The 'Great Keep Your Car Tip Top For Less' Hunt

Change your oil every 5kish,
Costs around £30 and can save your engine, also remember to check it frequently.
Drivers of turbo and turbodiesel cars, when you park up, let the engine idle for about 20 seconds to allow oil to flow to the turbo to cool it down and prevent turbo failure.

You don't have to use the franchise dealer for servicing. The warranty is now valid as long as any garage proves it performs the full service (i.e a checklist) and uses suitable replacement parts.

Franchise dealers use servicing to make their money now that car prices are much tighter than a few years ago. We, the consumers, are more savvy, and the rise in CarGiants and their like mean that margins on selling cars are much tighter. Dealers' hourly servicing rates are significantly more than a local garage, sometime 100% higher (see Which? passim). On a major 4-hour service, you can save over £100.:beer:

Plus, you're supporting a local business :cool:

jcchandler wrote:

This is true but the local garage MUST be VAT registered (the whole thing was a ruling by the European Court a couple of years ago)

So you can't use really small one man bands as the odds are that they are not VAT registered.

I didn't know that, so in all likelyhood I have invalidated my warranty (doesn't matter now, it has long since finished)....

M

If you've got an older car and it's out of warranty, buy a Haynes manual or similar and do the basic services yourself.

Changing oil, oil filters, air filters, spark plugs and the like isn't that hard to do if you're a little handy. Also, especially if you're not driving that much, it allows you to control your service intervals a bit better; if you're mostly driving short distances, it pays to change the oil more often as the contaminants don't burn off that well on short journeys. Also, buying the parts and fluids yourself allows to control the quality of what goes in your car!

Another top money-saving time that bugs me pretty much every time I buy a car - folks, check your tyre pressures regularly. I've lost count of the vehicles I've bought that had tyre pressures that were way to low. That doesn't do the tyres any good and can severely shorten their lifespan. Plus, if you don't notice it and the tyre blows/jumps off the rim, you'll pay more for your insurance...

Also, if you're planning to keep your vehicle for a long time, it maybe worth investing in a stainless steel exhaust when the one on the car gives up the ghost. Over the years this is likely to work out cheaper than buying a Kwik-Fit exhaust every couple of years.

If you're running a classic car or a car that's considered special enough to have an owners club, it's often well worth investigating what benefits a club membership can give you. Larger clubs can often negotiate better deals for insurance and/or breakdown cover, some have discount deals at specialist garages, plus you can often tap into an informal spare network which is extremely handy if your car is rare and/or is suffering from high parts prices.

Speaking of parts prices, there is often no need for buying new parts if the old one can be reconditioned - not to mention that you often can replace defective parts with good secondhand parts. This is especially useful for body parts as it'll work out a lot cheaper to get a used bumper, door or wing from a breakers (provided it is the correct colour) rather than buying a new one and having to pay for getting it painted.