Vehicle servicing
Servicing
Nearly every garage in the country will tell you they can service your car. But what is a service? What should be carried out on your car and when? The simple answer is "There is no simple answer" And the reason? Now we start to get complicated, and you will need some back ground information. So take a headache pill and settle down.
Those of us who have been involved in the motor trade can remember when cars were serviced every three months or so, this was in the hope of keeping them going until the next service. In those days engines were rebuilt after 50,000 miles and there was a garage on every corner. But the technology was so simple that every one's dad was a mechanic. But times have moved on. Developments in engineering technology have meant that components are now produced to much finer tolerances and in consequence are more reliable. Engine oil has been developed to such an extent that even yearly oil changes are becoming the thing of the past. Every car manufactured today is an engineering marvel compared to those of only a few years ago, with reliability just taken for granted. But that reliability tends to breed contempt.
The manufacturers of each vehicle have tested their vehicles to destruction. They know what items should be checked, serviced or replaced, and when to do it. They also know what is the correct specification oil, coolant, brake fluid, gear oil....The list goes on and on. Each manufacturer sets out a list of procedures to be carried out on each service, but these items are not necessarily the same for each service. For instance long life spark plugs routinely last 36,000 miles, timing belts have a service life that varies depending on age and mileage. A pollen filter may need changing every year or every three years, and brake fluid may need changing every three years. The bottom line is that the manufacturer knows best.
Every manufacturer publishes detailed service schedules, together with oil and fluid specifications, if you want your vehicle to remain reliable then it is essential that you take notice of what they say. We use technical data supplied by a company called Autodata who work with the manufacturers to ensure that the data used is totally up to date.
So when someone books a service for a vehicle that we have never seen before we will take our time to make sure that we learn about that vehicles service history. This is to ensure that it receives the one that is appropriate. We always service in accordance with the manufacturers recommendations, we use dedicated service schedules for that vehicle, and use the correct parts. By doing this we can guarantee that the work is to the same standard as the franchised dealer, but considerably less expensive.
Take a look at PDF files located
behind the buttons below. They show the Service Schedules for a petrol
engined two
litre Peugeot 406. Note that each service is different dependant on age or
mileage.
And you thought a
service was a service!
Our thanks to the nice people at Autodata who have allowed us to reproduce the above schedules.
