Car service

Mercdriver

fred246 said:

showmethecash said:

Thanks all. I’ll look into local dealers, good garage schemes etc and compare prices as forking our £350 for major service is a bit much at the moment and not necessarily worth it given the car is only 4 years old and has relatively low mileage so should be sound.

Harry Enfield is funny but irrelevant. The age of your car doesn't matter. An oil change is still an oil change. Car servicing has been the same since at least the 1970s although it's much easier now because a lot of the tasks have been removed. There is no need for any fancy tools or equipment. It can easily be done on your drive in a couple of hours. There has never been any difference between DIY,mobile mechanic,independent or main dealer. It's all about an individual following a 'menu'. My preference is to know who that individual is personally. Then you know who is responsible. The motor industry is unregulated. No qualifications, examinations, registration, inspection. The individual motorist has to do their own research whether by internet or personal recommendation. Nobody is policing the industry on your behalf.

You give advice as if it the bible and should be treated as such.  If you keep your car until it is falling apart at all 16 years old, it doesn't matter much where the car is serviced because you aren't selling it to anyone who is going to care about such matters.  

Now someone who has bought a car at 1 year old and intends to sell it at 4 years old.  The average price is lower than at 1 yo but still a significant investment.  If I am buying a car at 4 years old and there is one with Dealer servicing, one with local indy servicing and one that's been done by someone who has been following youtube videos, which one do you think I am going to buy, assuming they are all being sold in the same place?  Which do you think will retain most money on part ex?  Assuming the seller isn't going to follow your suspect advice to ask a dealer to stamp the book without servicing it (fraud) what value do you think the seller get for the third?  I guarantee it will be less than the other two options.  
When I had my merc I kept the servicing with the main dealer.  Two things it did for me.  Firstly I got £1000 more for it at part ex.  Secondly, I'd had issues with the car that continued until after the approved used guarantee had expired.  The main dealer changed every injector at no charge to me.  I had the EGR valve play up which started after the end of the warranty.  That was also dealt with FOC as a goodwill gesture.  

Now imagine I buy a new or nearly new car, I follow your advice and service my car myself following the YT video.  I then have a problem with something to do with the fuel system, and they ask who serviced it.  At that point I am up the proverbial creek without the proverbial paddles.  


You won't indemnify anyone for following your advice.  Yet you give that advice in absolute terms as if it is irrefutable.  Your advice is only correct for a very specific group of people:

Those who possess reasonable mechanical skills who don't plan on selling their car for at least 8/9 years, or who have so much money that it doesn't matter if their is an expensive heavy paperweight because it is fubarred because they followed the advice of someone on the internet.  Neither you or the other Fred will give a monkeys let alone a red cent to help.

fred246

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3979405.stm
So are you going to pay the £170m every year to correct the problems caused by dodgy garages? Have you ever wondered why you have so many problems with your cars? I've never had a problem with my injectors,  EGR valves or fuel system. The only warranty work I have ever had done they damaged my car which caused continuing problems. I would rather just sort it out myself.

Mercdriver

fred246 said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3979405.stm
So are you going to pay the £170m every year to correct the problems caused by dodgy garages? Have you ever wondered why you have so many problems with your cars? I've never had a problem with my injectors,  EGR valves or fuel system. The only warranty work I have ever had done they damaged my car which caused continuing problems. I would rather just sort it out myself.

It was an intermittent fault that they couldn't replicate when they gave me a courtesy car to use.  Nothing showing in codes, until on one occasion the workshop manager had the symptoms happen while he was driving.  Turned out to be faulty sensor.  It was a single fault, and the EGR valve was a little way down the line.  So I had two faults.  Not MANY faults.  

Put your money where your mouth is.  Or stop encouraging people to DIY it when they are not necessarily likely to poossess the skills.  

Cheerio bye bye tata.

fred246

You are encouraging people to use garages. It costs  £170m a year to put right the problems caused by dodgy garages. Surely you should pay that if I am supposed to pay for the problems that DIY motorists have.

MinuteNoodles

fred246 said:

There has never been any difference between DIY,mobile mechanic,independent or main dealer. It's all about an individual following a 'menu'.

There absolutely is an enormous massive gulf of difference between a DIYer and someone who has spent 2 years getting qualified doing an apprenticeship doing a job, especially when you tag on manufacturers training for specific models. And the fact you think it's all about an individual following a menu is you literally waving a great big neon sign saying "I don't have a clue."

