It’s a real conundrum, isn’t it? Shell out a few more bucks and get that oil changed, brake fluid flushed, or HVAC filter replaced? In my over fifty years of driving, I’ve been all over the spectrum. I imagine if you’re my age or close to it, you fit the same pattern.
Stage 1 – Forget It. As a typical broke young college student, any money I had went to tuition, dates, and beer – usually in that order. Car maintenance was down near ten or eleven on the spend plan. Fortunately I was driving a 1968 Plymouth Valiant with the 225 cu. in. Slant Six and Torqueflight. Oh, the abuse I heaped on that car. But it took it and kept on ticking – and it has my respect and admiration to this day. Oil change? Nah, it’s down a quart so I’ll just add some or maybe a bottle of STP. New battery? When the lights start to flicker I’ll consider it. Coolant flush and fill? Maybe if the temperature needle moves. Shame on me…
Stage 2 – Only the Basics. Later with a wife and family I became much more dutiful. But I was also driving Toyotas which can build bad maintenance habits. Oil and filter changes came right on time, along with coolant and brake fluid. But the HVAC filter? It can wait until next year. Transmission flush? It still shifts fine. Tire rotation? Give it another twelve months.
Stage 3 – I’m All In. Now fast forward and the kids are gone and I’m buying a new Volvo. I was aware that European cars demand careful attention and don’t cotton to neglect. In talking to a couple Volvo techs, they all assured me that sticking religiously to the Volvo factory maintenance schedule was the key to a happy Volvo experience. After thirteen years of ownership, their wisdom proved correct. It’s been expensive at times, but I’ve done everything the maintenance schedule in the owner’s manual calls for at the stated intervals, and have had zero problems. Note I mentioned the owner’s manual – not the dealer’s recommended schedule. I’ve found just like with other brands, some Volvo’s dealers will shorten and broaden the recommended factory services. Shame on them…
So that’s my “car maintenance experience” – what’s yours?
Your writeup was funny and – to me – cogent.I was given a ’49 Plymouth Business Coupe at age 17.Insurance was $100 a year!1956 to Penn State.Change engine oil once a year if necessary.Transmission?Well shifting was really tough when cold, like gears through glue til warmed.Tires? a new set of retreads, including snow on rear – once a year.My car in winter the only one that started routinely.Could count the revs of the engine as it turned, checked the radiator daily to be sure no ice in it.that car served me well.What I would give for a car that tough today – and today ?with my Hyundais, have for years followed manufacturers routines to the letter.Never have a problem.I have used Mobil 1 since mid 70’s.Always change tires to wider or higher or both when new car is bought.
Just purchased a RAV4 which indicates 10k between oil changes. I’ll be at the service dept every 5K to 7.5k for oil changes for the first few years to pad my bet.
That’s how I got 220k miles out of a ’05 Escape and 150k miles out of a ’12 Escape. Only engine issues were oil leaks…natural for a Ford!!
Like you, it depends.
For new(er) cars, particularly if under warranty, I will follow the schedule to the letter, if not more frequent such as oil changes. 10k oil change intervals just haven’t gained my confidence. Our ’14 VW Passat is knocking on the door of 100k, I have followed the maintenance schedule, and it remains as reliable as the day it was built. We bought a new vehicle three weeks ago and I will be following it’s maintenance schedule, also.
For my old stuff, it’s on an as-needed basis. My ’87 Dodge D-250 would actually tell you what it needed, be it oil or transmission fluid. I will address some items simply due to age, whether at a certain mileage or not, such as when I replaced the rubber brake lines on that ’87 Dodge. I really need to do that with my current ’91 and even the ’00 Econoline.
From how you describe it, I’m either at Stage 1 or Stage 3. Well, maybe not Stage 3; let’s say Stage 2.5, somewhere between the second and third stages.
