Service on car by mileage or months

harshitguptaiitr

Hello
Looking for opinions here..
For a six year old car -
Is it recommended to go for a service based on mileage or based on months?
What are the pros and cons of each option?

JGB1955

If you go for months and have done huge mileage you might miss the cambelt change at 60,000 miles. Likewise, if you have low mileage you might miss the cambelt change at 6 years. Personally I would go for whichever comes first, miles or months.

flashg67

servicing is always due on whichever comes first

Ectophile

I'm with flashg67. It's mileage or months, whichever comes first. In my case, that's usually months.


The service history book should tell you.

Tokk

Absolutely spot on above - whichever comes first

force_ten

some marques now use condition based servicing so you may find that some cars are mileage based only

but if it is months or miles for your car then as above it is whichever comes first and this information can be found in the service book

AdrianC

force_ten wrote: »

some marques now use condition based servicing so you may find that some cars are mileage based only

Oil condition tells you nothing about when the cambelt's due.

force_ten

AdrianC wrote: »

Oil condition tells you nothing about when the cambelt's due.

lots of cars have gone back to using chains so they dont need changing

as we have no idea what car we are talking about everybody is just guessing

System

I guess you're wanting to do it on mileage because you don't do many so would only reach the service interval every couple of years?

Either being stood for long periods or only doing short journeys doesn't do cars any good. Being stood means things like brakes start to seize. Doing short journeys, especially if they're round town, means that everything gets hammered more than a car doing motorways - you'll brake more, you'll do far more gear changes, you'll be using the steering much more and putting much larger inputs into it, the suspension will get more of a workout from speed humps and potholes on urban roads. Because the engine won't get fully up to temperature moisture in the oil won't be burned off (common to have mayonnaise under the oil filler cap like head gasket failure on low mile cars that have just pottered around town), nor will moisture in the exhaust so it'll rust quicker.

For those reasons alone you do what is first, the time or the mileage.

eamon

I'm one of those that has reconsidered my cars serving frequency. Most of my journeys are of the worst kind, 30mph zones, speed humps, frequent stop/starts and lots of gear box stirring. Manufacturer says 12k or annually, I'm dropping that to 6k/annually which ever happens first and may go lower than that.
I would rather pay out few hundred than thousands of pounds.