What do you want from a maintenance program?
When people bring late model cars to Robison Service (or any
independent service specialist) they are often seeking an alternative to dealer
service. Why?
In my experience, dealership service personnel follow a game
plan that is laid out by the carmaker and oriented toward maximum new car
sales. In other words, keep the new car
buyers happy so they buy another car in 2 or 3 years. The primary purpose of a new car dealer is to
sell new cars. Service may be an
important tool to build client satisfaction but it’s not the reason dealers are
there.
Shops like ours –
specialists who concentrate on one or two makes for service only – have a
different orientation. We are here to
keep the cars under our care on the road and as reliable as possible for as
long as our clients want to drive them.
With that different perspective it should not come as any
surprise that the dealer and we would espouse different philosophies when it
comes to preventative maintenance.
The manufacturer may call for a 15,000 mile oil change
interval in a certain model car. That
may work fine for new cars. But we cars
that are 7-8 years old, with 70-80,000 miles on the odometers, and that 15k
service interval hasn’t worked out too well.
Maybe the owner didn’t make it in a exactly 15k. Maybe the dealer didn’t use the right
oil. Maybe the 15k recommendation was a
little too aggressive. Maybe . . . .
From our perspective, the maybes don’t matter. Results matter. We see the damaged high mile cars, and we see
other cars whose oil was changed at 10,000 miles. Those cars don’t show any wear or
damage.
The dealer represents the carmaker, and if they say “do oil
at 15,000” that is what they do. We are
independent. If the evidence of our
service fleet causes us to believe 10,000 miles is a more prudent interval,
we’ll say so.
We also recognize that tests may facilitate even better fine
tuning. If you run 25 vehicles, and you
sample oil from all of them at different intervals you will get a very accurate
idea of how often to change oil for your fleet in the circumstances in which
you operate. You may be surprised at the
number.
We may deviate from the manufacturer’s suggested service
schedule based on our experience. Does
that mean the manufacturer was wrong?
No. It means operating conditions
differ in different areas, and service schedules may be optimized to reflect that. In some cases, manufacturer service scheduled
may be trimmed down to present a lower cost of upkeep in the early years. If you only drive the car for those early
years that’s good for you. But if you
plan to drive it for ten years, you’ll pay a price for that early economy. We don’t have to follow that plan for
long-term owners, while we can embrace it for short term lessees.
Flexibility has value. We can apply that flexibility in a hundred different areas from filters to fluids; from software updates to system upgrades.
There’s room for more than one opinion when it comes to
service.
Think about that as you consider what you want from a service
provider.
John Elder Robison is the general manager of J E Robison Service Company, independent restoration and Bosch Authorized Car Service specialists in Springfield, Massachusetts. John is a longtime technical consultant to the Land Rover, Porsche, and Rolls Royce Owner's Clubs, and he’s owned and restored many of these fine vehicles. Find him online at www.robisonservice.com or in the real world at 413-785-1665
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