As a man of a similar age, my experience follows yours… when young, I did what I could afford, when I could afford; a little older with more income, and it was, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – which is still my mantra with the Mustang, but once I purchased my Honda, which I’m told can withstand neglect like a Toyota, I’ve stuck to the program.
At first, I stuck to the dealer recommended intervals, but now lean more towards the owner’s manual recommendations.
With my wife’s Mazda CX-5, I’m relying more on my neighborhood mechanic who sticks to the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” mindset, however, I still pay close attention to the owner’s manual, and just my own observations with the car.
One thing I’ve never been lax on however is oil changes and tire rotations.
With the former, I was an every 3000 mile guy, until my ex wife, a mechanic by trade, told me that this is an old-school mindset, and that 5,000 or 1 year is just fine. My Mustang’s owner’s manual agrees with this, however the CX-5 shortens that up time-wise to 6 months. I use synthetic in her car, so the 1 year thing is just fine for the low amount of miles she puts on it.
With the tire rotations, the two Japanese cars get that at every oil change, or about 5,000 to 7,000 miles, but the Mustang never really needs it, although I do it occasionally. You see that car has been perfect on tires. It really does not matter in what position each tire resides, they all wear out at the same time. I do all this because I can’t stand replacing only two tires at a time. I want a whole new set when it’s time!
Fifty-five years of driving; almost fifty years of ownership. I think I’ve always been about “factory-manual” for oil changes; automatic transmissions a little neglectful, though I had one that was such a leaker that it was getting constantly refreshed. With purchase of first new car, my pride made me more conscientious (including winter car washing in road salt country), including the tire rotations, for which I’ll give myself a B-plus. The HVAC filter? Ahhhh, I’ll get to it eventually.
I enjoy reading road-test reviews of 1950s-60s-70s cars, as the more extended intervals become recommended by Detroit, with reviewers of varying minds…
grad school 67-69, hand me down 1965 Buick Special, if it runs, oil & gas
USAF 69-73 1970 VW & building a dune buggy from a rolled early 60s bug
oil, plugs, points, and maintain friends american iron.
after that mostly finding shops that specialize in the specific cars (i.e. BMW 530i, 74 MGB, 60 Austin Healey 3000, Lexus GXs, Tesla 2017 Model S – Tesla)
Fun read……
My nature is to be suspicious and cynical about these recommendations. And the issue about the dealerships trying to upsell more frequent or broader service only reinforces that. I avoid dealers like the plague, and I question the recommendations, although I do end up following some of them where I think it actually makes sense.
Brake fluid changes? I just had my mobile mechanic redo the brakes on the xB this fall, and the fluid was changed for the first time in 20 years. The TSX still has its original fluid (10 years). And original coolant.
Both the xB and TSX have what are considered to be “bulletproof” engines so I sometimes forget about oil changes; have gone as far as 12k miles or more.
The Promaster van gets the most miles and these engines are prone to the “Pentastar Tick” due to a weak needle bearing in the valve train. Some never get it; others do, so I try to keep oil change intervals from getting too long.
My mantra about oil changes is: how many cars actually croak because of a lack of frequent oil changes? It’s almost always something else. Most engines are good for several hundred thousand miles. So who keeps their cars that long anyway?
it’s a question I’ve long wished to find an actual answer to: how many older cars get scrapped because the basic engine fails versus some other components or rust or? When a car gets old enough, it can take very little to make even a pretty small repair uneconomical and get scrapped.
My guess today? The automatic transmission fails and kills the car more often than the engine. When engines do fail it often seems to be a timing belt that wasn’t changed.
As you say, the older the car the more likely a small (but still expensive) failure will send it to the wrecking yard. It can also be the un-availability of a required part if the car is much older than 10 years…
That’s my guess too. Or some ancillary component that would never be affected by the oil. My BIL just spent $1000 to have the alternator changed on his ’95 VW Passat, knowing it may well be worth less than that.
