Whenever we shop for a car on the used market, we try to find those 3 little words that every car shopper wants to hear. FULL SERVICE HISTORY. It conjures images of careful, responsible ownership and warms the deeper reaches of our hearts. Full Service History? Now that’s a car worth looking at.
However, I am ALSO a great believer in, don’t scratch where it don’t itch. By that I simply mean that the very act of changing your oil and filters, puts wear and tear on surfaces, seals and fasteners that need to be removed in order to perform the service. Or to look at it another way, a car that has had 15 oil services in its life, is far more likely to have a leaky oil filter housing or sump plug, than a car that’s never been serviced in its life.
Your car MUST be serviced regularly!
So you should never service your car? Heavens NO! Your car MUST be serviced regularly! How often you service it, is a little bit of a balancing act. But, by the end of this article, hopefully you’ll understand why I don’t believe that simply servicing your car once a year regardless of your usage case, is a good idea.
Rewind the clocks to before the invention of manufacturer warranties and service plans. To a time when your car’s user manual explained how to set plug gaps and idler valves. Rather than the manuals in modern cars that usually just tell you not to drink the coolant or brake fluid. Elsewhere in your manual, you would typically find a section explaining your service intervals.
Generally speaking they would offer a range of mileages of anything between 5000 miles to 20,000miles. There would have been some kind of table stating that if you do mostly highway driving, you can service the car every 20,000mls for example. But if most of your driving was short distances in town, you should service your car every 7,500mls. Just as an example.
Manufacturers suddenly had skin in the game
With the introduction of Warranties and Service Plans, things changed. Manufacturers suddenly had skin in the game when it comes to maintaining your car. So, in order to minimize their liability, they insisted that if you want your plan and warranty to remain active, you MUST service your car every 12 months at the very least regardless of mileage. Service intervals also dropped to around 7,500-10,000 miles. Or in this country, 10 – 15 thousand Kilometers. Fail to service your car on time and your warranty and service plan goes the way of the dodo.
Suddenly people were brainwashed! Thinking that even if I only do 2000km in a year with my car, I MUST change the (perfectly good) oil every 12 months. This despite the fact that there have been MASSIVE technological advances in modern synthetic oil technologies, from industry leaders like Rowe Motor Oils, Purchase your ROWE products HERE (shameless plug). In fact, several years ago, a couple of engineers did a study to see how long it would take for modern synthetic oils, to significantly break down in some meaningful way if it’s sitting in an engine doing very minimal mileages. The answer – it doesn’t. After 9 years they stopped the study having only found very small trace amounts of contamination from condensation.
I have seen service books with gaps
So what’s my point? I recently did a video about the realities of buying and owning a used Ferrari, (You can watch it here). In that Video, I mentioned that a Ferrari, with “partial” history, where the car wasn’t serviced every 12 months, is not necessarily a bad thing. In fact, the same can be said for any occasional use classic or sportscar. I have seen loads of service books with 3-, 4- or even 5-year gaps that do not concern me at all. Those cars were covering such low mileages in a year! It simply isn’t worth changing perfectly good oil for the sake of making the garage rich. Or putting a stamp in your book.
For me, a far better option is to reduce your service interval mileage mentally. For example of your book says every 10,000km, make it every 7500km. Then service for mileage or every 2-3 years. Obviously on your daily driver that’s doing 20k a year, you service annually or when you hit the service interval mileage. Your racecar gets serviced far more regularly because of its extreme use case. But the weekend toy, probably needs a lot less servicing than you think…