Maintenance Schedule

If you check the maintenance schedule booklet, I recall the first service is scheduled at 3,750 miles with subsequent services to be performed every 7,500 miles unless you operate your car under "severe" conditions as defined in the booklet.

Bill Bradley wrote:

Dealerships will often create their own, accelerated (more expensive) schedule. Your warranty only requires the time/mileage listed in the booklet and even then, if you had a claim - say - for a leaking radiator hose - they would have a hard time claiming it was because you didn't have your tires rotated on schedule. The entire schedule can also be performed by yourself or an indie mech if you want and still not cause warranty claims to be disallowed. Of course, under certain circumstances eyebrows may elevate, but most reasonable folks with reasonable claims have had few issues, even if they had to get a zone manager involved.

Carl

You can go to the Subaru website and view/print out the latest revision of Subaru's official maintenance schedule for your car. Take that to your dealer and insist that they comply with it or you will go elsewhere. Although the difference between 3000 and 3750 isn't that much, it sounds like they are expecting you to follow the "severe service" intervals rather than the regular maintenance schedule. Unless your usage of the car qualifies as severe service per the requirements listed, there is no need to service it that frequently.

My dealer did the same thing, although I initially waited until 3750 to bring it in (and if I am reading the manual correctly, for the 2006 Forester even that only applies to the turbo, so I didn't even really need to do that). They also put on a sticker staying to change the oil again in another 3K miles. I wouldn't say it's completely a rip off, really, but that at least in this city all the dealers seem to think that if you do any city driving at all, that qualifies as severe conditions and you are better off changing oil more often.

It isn't going to hurt to change your oil more frequently, but unless you really do drive under the severe conditions defined by Subaru, you don't have to. I do *some* stop and go driving but I don't think that qualifies as severe.

Hi,

While I agree in principle, if you read thru the books from various manufacturers, it's pretty hard to drive your car under what most of us consider "everyday" conditions and NOT qualify as severe service under some, if not many! And there's a lot of disagreement on what intervals to use--one of my books says 3750 mi, another one, same make but different model, says 5000! Still, I'd think 3750 miles should be more than frequent enough.

Rick

Hi, Subaru's maintenance schedule is 3 months or 3000 miles for the first oil change IF it's a six cylinder but if it's not then the schedule is 7 1/2 months or 7500 miles under "normal driving".

NissanSalesRep

I also sell Subaru's