Servicing your own car - FSH

Aletank

I've always done my servicing, I have a 2003 Mercedes C180k

I change the Oil, Oil Filter is on top of the engine, Air filter, Pollen Filter, Spark Plugs all easy jobs.
I have a stamp which I had made up from Ebay, It has the Mercedes Logo on it & says DIY Home Service See Receipts . I stamp the Service Book, tick off what's been done, write in the oil type/grade etc. Then staple the receipts together from that service & put them in a folder.
Brake Disc's & Pads are easy enough.
When I come to change my car it's value is goin to be under £1k so the Service History I have is more than good enough & I do advertise the car as FSH as that is what the car has - A Full Service History !

fred7777

1886 wrote: »

I find it laughable that there's people on here that consider themselves in the same league as a fully qualified and trained technician.
Just because you've gone to your local car store and bought an oil filter and done the job yourself means nothing to me. Your work comes with no guarantee and the parts you use are most probably a cheap copy. A main dealer uses genuine parts, the parts they use come with a warranty as does the work that has been carried out.
People who use main dealers do so because they have confidence in them, they don't do it for the cheapest option. If I went to buy a car that was advertised for sale as having had a FSH and then I found out the seller had done it themselves I'd consider that as adding no value, how do I know it's been done correctly? Main dealer techs have had years of training

I find it laughable that you will post the above without telling people you work for a main dealer :rotfl:

john_white

Aletank wrote: »

I've always done my servicing, I have a 2003 Mercedes C180k

I change the Oil, Oil Filter is on top of the engine, Air filter, Pollen Filter, Spark Plugs all easy jobs.
I have a stamp which I had made up from Ebay, It has the Mercedes Logo on it & says DIY Home Service See Receipts . I stamp the Service Book, tick off what's been done, write in the oil type/grade etc. Then staple the receipts together from that service & put them in a folder.
Brake Disc's & Pads are easy enough.
When I come to change my car it's value is goin to be under £1k so the Service History I have is more than good enough & I do advertise the car as FSH as that is what the car has - A Full Service History !

It has a full history of parts being bought for it.

Joe_Horner

john_white wrote: »

It has a full history of parts being bought for it.

As opposed to a full history of someone putting a stamp in a book but possibly not bothering to do the stuff?

AdrianC

I use a spreadsheet to keep a full log of work I've done on my cars - mileage, date, parts replaced. When I'm talking to a potential buyer, I'll email them a copy of it. BUT that's for cars that are a bit more "enthusiast" than your average disposable whatevermobile, so there's both an expectation of the average owner being more "interested", and there's also a bit more trust because I tend to be fairly active on the various owner forums (and that's where I market them anyway).

As such, I view my personal service history as being both more comprehensive and more likely to be accurate than an easily faked stamp in a book. Heck, half the work I've done - especially in the first few months of ownership - is usually undoing previous "professional" bodges and corner-cuts.

bigjl

Captain_Flack. wrote: »

26k for a mini cab, be a while before you're showing a profit.

Minicab?

You been taking your meds today?

No minicab here.

Joe_Horner

AdrianC wrote: »

[...] Heck, half the work I've done - especially in the first few months of ownership - is usually undoing previous "professional" bodges and corner-cuts.

Sadly, that's true of a lot of technical fields. Probably 25% of my income comes from sorting out watches that have been cocked up by big shiny storefronts.

Not that I'm complaining, of course, I just sometimes wish the owners would save some time and pay me for both jobs in the first place. They'd still have a working watch, the cost would be the same, and they'd save themselves all the hassle of the first "repair"

Retrogamer

When i left school at 16, i went straight to college to study Motor Vehicle engineering straight away. After that i went on to study my City & Guilds 383 (service & repair of light road vehicle)

When i started my apprenticeship years later, i always done things by the book. No shortcuts or bodges.
All good for the customer, but not good for the dealer / franchise. They wanted me to cut corners to get jobs done quicker so they could get more work in the doors, but still charge the customer the original time quoted.

I seen people bleed brakes badly (bucket underneath wheel cylinders and just pumping + drawing air back in)
I seen damaged unregistered cars being sprayed / repaired and sold as new
Every car got the same engine oil at a service, regardless of type required
And i saw people cleaning oil filters with WD40 so they looked new, rather than changing them.

Now i don't work on cars as a job anymore, but i do think i do a better job of servicing mines than most dealerships. I'm not under pressure to meet targets or timed deadlines.

iltisman

Retrogamer wrote: »

When i left school at 16, i went straight to college to study Motor Vehicle engineering straight away. After that i went on to study my City & Guilds 383 (service & repair of light road vehicle)

When i started my apprenticeship years later, i always done things by the book. No shortcuts or bodges.
All good for the customer, but not good for the dealer / franchise. They wanted me to cut corners to get jobs done quicker so they could get more work in the doors, but still charge the customer the original time quoted.

I seen people bleed brakes badly (bucket underneath wheel cylinders and just pumping + drawing air back in)
I seen damaged unregistered cars being sprayed / repaired and sold as new
Every car got the same engine oil at a service, regardless of type required
And i saw people cleaning oil filters with WD40 so they looked new, rather than changing them.

Now i don't work on cars as a job anymore, but i do think i do a better job of servicing mines than most dealerships. I'm not under pressure to meet targets or timed deadlines.

Just what I suspected and I bet the brake fluid rarely gets changed too as that is very difficult to check and can be time consuming to do.

Captain_Flack.

iltisman wrote: »

Just what I suspected and I bet the brake fluid rarely gets changed too as that is very difficult to check and can be time consuming to do.

It's dead easy to check.