Having car serviced before selling

Jackmydad

Depends what it says in the manual.
Yearly is minimum for me.
If the car's not doing a lot of miles it's probably doing short journeys that muck the oil up quicker.
I change the oil at about half the recommended milEage as well.
Modern engines are a pretty stressed, and don't carry a lot of oil.
Oil's not cheap, but it's a sight cheaper than engines. . .

worried_jim

Sammy2018 wrote: »

Depends on how many miles the car's done since the last one.

Correct! My neighbour changes his every six weeks but his Mondeo does have 300,000 miles on it and does airport runs all day. If you aren't doing the miles (I only do 3000 per annum) then you need to doing oil changes every 12 months. I doubt many in the know would deviate from this.

Richard53

Sammy2018 wrote: »

Depends on how many miles the car's done since the last one.

Not really. Oil degrades with time as well as mileage. Most people would agree that an annual oil change, however low the mileage, is a reasonable minimum.


Also, a low annual mileage suggests mostly short journeys, which are harder on the oil than long motorway blasts.

foxy-stoat

skm1981 wrote: »

When we buy cars, we usually end up using them until they are pretty much finished, and don't regularly service them. This time, we're not planning on doing that. We've had our car for 2 years. It's a 2012 car and was serviced in 2013 and 14. It hasn't been serviced since but we now want to sell it. A service is about £160 and I'm just wondering if we get it serviced before we sell it, is it likely to not make any difference to the price offered (we're looking to part-exchange)?

This sounds exactly what you have done here, driven it for 2 years and its not had a service for the last 5 years. Sounds like a sack and ready for a heap of issues when some poor sap does buy it from a forecourt, probably will start up a new thread about the ballache of a car they have just bought.

What is the car, last part of the reg number, just so we can all avoid it.

Robisere

The sump in that engine will be full of sludge and whatever substance is attempting to circulate around the engine, is no longer lubricating oil. It will have metal from worn components in suspension, which is acting like a grinding paste and causing even more secondary wear.

People like you are guilty of cruelty to a poor innocent piece of machinery and should be barred from owning anything more complicated than a small screwdriver. May the poor unsuspecting potential next owner realise their mistake before parting with any money.