Yet the first response by a large percentage of the car owning population to a any issue is: “maybe it needs an oil change?”.
It depends. The engine in my current car is the first Audi 2.0t (FSI), and while lack of oil changes probably won’t kill your rod bearings, it can kill your turbo (which can send oil sludge through the rest of the system), clog and ruin the VVT cam chain tensioner, and wreck the balance shaft bearings (which rotate at twice the engine speed and drive the oil pump).
There are plenty of these Audis, GTIs, etc in fine shape but the engine lets go
Same with the first 1.8t in Passats and A4s, not following the oil change schedule, in combination with a small oil reserve, led to all sorts of sludging issues in those engines. They ended up fitting a huge oil filter and really pushing the change intervals to overcome this
I’ve had my fair share of cars approaching end-of-life and indeed, I can’t think of any that failed specifically due to lack of oil changes. However, I have had crusted valve stem oil seals, rattly timing chains, piston slap and ticking hydraulic tappets that are all symptomatic of irregular oil changes.
Not keeping up with oil changes don’t necessarily kill engines, but the car does feel more worn out, and I’m sure that often contributes to the decision that the car is done.
I’m not quite at 50 years of driving yet, but my experience pretty much mirrors the others here. Early days. bare minimum. These were mostly basic cars from the ’60s and already pretty tired when I got them. As the cars got nicer, I got more careful. As I progressed through mechanic, shop foreman, fleet manager etc at work I became much more dilligent.
These days, when the vehicle is new I follow the manufacturer’s schedule until the warranty is up. I kept every reciept and ran a log book for fuel, repairs and service. About every third service went to the dealer just to be sure I was “on side” if there was a problem.
As others have noted, dealers tend to load up the schedule with expensive, un needed extras, and like to imply that your warranty is dependant on following thier schedule so you have to watch that.
Once the warranty is up, I follow the same schedule we developed for the fleet at work, which is done every 10,000 km (6250 miles). I do it myself 90 % of the time, and there is a good independant shop nearby for the odd thing I don’t want to tackle, such as A/C work.
It is getting harder to do your own oil changes, at least around here, because there are way less places to properly dispose of the used oil and filters. Luckily, I can still use the disposal facilities at my old place of work!
This is a really, _REALLY_ good article .
Most folks don’t work their chariots very hard and trade them in every 5 ~ 10 years so a lot of maintenance can be deferred leaving the next owner (sucker) to deal with it .
I imagine those who live in the rust belt have certain things they need to keep right on top of whilst knowing that in 6 years the vehicle will be worthless and likely unsafe .
Oil will always be the cheapest Mechanic for any machine .
That being said I tend to change the ATF, power steering fluid and SLS fluids and filters any time they’re visibly dirty (discolored) or begin to smell bad / burned ~ this is far easier and cheaper that doing the repairs that follow neglected maintenance .
I try to flush the brake fluid every two years, sooner if it goes dark, doing this has prevented hydraulic brake failures on almost every one of my vehicles .
The thing is : not everyone knows how to do these basic things nor has the proper space / tools to do so .
What are apartment / condo dwellers supposed to do ? . Darnell’s remains closed .
As far as European vehicles, BEWARE THE CHEAP MERCEDES as it invariably has multiple neglected systems that will co$t more than the car is worth to set right .
That being said, I love my 42 year old 1/2 million mile Mercedes Diesel taxi, it’s slow and looks funny but I have driven it all over and trust it implicitly to get me where I want to go safely and comfortably, it also has (like most European vehicles) extremely good road handling, this allows me to drive it *much* faster than is prudent going down hill, I have managed to overheat & boil the four wheel disc brakes in the mountains .
Few ever seem to give the cooling system proper care, I do yet the radiator in my 2001 Ford Ranger cracked and began leaking this past Summer, an easy fix and not terribly $pendy .
I seriously envy Robert’s ’49 Plymouth business cope, those were stellar cars when new, better brakes than most and well put together .
