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Once your warranty expires, and certainly after 6 years, there's little point in servicing at a Ford dealer's unless you particularly like them, or want to sell with FFSH. It will cost more than at an independent and I doubt that you would recover that cost in the sale - tho it may make the car more saleable.
But unless your servicing includes brakes, it has little in common with the MoT test, so if your independent also does MoT, get them done together. The MoT is more to do with roadworthiness. Routine servicing may ignore things like cambelt or brake fluid change.
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I'd recommend doing it yourself, but how keen are you?
I remove my wheels each year, dismantle, inspect and clean the brakes. How much does any garage charge for a 'brake service' that involves little more than spraying a brake cleaner through the wheels? You can have a good nose around the wheel arch while a wheel's off, check for anything else.
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As BT, best if you can be bothered and want it doing right is DIY.
Anyone can do an oil change plus other filters spark plugs etc on a Fiesta, the important thing is to get the wheels off and make sure, like BT does, that the system is all good underneath together with the rest of the underbody, handy opportunity to grease the brake pipes too.
You do it, you know its been done and whats likely to need doing in due course.
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As BT, best if you can be bothered and want it doing right is DIY.
Agreed, but it's not simple to do under-car jobs like brake pipes with just a simple jack or two. I remove wheels and pads to check caliper movement, and descale the disc rims, about once a year. I also like to change oil and filter. But even that is getting harder with modern cars. Handbooks don't even tell you where the filter is, or how much stuff like sump-guards has to be removed to do it. All to keep the jobs coming to the garages, presumably on the pretext that it prevents home botch jobs.
Maybe.
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Agreed, but it's not simple to do under-car jobs like brake pipes with just a simple jack or two.
Absolutely, and the best investment the home mechanic can make is in a substantial trolley jack, and not one of these flimsy little pocket sized jobbies with an eggcup sized jacking cup...£100 should get something reasonable for DIY and another £25 for a pair of axle stands...one full service/brake overhaul and those two essentials will have paid for themselves.
I replaced my old trolley jack (pro) bought some 25 years ago earlier in the year, thats seen some work and still going, splashed out a bit on another professional item again, Weber, it'll outlast me but will pass on to my son, who isn't afraid to get his hands dirty, in due course.
If i was 20 years younger i'd invest £1500 in one of the new electric/hydraulic scissor lifts now available that will hoist the entire car via the chassis points about 3 ft in the air.
Edited by gordonbennet on 28/11/2013 at 23:35
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Home servicing is easy enough, just stick to the manufacturers schedule and you cannot go far wrong. Had a Golf GTi that did 113,000 miles in my ownership. It never saw a garage after 20,000 miles and the VW garage was more than happy to give me a good price for it since I had all the receipts for the service parts bought, from them.
But do make sure you use the correct spec oil, its critical in most modern cars and the wrong stuff can create problems down the line. The correct stuff is never that much more expensive than a bottle of cheapo. With Ford of this era you are lucky that the correct Fprd spec oil can be had for under £20 for 5 litres.
On these Ford engines be especially careful removing the plugs. It used to be 40,000 miles or 4 years between replacement with no checks necessary, they had usually welded themselves in by then. Always put some copper grease on the threads before fitting.
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Home servicing is easy enough, just stick to the manufacturers schedule and you cannot go far wrong.
All true. But as I said, you need some proper kit and there are fewer things one can do. My present car is a 2008 and it has to be hoisted to change the oil filter. This can only be done from below, after removing the sump guard. On my previous car (a 306) I could put it on ramps, remove the sumpguard and get at the filter with some difficulty.
If one is keen enough to DiY one's car(s) to lay out enough cash, fine. But as many threads on here tell us, you may need diagnostic kits as well. It's a self-protection conspiracy by makers and their dealerships.
Edited by Andrew-T on 29/11/2013 at 09:18
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One of the big ironies of DIY servicing, certainly in my case, is that by the time you can afford all the equipment you need, your body starts to lose the ability to get down and use them - especially on modern cars which need more tools/equipment and have far less room to work around the engine.
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I prefer to fix stuff on my own rather then to pay car services for doing the same thing
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We have a 10 year old Corolla and service and MOT are due at the same time. We do similar mileage to the OP and for the last 10 years (bar 1) i have stuck with main dealer servicing, mainly so I can keep my Toyota a Toyota and use OEM parts. I appreciate this is probably frowned upon as a waste of money on this site (no offence as you all tend to be very knowledgable about cars and maintenance etc) but the local indies are not a great deal cheaper than the fixed price offers provided by the dealers. The parts I had fitted on the single non-dealer service were definitely inferior to Toyota OEM parts. The brake discs and pads are absolutely rubbish compared to OEM. Of course you can specify a quality brand but you are the approaching OEM costs anyway. I think the fixed price deals at some dealers can be as cheap as some independents.
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>>The parts I had fitted on the single non-dealer service were definitely inferior to Toyota OEM parts. The brake discs and pads are absolutely rubbish compared to OEM.
Can you expand on that please?
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I agree with Cleudo about Toyota servicing, when we ran the Hilux the services were so well priced that it simply wasn't worth the bother of looking elsewhere, not as we would have whilst under Toyotas warranty or several years after.
The services were also properly done, the second service (major, major and minor services alternate) include a full brake strip clean etc, that was done properly too not just a squirt of brake cleaner through the wheel and a peer though.
I changed the original front pads for Mintex early in the vehicles life though, the Sumitomo OE didn't have enough bite for me and the MIntex replacements i sourced were better in this respect.
Cleudos bad experience with an indy reflects more on the quality of the indy IMO, the unfortunate result of using some indies based purely on price is that they fit the cheapest parts to be, wel,l cheap, some other indies, notably my MB chap doesn't do such things, yes he's cheaper than MB by eons, but partly because he doesn't throw new parts in willy nilly and fixes things wherever possible, and his diagnostic skills and reputation and knowledge after 40 years as an MB indy are highly regarded.
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I changed the original front pads for Mintex early in the vehicles life though, the Sumitomo OE didn't have enough bite for me and the MIntex replacements i sourced were better in this respect.
I recently changed the front discs and pads on my 9-3 Aero. i too chose Mintex. The discs are 304mm, so hardly underbraked for a compact saloon!! Every bit as good as the originals (as you say, better bite actually) and have had no fade despite severe provocation.
I do all my own servicing and mechanical repairs:
oil & filter
sparks
fuel filter
air filter
brake fluid change
coolant
springs and shocks
suspension links and track rod ends
pads and discs
Rad changes
general lube of hinges, locks etc
bulb replacement
timing belt
turbo cleaning
alternator swap
battery swap
general cleaning and inspection underneath
Next week I'm changing road springs on a young lady's Stilo (one has broken).
Sorting the G4 connector on same car after reading all sorts of elec fault codes.
Recently did a drive shaft change on a C3 HDi.
At Xmas I'm doing the head gasket on wifes Rover 25.
Recently changed brake fluid on 3 different cars. A simple moisture meter is less than 20 quid.
I have a bluetooth OBDII adaptor and Torque on my phone - can read the code on any vehicle (and watch live data when driving). Cost less than 30 quid, cheaper than a single read at a dealer.
Fair enough, some complex electrical checks may require the services of a garage and it's nearly imposible to change a clutch on a FWD off axle stands these days (I could swap the 'box on my Avenger in about 40 minutes).
There is still plenty you can do yourself even on a modern car. And to a higher standard than any garage could afford to do (eg I double flush my engine at each oil change, twice a year @ roughly 3500 miles each!!).
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