Financial tips for car/s

TheMoonandBack

I budget £75 a month for car maintenance. That’s for a car I bought at 3 years old and will keep until it’s 10 years old.
I do 15000 miles a year, and worked out the monthly figure by working out the costs of servicing(doing 10000 miles every 7 months), 4xtyres every 40000miles and £250 a year for repairs.
Don’t forget to include cambelts, brake fluid changes and Aircon services.
It’s worked for me.

Mercdriver

edde wrote: »

Just look at private hire taxi companies they know how to make cars run long term. They do ever 3k oil changes.

Leaving oil a year is to long imo

That's more to do with the amount of start and stop journeys. Every 3k is far too frequent.

nickcc

Just a tip that many older members will understand. When you wash the exterior always hose under the wheel arches ensuring all the crud off the road including salt has been removed. I realise that newer cars have far better corrosion protection but all it takes is slight damage to that protection and unseen corrosion will start.

edde

Mercdriver wrote: »

That's more to do with the amount of start and stop journeys. Every 3k is far too frequent.

One taxi company know who does this servicing etc is a long distance executive car company.

3k is too frequent imo but they do over 350k on the cars and it works for them.

System

edde wrote: »

Just look at private hire taxi companies they know how to make cars run long term. They do ever 3k oil changes.

ROFLMAO. No they don't. Really they don't. Assuming it gets looked at at all before the council inspection it'll be at least the manufacturer's recommended interval but usually longer than that. You don't make money in what is already a cutthroat market by wasting £20-£30 every other week on an oil change you don't need to do.

It isn't the 1970s any more. Changing oil that often achieves nothing. There's a test done in the States where they take the Mobil 1 20,000 mile engine oil and run it in a car for 120,000 miles changing the engine oil and filter every 20,000 miles and doing other servicing at the manufacturer's schedule. They take oil samples every 5,000 miles. They also do a test on a Chevy over 500,000 miles and at the end of the test they strip the engine and it looks like new. The only thing that failed during the test was the gearbox at 300,000 miles.

Explanation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0IqLRhxdoGg

Video showing engine components when it was stripped down at 120,000 miles and towards the end of the video a Chevy Sileverado done at 500,000 miles.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-zDt9FGJi8

Here's what an engine in a Skoda Octavia which did 432,000 miles with just standard service schedule oil changes looked like when they took the head off.

https://youtu.be/Wk-isKUjWBQ

edde

Tarambor wrote: »

ROFLMAO. No they don't. Really they don't. Assuming it gets looked at at all before the council inspection it'll be at least the manufacturer's recommended interval but usually longer than that. You don't make money in what is already a cutthroat market by wasting £20-£30 every other week on an oil change you don't need to do.

It isn't the 1970s any more. Changing oil that often achieves nothing.

They do I think the 3k is excessive but its there business and they have being going for yrs they don't care about the extra pennies, they have executive taxi contracts and I don't see them saving 20 to 30 ever few weeks as really matter ing. After all they don't buy 2 liter models so they will be loosing a lot ever month in depreciation.

They don't just change the oil its a service and check.

Personally I do it ever 10k or 6 months ish ie twice as often as the manufacturer recommends for my own car. That's more than enough.

reeac

Ectophile wrote: »

This isn't the 1960's any more. Multigrade oil has been invented now.


I change the oil every year, or at the manufacturer's recommended interval, whichever comes first.

BP Viscostatic was introduced in the mid 1950s. I distinctly remember seeing an advert on the back of a bus and a fellow cyclist asking me what it meant. I had the benefit of having just spent 6 weeks working in the Shell labs. near Chester and explained it to him. Mind you, we all know now that being writtten on a bus doesn't actually count for much.

AdrianC

reeac wrote: »

BP Viscostatic was introduced in the mid 1950s.

...and wasn't the first to market, by a good few years. Duckhams and Motul, probably others, had multigrades in the early 50s.

The other one that gets the bobble-hats wobbling is synthetic oils - which were in use during WW2.