Thanks for sharing John Cadogan’s videos. My mechanic went to the same auto school (well, kindred spirits).
One of John Cadogan’s videos put me onto data on the VW emissions scam and the scandalous statistics on impacts. Correct operation of emission controls (inexplicably there are better standards in Europe than here in Australia) matters to everyone’s health, and correct servicing must thus be important.
Increased air pollution due to VW’s reduced emission controls has led to many premature deaths. This would be the tip of the health impacts iceberg with many strokes, heart attacks, cardiovascular disease and asthma, lung cancer, brain and organ impacts just causing lots of misery and massive health costs.
From the article abstract:
In September 2015, the Volkswagen Group (VW) admitted the use of ‘defeat devices’ designed to lower emissions measured during VW vehicle testing for regulatory purposes. Globally, 11 million cars sold between 2008 and 2015 are affected, including about 2.6 million in Germany… Integrated over the sales period (2008–2015), we estimate median mortality impacts from VW excess emissions in Germany to be 1200 premature deaths in Europe, corresponding to 13,000 life-years lost and 1.9 billion EUR in costs associated with life-years lost. Approximately 60% of mortality costs occur outside Germany. For the current fleet, we estimate that if on-road emissions for all affected VW vehicles in Germany are reduced to the applicable European emission standard by the end of 2017, this would avert 29 000 life-years lost and 4.1 billion 2015 EUR in health costs (median estimates) relative to a counterfactual case with no recall.
Chossiere, Guillaume & Malina, Robert & Ashok, Akshay & Dedoussi, Irene & Eastham, Sebastian & Speth, Raymond & R H Barrett, Steven. (2017). Public health impacts of excess NO x emissions from Volkswagen diesel passenger vehicles in Germany. Environmental Research Letters. 12. 034014. 10.1088/1748-9326/aa5987.
Why so? Many European governments and the EU itself are not as impervious to science and the well being of their residents compared to our situation where a dollar in a pocket is paramount, and many in government wagged science classes and think because we have such a wide open unpopulated area it doesn’t matter.
The passing of any individual is a sobering moment, and cause for reflection.
Estimates are always useful, and it is interesting to compare this with the greater picture.
The abstract does illustrate the risks of modern technology and potential for hidden impacts!
VolksWaggen were caught out seriously, for something that should never have occurred.
Fortunately for VW perhaps they are not facing 1,200 claims for compensation in court and billion dollar payouts for each life lost. Although VW were required to provide alternate restitution to the owners of the vehicles and who caused the increased levels of emissions every time they used their VWs. Perhaps the owners are also fortunate to not be in court also being pursued, as once the problem was public, continued use of their vehicles would have added to the emissions. However there was no sudden ban on VW’s continuing to be used despite the non-compliant and higher emissions.
Not quite the most recent data (but relevant to the last year referenced in the abstract on premature deaths).
For the EU at 1st Jan 2017 the total population was estimated at 511.8M
The deaths during the previous year 2016 were estimated to be 5.130M
The median estimate of premature deaths due to excess VW emissions was 0.0012M
It is sobering that not all of the 5 million were due to VolksWaggen. It does however demonstrate the magnitude of the problem facing the EU in improving lifespan with more than 5 million improvement opportunities every year. It would be an interesting separate topic for those with a special interest in ageing and the contributing factors to premature death. What more can be done?
Australia’s task is fortunately not as numerically large, but no doubt equally challenging?
In this topic there have been some very good posts on why it may matter. It could affect your warranty if something does fail, it can help improve engine life, it can address faults before they cause more problems. There may be issues that are subject to recalls that you may have missed and having the service done on time/km may/should get them addressed.
I encourage you to read through the posts in this topic and hopefully that will address/answer your question.
Those of us going to independent shops cannot depend on them advising of campaigns. Some might, some might not, and some might do best efforts for those campaigns they know about. The dealer network is (rightly or wrongly, but in reality is) often the only source of such information. A related topic.
It is worth doing a search before any vehicle service (any make or model) to see if there are any ones that may need to be completed at the service. It saves the effort of returning the vehicle at a later date or missing one needs doing.
Doesn’t apply to my 2011 but ta anyway. My point is I use it for shopping etc so 4 K’s a year Max. So post warranty, things need changing after 4K’s a year ? I don’t think so. The timing belt, wipers, battery, fluids and filters have ALL been changed. So at 122K’s nothing needs changing yet. It should be good until 132K’s imo. I’ve got 10 k to go. Maybe the wipers and fill the wiper tank !
As outlined above, most in between services are more or less an oil change and visual check…noting major. Have a look at the service manual with the vehicle to see if this is the case.
If this is the case, you could take your vehicle to a local mecahnic and only ask for the oil to be changed which will be a relatively cheap service.
If you are a risk taker and not worried about what may happen if the inbetween service is not done, you may decide to risk it and miss it. In such cases, ensure that you monitor oil use as some vehicles are known for consuming oil even when new. If the oil runs dry, it may become very expensive.
At the end of the day it is up to you what you do.
True, it’s your call and your opinion. Certainly some owners can relate success with similar strategies.
Three things any one doing so might like to discuss or consider.
How old is your vehicle already? Bad things start to happen much more rapidly with vehicle age. Think 8-10 years onwards.
How risky is high tech? VWs used to be low tech rattlers. These days they are one half step from the bleeding edge. Think last year’s Audi being produced for the masses. And Skoda is last years VW in the eyes of some tech heads?