I wish I could put less than 5,000 miles on in a year =8-) .
-Nate
I’ve always stuck with what my dad taught me to do back when I first started driving as a 16-year-old back in 1969 … oil change every 3500 miles and rotate the tires every 10,000. Back then the “points and plugs” had to be set or the gap checked, that was done every 15,000. Never changed the transmission fluid as it wasn’t necessary.
My first car was my dad’s 1962 Chrysler Newport 4dr sedan; he gave it to me and bought himself a ’66 Plymouth Fury I police interceptor. First set of tires I bought was a set of recaps for 20 bucks a piece.
By the way, I like that Valiant.
I’ve always stuck with what my dad taught me to do back when I first started driving as a 16-year-old back in 1969 … oil change every 3500 miles and rotate the tires every 10,000. Back then the “points and plugs” had to be set or the gap checked, that was done every 15,000.Never changed the transmission fluid as it wasn’t necessary.
My first car was my dad’s 1962 Chrysler Newport 4dr sedan; he gave it to me when he bought a 1966 Plymouth Fury I police interceptor. First set of tires I bought was a set of recaps for 20 bucks a piece.
By the way I like that Valiant.
“You can pay me now, or you pay me later.” The Fram Guy. I was always reminded of this advertising tagline in college by my buddy whose family owned one of the largest auto parts distributors on the West Coast. He’d say this when reminding me that I should always do a 3,000-mile oil change. I trusted him even though he was no mechanic. So, I tried to keep that as a general rule. That was the recommended interval for my MGB and Audi in the 80s and pretty much standard for my T-Bird and Mercedes in the 90s. By the aughts, computers told me when to change the synthetic oil and I’ve been sticking to that (approximately every 5k miles).
In just about every owner’s manual in the section that talks about maintenace there’s “Regular/Routine/Normal” maintenance and “Severe/Heavy Duty” maintenance. I follow the Severe/Heavy Duty schedule. Mobil1 at 5000 miles with the filter. Now that my car (’12 Flex) has 175k on it, I have also taken to draining the transmission (which only gets about 1/4 of the fluid in it) on every other oil change. The filter is buried inside the transmission which requires disassembly to replace it and even then that won’t drain the torque converter.
Water pumps on the N/A V6 is buried inside the engine and when it fails, it usually takes the whole engine with it. So as a preventative measure, the water pump (not leaking) was changed at 150k.
Other than brakes and tires, rear toe links and lower control arm rear bushings have been done.
It still drives like new and looks like new since it gets oil sprayed annually as well.
My answer is it depends. The two newer vehicles that came from a dealer and were financed were serviced more or less on time by a shop. This seems to pay off because our 2016 Mazda CX-5 is coming up on 70,000 miles with no problems, only a lot of tires and one battery, which solved the issue of the infotainment randomly jumping radio stations.
Other cars are a mix. Our 97 Saturn was serviced more or less on time and got to 120,000 miles in 15 years before the transaxle grenaded due to a design defect.
The current oldies in the fleet get an oil change every other year plus occasional coolant, trans fluid etc. because they only get driven a few thousand miles a year. The Buick may need more frequent service now that our daughter finally has her license and is driving to work, but that will be her brother’s problem since they live together 200 miles away.
I’m pretty good about following recommendations from our 3 modern cars’ service indicators. The VW and the Ford Transit seem to have some oil life algorithm that I feel I should trust, up to a point. The VW gets a lot of short drives and the oil change indicator may come on at around 4000 miles, which can be more than a year. It’s easy to do on this car, plus it’s my wife and she reminds me when the dash lights up. The Transit gets much more mileage, often over 10K per year, and I sometimes change it after 6 months just because. Oil is cheap compared to two oil-cooled and lubed turbo’s, which are also very inaccessible.
The Tacoma has been getting very little use recently but the oil change (‘service reminder”) is pure mileage based, every 5K. The Toyota recommended change interval is 10k but again, I figure changing it every year (at worst) is cheap and easy.
