Are yearly services worth it on an old car?

Nimeth

When you said old I thought you meant early 90s or something!:p

I have a 1989 Scirocco and a 1970 Beetle that I do a yearly basic service on. I'll clean the air filters, change the oil filter and oil. I also check my spark plugs regularly to see if they need changing.

I agree with the above poster, it shouldn't be difficult to do a basic service yourself and cheaper too. Get your hands on a Haynes manual and have a read through to see if you are confident enough to do the work yourself. If you are going to service it yourself, make sure you get the correct oil for your car.

andymc29

Changing the oil myself sounds like a good idea. I'll give it a shot soon.

Stigy

I'd be inclined to do it myself if I had the space. Assuming it has rear drum brakes (as is the case on all but the 2.0-litre Focus' of that era) I'd certainly want to monitor the wear on the rear shoes and wheel cylinders, as with discs & pads you often need not even remove the wheels as you can see how they're doing through the spokes on most Focus alloys, and you can't do this with drum setups, obviously. The whole service would be easy to do yourself and would cost maybe £30 to £40 in parts, whereas a garage often charge over £200!

greyteam1959

Might be worth checking the terms of your breakdown cover..........
'Vehicle must be serviced in accordance with the manufacturers.............'

Lum

I'd only skip on servicing if it was a car I'd paid less than £250 for and didn't expect it to pass the next MOT anyway. Once you reach this position it's more cost effective to just scrap it get another banger when it fails it's MOT.

Somehow I suspect an 11 year old Focus isn't quite at that stage yet. I'm still struggling to get my head around the idea of a 2000 car as "old".

Hammyman

andymc29 wrote: »

About 12000, and I have full breakdown cover

So you'll prematurely kill the engine and you could end up wearing the brake pads down so low that you'll need to replace the discs as well as just the pads. Also other things that can go such as CV joint gaitors would end up not being found until their failure had caused more expensive garage.

My 04 plate Mondeo is now on 152,000 miles. Up to 150,000 it was main dealer serviced (£2 less than independant garages unbelievably) however I'll be reducing that considerably to basic servicing from now on. I've just had all discs and pads replaced (last fronts lasted 60k) and the next 25,000 miles of servicing is just minors so I'll get the oil and filter changed at thick gits or wherever, change the pollen filter every year myself and go round the locks and hinges with some spray grease. Fluids and lights should be checked weekly anyway so they're a non-issue. And come MOT time, I'll get it done 4 weeks before its due.

I'd do one of the special offer Oil and filter change once a year at the very least and take advantage of free brake inspections.

Lirin

If you're planning on getting rid of it shortly, then don't bother much with it barring ensuring it's capable of running. If you'd like to keep it for a bit, def maintain it. A 2000 car isn't old- it's a baby compared to some I've owned.
For 12,000 miles a year, you def need minimal maintenence on it at least.

andymc29

okay, cool, I don't know why I think of 2000 as being old, eleven years to me feels like an old car. I know I wouldn't buy one that old anyway.

My girlfriends getting rid of her car now cause it's six years old and she's worried about it becoming unreliable, it's only got 60,000 miles on the clock.

catflea

If its really that worthless to you, I'll take it off your hands. :A

2000 is still a "new" car as far as I'm concerned. Regular servicing keeps cars running better, longer. At the very minimum I do an oil + air filter change on the rover every 6000 miles, its carried me getting on for 20k miles this year. I dont feel that £30-40 every 4 months is a large expense when running a car. BTW, the rover really is old and worthless but it runs well and isn't showing any real signs that its going to go drasticly wrong any time soon so it makes sense to maintain it.

Lirin

Yup, and so is 60,000 miles! OP, I've had cars touching on 300,000 before, and coming in round the 20 year mark!
I'd still count maintenance as valid unless I was planning on scrapping it in a month.