How well do you know and understand your vehicles vital signs and condition? Some of us claim to be able sniff and finger our engine oil, name and date it’s age and which oil field it was born in. True, once heavily degraded and burnt there are obvious signs to some. By then the damage is already done.
Perhaps for anyone who can add to or expand on these three points, they do not need the help of this topic. The real wisdom for everyone else has already been offered up.
Once a year for an inspection and oil & filter change is really very cheap insurance compared to the cost of a preventable failure, and still very low cost when compared with annual basic insurance and registration costs for a vehicle. Over $2,000 pa per vehicle in our household.
That is true for those who have $2,000 pa to spend per vehicle. For those in less comfortable economic circumstances who need to budget their daily food rations it is not so clear cut that it is ‘cheap insurance’ when they are just getting by, if that. I am not suggesting anyone participating in this topic is among the latter, but someone could be.
My thoughts were coloured years ago when I was a middle manager and a young lady at entry level asked ‘around the water cooler’ how she could save. I responded with the benefits of the American IRA (eg super-like account) which was ‘the thing’ to minimise taxes and build wealth at the time. A gracious colleague took me aside and mentioned the young lady did not have excess cash to stash, did not have a tax problem, and needed income and hopefully growth at her age and level to keep her apartment, car, and so on going while she saved for a house or a rainy day. It was educational and decades later I still think about the ‘other person’ circumstances or reader’s ranges of circumstances, not just my own or best practices, when giving advice.
We have had broken timing belts in the past on our Landcruiser and Hilux mine site utes, not from going over the service schedule but from the long engine run time versus km travelled. The average speed on a site is low and the idle time is high to keep the aircon working.
These engines do magnitudes more revolutions per km than the average city or highway driver. The broken timing belts destroyed the engines in these cases.
It seems the GDI valve coking issue is more prevalent with certain designs by certain manufacturers. One recipe for coking is when crankcase ventilation vapours and exhaust gas recirculation (EGR) gases are mixed in the intake manifold creating a sticky tar.
I have a Hyundai 2.4l GDI 148kW (non turbo) that doesn’t use EGR for NOx reduction and therefore doesn’t create the tar mixture in the inlet. It uses 91 RON fuel with 11.3:1 compression ratio and manages this and NOx control purely with precise multiple injections per compression stroke direct into the cylinder.
It is only serviced every 15k using Nulon Long Life Synthetic oil and at 130k on the clock still runs like new and averages 8l/100km moving 1.7t of vehicle around. If any coking is happening inside my engine it is not yet affecting performance.
The service book does state to use a fuel system cleaner every 15k. I use Nulon Total Fuel System Cleaner and while unconvinced of its effectiveness in MPI engines, I have noticed a deterioration in performance when I have forgotten to use it in this car. I have had another brand of cleaner (Caltex Techron 5000) actually destroy all rubber components in the system so beware.
I have a 2016 Subaru Liberty, and had been servicing it “by the book” with the Subaru dealer, 6 monthly but never as much as 12500k. The car is used mainly for long trips. I rang the dealer on one occasion to book the car in and was told there was a one month wait. The dealership is spread over several buildings and has cars up and down the local street, and in my opinion seemed to struggling with their workload. I suspected that, as mine is a fixed price service, I was put at the back of the queue so that more lucrative work could be done. I have now gone to the local RACV workshop and have the car serviced on a 12mth/10000km basis, although foolishly or not, we use 98 fuel in our cars and have done so for years. I once asked the Subaru dealer if they rotated and balanced wheels, to be told that Subarus do not require this. I suspect that this was left out of the schedule so that the service could be done at the low price. The RACV workshop found that the wheels did need rotating and balancing.
Although I am paying more for a service, I am happy with the servicing and the car (my second Subaru)
If you have a shop you are happy with it is a good situation, but.
I found my local ‘RACV approved’ shops tend to be priced at or near dealership levels. It might be the cost of having the RACV logo.
The local shop I have been going to for the past 2 years has been excellent, does not over service (eg if you want a log book service they deliver and document it as specified, but otherwise check everything and only replace what needs replacing). They do all the fixed price services as well as log book services at less and sometimes considerably less than the dealers. The shop’s position is the fixed price services get customers into the dealer bays while assuring the dealer makes his dollars on the visit. not that the customer is saving money when compared to alternatives. eg, it is clever marketing.
We get our MY15 Honda CR-V serviced by the Honda dealer once a year as we only do around 12,000 km annually, and they even give it its free annual wash.
When we had our previous Gen 3 CR-V, I called the private service business who had maintained our previous out-of-warranty vehicles as well as Ultratune.
Ultratune was the dearest followed by the private business, and the Honda dealer gives us a discount of around 10% off their quoted book price, making them the cheapest by far.
We observed that depending on whose car was being booked in and by whom the quoted price asked and outcome seemed to vary. One rate for the ABN holder and another for the real manager of the household? One customer seemed to always get the vehicle turned around in a few hours, the other took all day?
Interestingly although some time past when the work fleet lease vehicles were serviced through a direct agreement with the fleet owner. There was a special deal in place that seemed to also ensure the fleet provider a great price?
Perhaps dealer quotes are negotiable in some circumstances? The risk of trading one quote off against another is the possible loss of quality of some of the service items, although dealerships likely have higher overheads when compared with smaller private service providers.
