Oil change and "specialist" oil

sarahTT

I've been using the same F1 Autocentre for years and so far had no reason to complain. However, the last service was an unpleasant experience. I had ordered everything via their website, basically an MOT and a short service but without what they call "specialist oil" as I thought this was not needed (see down). Well, the guy taking the car (Dacia Sandero, 998cc, 2019) advised me that this car needs specialist oil and that I'd have to pay an additional £20 for that.

Now hubby had downloaded a copy of the manufacturer's service schedule after we'd bought the car and there it simply says that any oil is fine as long as it's to ACEA A3/B4 spec. And in my local ASDA all the oils, even the cheapos, are ACEA A3/B4.

So my question is... why does that car need specialist oil when any ACEA A3/B4 oil should be fine? Or put differently, is this a money-making scheme for those F1 guys?

Car_54

Well, if you must buy these hideously expensive, high performance supercars ...

Seriously, I suspect they were ripping you off, but I'm no expert and others will comment.

Bigwheels1111

Common practice, quote for semi synthetic oil.
Your car takes fully synthetic oil and so you get stitched up.
If you get a quote from Halfords for eg, it’s say £90. Then you put in your reg and bingo it’s £135.

CliveOfIndia

Car_54 said:

Well, if you must buy these hideously expensive, high performance supercars ...

Seriously, I suspect they were ripping you off, but I'm no expert and others will comment.

I love your comment!  But you're absolutely correct.  It's true that using the correct oil as mandated by the manufacturer is important (and, arguably, one of the simplest bits of preventative maintenance you can do).  But most "ordinary" cars use a small range, as it were, of widely-available oils.  As long as the ACEA and viscosity ratings match the manufacturer's recommendations, then you'll be fine.

If you really did own a supercar then you might reasonably expect the correct oil to be expensive - along with every other component.  But for an ordinary family car, any oil with the correct specifications will be fine.  In fact, changing the oil regularly is arguably far more important than the actual grade of oil itself, within reason.

Goudy

I think what tends to happen is these fast fit centres carry all the commonly used engine oils in large drums but when they check what oils some cars use, it's not something they stock so the price goes up as the have to buy it in in small amounts which is more expensive.

The comment regarding matching manufacturers recommendations is correct.

Although your car takes a certain grade of oil which may be common, that is made to a common industry specification, Dacia specifiy it also needs to meet their specification.
This is usually a manufacturers code, in the case of Dacia it's a Renualt RN code.

If you check your owners manual it will usually state this manufacturers spec in there.
Then again it might not and just point you back to the dealers, like my Clio handbook, it doesn't even tell me the grade!

I think it will be something like RN0700, but it's worth checking.

sarahTT

Car_54 said:

Well, if you must buy these hideously expensive, high performance supercars ...

You must somehow have mixed up my Dacia with hubby's Porsche, an ancient 911 Targa... sometimes it actually works

OK, seriously. The Dacia doesn't NEED fully synthetic (as per manufacturer's published specs) though it'll certainly run fine with that. That's the whole problem: the car would be fine with semi-synthetic as long as it's ACEA A3/B4 but the F1 guy insisted on full-synthetic as the only possible oil.

Well, if they insist I will take the car elsewhere. Perhaps I should complain to their head office about this.

And thanks all for the answers.

Ganga

I would just suck up the £20 extra charge this time and take it elsewhere next time.

CKhalvashi

Ganga said:

I would just suck up the £20 extra charge this time and take it elsewhere next time.

I wouldn't, I don't appreciate being lied to, especially when it's easily provable to be the case. Benefit of the doubt normally is given though, however not in the case they have 'checked' and come back with a same story.

A Sandero will not need specialist oils unless it's a Ferrari Sandero or McLaren Duster. Yours is neither of these.

Those little 1.0 Mercedes engines are extremely robust and actually quite simple in design.