The truth about 12-month service intervals
Cars have become astonishingly reliable and durable - as evidenced by the proliferation of 12-month service intervals. But these do have a dark side…
With servicing, you have to remember: it’s the time or the distance - whichever occurs first. You cannot say: Ohhh - I’ve only driven 8000 kilometres. I’ll wait. Unacceptable. You’ll void your warranty. Something expensive will break. Don’t do that.
Feedback is the first problem with annual servicing. Cars are so astonishingly reliable today, on average, that the people who own them increasingly fail to do any routine checks.
The system is the car. The change is increased reliability over time. The feedback is people failing to do the most basic checks because cars generally fail to break down often enough to motivate greater interest in roadworthiness by the people using them.
We could vox pop people in the street - and I know a worrying, significant proportion of them not only never check the coolant level, oil level and tyre pressures, they would not know how or where to do this.
How many cars do you suppose are out there right now, driving around, and the only time the oil, water and air ever get checked is during that annual service?
Half as often as previously.
That’s feedback, opening the door to disaster. People used to check everything regularly because cars used to break down more often if you didn’t. It was almost a guarantee.
Once a fortnight, or every second time you stop at the bowser. Check those three things: Oil, coolant, tyre pressures. It would avert so many five-figure disasters.
Cars are definitely more reliable today. But those statistically infrequent catastrophic failures are very expensive.
Perhaps you can make it a Sunday morning ritual. Unlike going to church, doing this will reduce the risk of going to automotive hell.
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Second problem is early replacement of parts. Here’s the scenario: When I go to my local independent mechanic, he’ll say to me: “Mate, your brakes are getting a bit low. Come back in three months; I’ll have another look. You better budget about $X to replace them - we might have to do the discs as well.”
Couple of big advantages here, right? I get three months to budget for the job, and I don’t throw away a set of pads that are good for the next three months.
You don’t get these advantages at a dealership.
Problem number three is human nature. The 12 months comes up. You push the limit a bit. It’s 15 months, all of a sudden, and the service is still due - provided your engine doesn’t compose a letter to its barrister or go poopy in its trousers.
12 months is a limit on the time between services, not a broad hint to start thinking about it over coming weeks, maybe get your people to set something up with the dealership some time after Christmas and before the heat death of the universe.
It’s a limit. It’s why they stopped putting the term ‘safe working load’ on shackles and cranes - because people thought it was OK to be a little bit unsafe. They call it a working load limit now. This is that, psychologically.
Finally, there’s this issue of harsh operating environments reducing the service interval. People have entirely the wrong idea about this. You might think a harsh operating environment is some long drive across the Nullabor, or towing a boat, or something.
But in fact, one of the harshest things you can do to engines is start the car, drive a short distance - five km or something - then park, catch the train to work, and repeat this process every day.
This is like GitMo for engine oil, which is subject to immense chemical attack and contamination in this situation. There’s a lot of combustion blow-by into the crankcase, because the parts haven’t warmed up properly and therefore they are not yet the right size.
So a lot of water, unburned fuel, sooty crap, aromatics, whatever, gets into the oil. It becomes significantly diluted, and does a relatively shit job lubricating the precision parts down there.
It’s especially bad if the engine is turbocharged, because turbos run very hot and very fast, and they require good, uninterrupted lubrication. And they are kinda expensive to replace.
If you’re one of these short trip drivers who doesn’t get out on the highway very often, you’re really not giving the oil much opportunity to heat up and evaporate away those cold start impurities.
Heaven forbid, in this situation, you might actually think about doing an intermediate oil change at the six-month point between major services. Also a great opportunity for your local mechanic to check the car’s vitals.
