) I can get an oil change done over there with a new filter and a decent (but not top quality) oil for the same sort of cash I'd pay to get the materials over here.
The whole point with this car is that I don't want to be doing anything like this myself. Changing it in a 1000 miles time means lying on the ground in the cold/rain/snow/ice. I think I'll just trust the manufacturers service intervals, but give it a bit of a running in period instead.
I have to admit, the Celsior had just had an oil change before I bought it, and apart from a couple of top ups I didn't change the oil in 14k and it was no dirtier/darker/more opaque than after I got it, when I sold it. I was just topping up with the cheapest 10-40 semi, used less than a litre in all that time, so it wasn't like I was running as a total loss system. I feel bad about about not servicing it, but it wasn't until I sold it that I realised just how far I had left it.
The guy that bought it, bought it for the engine, and asked when the oil had last been changed. I told him "a couple of months ago, about 3k miles". He happily accepted it
Chips and cheese at the local cafe to me is £1.50 Perfectly acceptable price, and close to diet food compared to some of the other stuff they do, but not as tasty as a Bacon and melted cheese Bagel for £1.95
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