My house was owned by a DIYer who thought he knew what he was doing and sure everything works but for example his solution to getting power to an electric shower upstairs was to take some suitably rated twin and earth, run it up the outside of the building into the loft. Nothing necessarily wrong with that other than it's not the tidiest of solutions. But because he was a DIYer he didn't know that the insulation of the cable he was using wasn't rated for outdoor use, I doubt he was aware such a thing exists, and didn't put the cable in trunking. He also thought when putting in mains power for the combi boiler that putting in a mains socket directly under the boiler less than 2ft from the kitchen sink was a good idea.

Back to cars, I've seen lots of things that DIYers have done which frightens me. I've seen things that people like your self who think they're competent have missed when they've been doing their servicing. An often heard phrase when a car serviced by someone like you failed its MOT on something dangerous was "How has it failed on that? I've just serviced it and I never noticed anything wrong." Yeah, it's because you don't know as much as you think you did and didn't know what you were looking for. Changing fuel filters on diesel engines is one that always gets a chuckle. "I've changed the filter, I've bled it like it said to do on Youtube but it keeps running for a few seconds and then dying." "Is that the video that tells you to just keep turning on the ignition for 10-20 seconds 5 or 6 times?" "Yeah that's the one." Yeah, no. It MIGHT work if you're lucky but often it doesn't.

I've countless tales of woe when it comes to auto electrics. Best I ever saw was some dumbass who melted the entire front to rear wiring loom on their car. They'd fitted a high level brake light, took a feed off the rear light cluster but when they'd been putting the cluster back in they put a screw straight through the twin core wire they used. Brake lights kept blowing fuses, they just kept putting bigger and bigger fuses in until eventually the car got to the point it would no longer run at which point I ended up with it.

MinuteNoodles

fred246 said:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/3979405.stm
So are you going to pay the £170m every year to correct the problems caused by dodgy garages? Have you ever wondered why you have so many problems with your cars? I've never had a problem with my injectors,  EGR valves or fuel system. The only warranty work I have ever had done they damaged my car which caused continuing problems. I would rather just sort it out myself.

Funny you should mention those. They tend to be in the main done by small and back street garages where the people doing the work are DIYers who got an over-inflated sense of their own competence and decided to set up in business. Much in the same way as many who decided that because they once installed Windows on their mum's laptop that they were an IT god. I've made nice money out of sorting out their !!!!!! ups too over the years.

I've never had any of those problems with my cars either, even despite mileages of 170,000 miles and 15-20,000 miles a year. All it's needed was regular servicing to the manufacturer's schedule and not doing much urban driving so your comment about that is hardly a great qualifier. In fact thinking about the last three cars I've owned over a period of 15 years and over a third of a million miles covered other than an alternator and a thermostat I've never had an issue with anything bolted to the engine, it's all been suspension and brakes.

fred246

No need to worry about me. I know what I am doing.

Mercdriver

fred246 said:

No need to worry about me. I know what I am doing.

Sorry but I don't believe you.  I wouldn't buy a wooden shed from you, let alone a car

Mercdriver

fred246 said:

You are encouraging people to use garages. It costs  £170m a year to put right the problems caused by dodgy garages. Surely you should pay that if I am supposed to pay for the problems that DIY motorists have.

No.  I am saying that people should stick to what they know since getting it wrong could be way more expensive than going to a dealer.  You are telling people to do it themselves without regard to their ability or lack thereof.  

If people have the ability to do it themselves, then fair enough.  But telling novices that all they need to do is watch a YT video is irresponsible and foolish.  Different people have different skills.  Recognising that is incredibly important.  Knowing what you don't know is far more important that knowing what you do know.  Not recognising that is arrogance of the highest degree.

MinuteNoodles

fred246 said:

No need to worry about me. I know what I am doing.

So did the people who ended up bringing their disasters to the garage I worked at for us to put right. I'm quite sure the guy who fitted the high level brake light and melted half the wiring loom thought he knew what he was doing too.

I'm all for people servicing their own cars but your claim that an untrained DIYer armed with no more knowledge than what Bob down the pub said, a Haynes manual and a few Youtube videos is as competent as a time served apprentice trained mechanic is just laughable.