Lack of maintenance killing cars

fred246

Having read these forums for a while it has become clear to me that we are losing many cars early due to poor maintenance. It has fascinated me that while cars have become much easier to service people have been led to believe that you can't service cars yourselves. As people have stopped servicing their own cars I also am pretty sure that they have stopped checking fluid levels. I can't remember ever seeing my neighbours checking tyre pressures or lifting their bonnets to check fluids. I have always maintained that cars between 3 and 12 years are in the prime of their lives. Just need batteries, tyres, exhausts and brakes. If however a minor oil leak means that they are driven with no oil in, or a radiator leak means they are driven without coolant then premature engine failure will result. Coolant temperature is less clearly visible to the driver. My wife and kids had no idea that the temperature was displayed on the dashboard as a series of LEDs. Taking your car to a garage for a service is a lottery in terms of will anything actually be done. If you believe that they do the job properly you should always still be checking fluid levels. It only takes a couple of minutes.

motorguy

fred246 wrote: »

Having read these forums for a while it has become clear to me that we are losing many cars early due to poor maintenance. It has fascinated me that while cars have become much easier to service people have been led to believe that you can't service cars yourselves. As people have stopped servicing their own cars I also am pretty sure that they have stopped checking fluid levels. I can't remember ever seeing my neighbours checking tyre pressures or lifting their bonnets to check fluids. I have always maintained that cars between 3 and 12 years are in the prime of their lives. Just need batteries, tyres, exhausts and brakes. If however a minor oil leak means that they are driven with no oil in, or a radiator leak means they are driven without coolant then premature engine failure will result. Coolant temperature is less clearly visible to the driver. My wife and kids had no idea that the temperature was displayed on the dashboard as a series of LEDs. Taking your car to a garage for a service is a lottery in terms of will anything actually be done. If you believe that they do the job properly you should always still be checking fluid levels. It only takes a couple of minutes.

I am inclined to agree, however, a couple of things :-

• Cars tend to run on longer these days. The average lifespan of a car is now something like 14 years so has went UP not DOWN.
• (lack of) batteries, tyres, exhausts and brakes maintenance will not kill a car.
• People should get their cars serviced at least once a year along with any MOT prep. Often people dont bother at all.
• People should check fluid levels at least a couple of times a month. 95% of people dont.
• People should check their tyres once a month, including the very inside edges where modern cars tend to scrub them off.
• If the car has a timing belt get it done ahead of schedule just in case. Belts are cheap. Replacement engines are expensive
• I dont trust long life service intervals. I get my cars done around every 9,000 miles or so.

Ultimately these days what puts older cars off the road is a major mechanical failure such as DPF failure, turbo failure, etc which once a car is worth less than £1,000 or so become prohibitive, so as a car reaches it latter years it can become a little bit of a lottery with regards to longevity.

Your "solution" seems to be that people need to do their own servicing as you often preach that garages cant be trusted and dont do the work. I dont agree with this.

Any garage i use has been based on recommendation and i have come to trust them over time. "Trust but verify" - as Ronald Reagan used to say. Every town usually has a range of decent mechanics - you must have been very unlucky to only find ones who dont actually do any of the work you've asked for.

I think promoting that approach is more likely to yield results than your "dont trust garages as they dont bother doing the work" which i think is more likely to make people avoid maintenance and servicing altogether.

onomatopoeia99

Nowadays I earn enough that I can pay someone to service my daily driver. Used to be the case that I didn't and I serviced my cars myself. I still do all the work on the race cars, but the one I drive to work every day, nope, too many other demands on my time so I'll pay someone else, thanks. Never mind that it needs a 4 post lift to service as many parts of the engine are inaccessible from above and I don't have one of them in my garage. Now according to the OP my car is well past its "prime", being 18 years old, but it still goes well and I still enjoy driving it.

My experience of garages is they do the work you pay them for. I've been using the same one for almost 15 years and am yet to have any cause for complaint.

mark55man

I think I agree with OP - and am in the category of people who only check fluids when the screenwash needs done. Our cars have tyre pressure sensors (just an astra nothing flash) so I don't feel the need to kick the tyres - but will check if I have parked with wheels turned out


I will add some basic checks to my list of things to do but I'm never convinced that (other than checking there is fluid in there) I would actually spot anything!!

AdrianC

fred246 wrote: »

As people have stopped servicing their own cars I also am pretty sure that they have stopped checking fluid levels. I can't remember ever seeing my neighbours checking tyre pressures or lifting their bonnets to check fluids.

There's also a large element of not needing to - until things go wrong.


