How to deal with my old car that i'm giving to my gf

joeyvicks

Hi folks,


I am just about to take delivery of a new car through work and my current car (VW Golf) which I now own outright is being kept for my gf to use. I have some queries as the Golf has been used for work and has been doing 30k miles a year (Total current mileage is 144k). It will now do circa 2-3k miles a year and I was concerned such a dramatic drop in its use may cause problems?
It's also been on the long life service regime (20k intervals). I was planning on changing it over to time and distance (it'll probably be time due to the low use). Is this the right thing to do?


Any pointers would be great if anyone has been in this situation or one similar in the past.


Joe

AdrianC

A couple of thousand miles a year won't do a modern diesel with DPF any favours at all, but the "change of use" won't affect anything. The car doesn't "know" how it's been used.

Yep, it'll still need an annual service, and things like coolant/brake fluid are always changed on time rather than mileage.

forgotmyname

The lack of mileage is not going to cause problems. The lack of a decent run every now and then and the fact that too many people assume they dont do many miles then it doesnt need a service.

Lack of servicing will do more harm.

IamNotAllowedToUseMyName

That sort of mileage can be a problem - I know, we've had problems though low usage.

The main problem is that modern cars (last 15 years sort of modern) oftenhave electronics that is always active and drains the battery.

Our Golf Mk4 was very unreliable when not used sufficiently. Basically, battery tended to go flat and then when the battery was flat we'd get errors coming up and the car would go into limp home mode and stuff like that.

We'd sometimes have it sitting on the drive for a couple of weeks and popping down the shops wasn't enough. We didn't want to sell it as it is a relatively low mileage (70k at the time, 10 years old) and the offspring were abroad or at uni.

Servicing - stick to recommended regime. The main issues are making sure that things are properly exercised so brakes are stomped on every now and again to clean them up, and you keep an eye on tyre pressures and things like that.

I'm not convinced oil goes off significantly over time if it is not being used, so I don't really see the benefit in extra servicing, which these days often is barely more than an oil change.

joeyvicks

I suppose once every 2-3 weeks I could do my 110 mile round trip to work in it to keep it lively? Would this do the trick?

AdrianC

Probably not even needed that often.

arcon5

At 50 miles per week, unless she's taking 50 trips to the local shop it's highly unlikely to see the battery run flat unless the battery is on its way out anyway