If it dies, it dies.
Learn to change your own oil people. You literally only need a socket wrench and and a drain pan. You don’t even need to jack a lot of cars up if you don’t mind squeezing under.
Get a fumoto valve and you don’t even need the wrench.
And a filter wrench, and a way to dispose of the oil and filter, and a place you’re allowed to work on your vehicle (many apartments disallow it) and I don’t think it’s fair handwave the jack and jackstands and possibly wheel chocks that most cars need to safely and comfortably get to the drain plug, plus gloves and safety glasses. I have all those things so I do my own oil changes but I’m not pretending it isn’t a hassle and it’s barely a cost savings. I think people should learn basic car maintenance because it’s outrageous to be completely ignorant of something so important and expensive in your life, not because paying for someone else’s time and experience is a bad thing.
The initial cost might be higher, but once you have the gear it’s significantly cheaper. I just paid $80 for a conventional change on my wife’s car, which is way more than 4qts of synthetic and a filter.
Yeah I will start learning oil changes, will be useful for my EV
I changed the oil in my Leaf a couple of weeks ago. It has a reduction gearbox that holds a couple quarts of transmission fluid.
At least learn how to change your blinker fluid for goodness sake!
Subaru is the worst in my personal experience. Several years ago I had gone ahead and changed the air filter since it was filthy and because I knew they would want to do it on the oil change that was scheduled in a week or so. $15 instead of their $70. At the oil change appointment the service advisor brought a filthy filter to me and said they were going to change it and they could give me $10 off as part of the appointment. I said “I don’t know where you got that but if you look at my filter you’ll see it’s clean since I just changed it. How about I show your manager my receipt for it?”
He looked like someone walked on his grave, apologized, and gave me 10% off the oil change. I never went back to that dealer, and my wife kept that car in the divorce so I don’t know who she goes to now, but definitely not them.
Recently bought a WRX, the O2 sensor went bad, the shop I normally use didn’t want to mess with it so I went to the dealership. While I was waiting I get a text saying my car needs $8,000 worth of work, I just bought the thing so I am starting to panic, the advisor said the battery sensing plug was messed up and to fix it the ENTIRE engine harness had to be replaced. I asked to see what they were talking about, so we walked into the shop, it was a small plastic plug about the size of my pinky finger the previous owner had wrapped in electrical tape so i asked if we can just wrap it back up, the mechanic shrugs but wraps it back, that was 2 years ago still never had an issue even though the advisor was like you need to get this fixed sooner rather than later. Never went back.
Or, you know, depinning the connector and replacing it? Sometimes there’s a weird connector but I have a hard time believing they couldn’t find a replacement if they tried. Some mechanics are just parts replacers and that’s it. My friend had a muffler break off on his Civic and the mechanic gave him a straight faced $1500 quote because they “couldn’t get a repair kit” and wanted to just replace all the parts. New pipe with resonator and new muffler is what they wanted to do. I welded it back on at home in an hour instead.
Dealer parts catalogue likely doesn’t have repair kits for most plugs. It’s the loom or nothing. They’re not even allowed to do repairs like that because “if something related breaks next, customer will blame the dealer/manufacturer”.
Little point in going to dealer unless specifically trying to keep the warranty, in which case you’re probably not paying to get repairs done yet
Older BMW and Mercedes. The plastic in the engine bay turns into expensive RNG repair add ons as you take it apart. Audi too really
Opposite problem, I have an Indonesian Honda, I’m in Indochina, which is a different market.
Dealerships refuse to do anything except change the oil, tighten/lube the chain.
The bike desperately needed an airfilter and 12K km service, still could use a chain/sprocket, and it’d be nice to have a guy with a multimeter who will track down why the spark is so weak.
I need those lights for christmas don’t touch it
They always tell me I need an air filter then tell me they don’t have one.
Every mechanic in SEA just takes the filter out, blows on it with an airhose, and puts it back in.
The manual:
spoiler
Do have an uncommon car? Non-OEM filters are so cheap.