Cars used to use coolant routinely. They used to use oil routinely. Now, they don't. You can check every week between services, and nothing will ever need attention. So it's very easy to get complacent...

Coolant temperature is less clearly visible to the driver. My wife and kids had no idea that the temperature was displayed on the dashboard as a series of LEDs.

That's just bad ergonomics, then.


But does that "coolant temperature" tell anything useful, anyway? Odds-on that it's not actually telling you about small variations in temperature (which don't really mean anything, because they're just natural and inevitable as the temp fluctuates between the normal lower bound of the 'stat opening temp and the normal upper bound of the fan kick-in temp), just saying "Yep, all happy and normal".
Back when fans were permanently run or viscous, a rising temp meant you were working it a bit hard, ease off. Now, all fans are thermostatically electric, and they'll keep all bar a total cook-up in control.

motorguy wrote: »

I am inclined to agree, however, a couple of things :-

• Cars tend to run on longer these days. The average lifespan of a car is now something like 14 years so has went UP not DOWN.
• (lack of) batteries, tyres, exhausts and brakes maintenance will not kill a car.

Ultimately these days what puts older cars off the road is a major mechanical failure such as DPF failure, turbo failure, etc which once a car is worth less than £1,000 or so become prohibitive, so as a car reaches it latter years it can become a little bit of a lottery with regards to longevity.

This is the big difference. Cars used to be scrapped because they were utterly rotten and worn out. Now, they die the death of a thousand paper-cuts and value-balancing.

parking_question_chap

To some extent I agree that its a more throw away society and we are more inclined to replace than patch up and repair, plus its that cars are becoming more complicated so there is more expensive things to go wrong, that years ago would not have been on the car in the first place.

But also I think its that there is more reliance on cars these days. People dont have the time or cant be bothered to walk to the shops, to work or walk their kids to school. So people are more worried about going without a car, therefore they tend to get replaced when they are old rather than when they cannot be fixed.

nickcc

Some of the horrors I've seen of work carried out by so called DIY mechanics would frighten many people, wooden blocks used to replace worn brake pads, antifreeze in screen wash bottles, engine oil in brake master cylinder reservoirs to name but a few. Whatever car I buy I always buy a proper workshop manual, obviously this doesn't apply to new models, and refer to it before carrying out any maintenance work even though most of my working life as a mechanic has been spent repairing cars and commercial vehicles.

sevenhills

parking_question_chap wrote: »

To some extent I agree that its a more throw away society and we are more inclined to replace than patch up and repair, plus its that cars are becoming more complicated so there is more expensive things to go wrong, that years ago would not have been on the car in the first place.

My last two cars both cost less than £500, a service at a dealer can cost more than the value of the car.
Is it just me that gets MOT advisories for tyres at 3mm, no where near the legal limit, advisories that seem invented?
I do less than 5,000 miles per year, the car has done 95,000 miles so it could break down with an uneconomical repair at any time.
I don't consider this a throw away society, more keep recycling the same car, so long as servicing and repairs are minimal.

motorguy

sevenhills wrote: »

My last two cars both cost less than £500, a service at a dealer can cost more than the value of the car.
Is it just me that gets MOT advisories for tyres at 3mm, no where near the legal limit, advisories that seem invented?
I do less than 5,000 miles per year, the car has done 95,000 miles so it could break down with an uneconomical repair at any time.
I don't consider this a throw away society, more keep recycling the same car, so long as servicing and repairs are minimal.

You're taking your subjective view through and extrapolating it across society.

We DO live in a throwaway / consumer society. Cars to a greater extent are part of that.

You're effectively practicing bangernomics with your car, which is great. Do the maintenance thats required to keep the car going and if you hit a massive bill, presumably scrap it and repeat.

Nobbie1967

sevenhills wrote: »

My last two cars both cost less than £500, a service at a dealer can cost more than the value of the car.
Is it just me that gets MOT advisories for tyres at 3mm, no where near the legal limit, advisories that seem invented?
I do less than 5,000 miles per year, the car has done 95,000 miles so it could break down with an uneconomical repair at any time.
I don't consider this a throw away society, more keep recycling the same car, so long as servicing and repairs are minimal.

Advisory at 3mm seems pretty reasonable given than legal minimum is 1.6 and wet braking is compromised before this limit. Quite likely the tyres could be illegal before the next MOT.

EssexExile

As others have said, cars don't need much checking now & they last longer than they used to. My early cars needed the battery, coolant & oil topping up regularly, belts re-tightening, nipples greased, tyres pumped up, etc. Now I check the oil, coolant, brake fluid & tyres once in a while but can't remember the last time I actually had to top any of them up.