I’m OK with diligently keeping up with fluids and filters. The non-factory maintenance like “fuel system cleaning” that so many dealers recommend? Uggh.
On my air-cooled Ducati motorcycle the engine has a sight glass to check oil level. When I was commuting regularly on the bike, maybe 10-12 miles each way, the bike felt fully warmed up in a few miles from a drivability (and emitted heat) perspective. But if I didn’t ride it at least 50-100 more miles once a month, the sight glass would get gunned up with opaque milky sludge. And this with name-brand full synthetic oil in mild coastal California weather. A good reminder of why oil changes are good.
Like dman and others have said, nowadays I tend to follow the service indicators for oil. This means that the Toyota gets its oil changed every 5K miles (that service indicator is pretty dumb tech, it simply comes on every 5K miles…but then triggers an aggressively annoying light, so I do it). The Honda gets one when its conditions-based sensor calls for it…which is generally somewhere close to 8K usually. The BMW’s condition-based sensor used to call for oil changes between 10K and 12K miles…which was fine with me, until I hit 213K miles whereupon the software disables the condition-based sensor (seriously). So, now I just go it every 8K or so. The 49 year old Volvo…which is the only car still on dinosaur oil…doesn’t get driven even 2500 miles a year, so I just do that once a year (unless I forget, the car doesn’t complain).
My goal for brake fluid changes is every 2 years. I try hard to keep to that, as I really really don’t need to be letting moisture kill ABS units in the 3 modern cars…and the Volvo sits around enough that it too will rust out its brake lines, master cylinder, wheel cylinders if the fluid is not changed regularly.
I have target goals for differential(s) fluids and transmission fluid (on the 2 manual cars…the automatics I leave alone), but those tend to be different for every car I own, so that gets tedious to report. Basically, I keep on top of that stuff too.
Beyond that, I fix stuff as it breaks.
2 of my cars (the Toyota and the BMW) I’ve owed since new (the BMW almost new) so yes, back when they were under warranty I tended to adhere to the manufacturers’ maintenance schedules. This was great for the BMW as they simply covered everything – I mean everything – for the first 3 years (and then I paid them $1000 to extend that for another 3 years). So, I let the car call its home planet to request service (this was a feature…) and I’d get notified by email when to bring it in and they’d do their maintaining thing and send me home with a car wash. It was lovely, and I would doubt that new BMW warranties offer anything similar (I had that on a MINI too).
The Toyota was a very different story. That car had a maintenance schedule, but the point seemed to be that under warranty I was supposed to bring it in up to 4 times per year and pay the Toyota dealer anywhere from a couple of hundred to many couples of hundreds to “check” things…any actual work required seemed to be on top of that. Maybe that was just my particular grifting Toyota dealer (its primary clientele back then, as now, seemed to be older people – mostly nice grandmas – who could be convinced that if they didn’t buy a st of new tires every 6 months from the dealer that they would assuredly die on their weekly trip to Whole Foods or Trader Joes). So, we gave up on that “maintenance schedule” after a year or so and I just started changing the oil every 5K miles (or suffer the increasing wrath of the “MAINTENANCE REQUIRED” light/chime) and otherwise fixing stuff when it broke. It’s at 230K miles now 19 years later, so I guess I’ve done ok.
I have always been a stickler for maintenance and doing what the book says. In the case of my Golf, it calls for one year or 16,000 km for oil changes. I rarely drive more than 10,000 km a year, so I am comfortable with that interval
VW also calls for brake fluid changes, first at three years and then after two. I have done both fluid changes, as the car is now six years old. In addition, the maintenance schedule calls for a spark plug change every four years, regardless of kms driven.
I recently bought a new set of all weather tires. I was advised to rotate said tires at least every 10,000 km.
In six years, I haven’t had a problem with the car.