Hi All

Whilst enjoying a spot of after-dinner relaxation this evening and watching my second favourite car-based TV show (5th Gear), I was amazed at a segment about car servicing. They mentioned that with main dealer labour rates at an all-time high (they mentioned £200 p/h at a London dealer!), you could save a considerable amount of money by servicing your car at home. Now, I’m all for a bit of DIY servicing, and many of our customers often do their own oil changes etc. at home, and just bring us their cars for the MOT. The car they’d chosen to service for the show was a (circa) 2002 BMW Z4 3.0i. I won’t go into great detail about the whole piece, but basically, the presenter carried out a ‘full’ service at home in 4 hours and using £150 worth of parts and oil. They stated that the BMW dealer wanted £520 for the same service. The ‘tone’ of the piece was that main dealer servicing is a great big rip-off and it’ll be just as good to do it at home using parts from the local motor factors.  The whole service was then ‘checked over by an expert’ (who was an RAC patrolman) who peered under the bonnet for approximately 10 seconds, and then announced that ‘it was just as good as the main dealer service’.

Now, I’m not normally one to stick-up for main dealers, and I certainly believe that their labour charges are often bordering on extortionate. That said, in my opinion, there is absolutely no way that a major service carried out on the driveway of the owner, who has no mechanical experience, training or knowledge, will ever match that of one done in a professional workshop by a trained technician!

From experience, I know it’s virtually impossible to see anything of the underside of the car when it’s only 15cm off the ground on a jack or ramps and you’re lying uncomfortably on your back. Sure, you can drain and refill the oil and change the filter OK, but to actually spot a worn component is much harder. The presenter even spilled lots of oil on the drive as he tried to drain it into a 5 litre plastic can with a hole cut in it, whilst a trained technician (apart from using an oil drainer) would know that a BMW 3.0 holds almost 7 litres of oil!

They’d even bought a cheap EOBD fault code reader for £99 and a service indicator reset tool for £80, just to be able to reset the service indicator and read any diagnostic fault codes. All in all, they’d probably spent more on the tools and equipment necessary to do the job than they’d save in the first place! Apart from the fact they’d also have to take the waste oil to the local waste site, they’d have to clean and scrub the driveway, and that the service book wouldn’t get a stamp, it seemed like a great idea!

So, what did it prove? Well, apart from filling a 7 minute slot on primetime Channel 5, it proved very little. You see, the car they’d chosen wasn’t really representative of the type of vehicle that someone would wish to service at home. If you can to afford to buy, insure and run a 3.0i BMW Z4 convertible, it’s less likely that you’ll be the type that wants to get themselves all oily to save a few quid. OK, so you might be justified in not taking it to a BMW main dealer – after all, they all charge in excess of £100 per hour for labour (in our area), and the Z4 isn’t that complicated.

For a similar service that BMW charge £500 for, we could do for around £300. even using Genuine BMW parts and Synthetic oil. So, that’s a £200 saving, you won’t get your hands dirty, AND it’ll be worked on by a Level 3 qualified technician. We’ll dispose of your waste oil for you and can even offer a courtesy car. Best of all though, you won’t have to spend 4 hours on your back, cursing and skinning your knuckles trying to get that bolt undone. Also, if you then find you haven’t got the right tool to finish the service (but are already half way through and the car can’t now be driven!) you won’t have to walk to Halfords in the rain to try and buy one!

Anyway, you get the idea now. If you own a 1995 Cavalier 1.8 that’s only worth £500 max and are a keen DIY’er, you really can save a few quid by servicing it yourself. After all, it’s not going to be devalued by not having a service history, and it’s relatively easy to work on. If however you have a modern car with complex electronics and a relatively high retained value, it’s simply not worth the cost saving for the negative effec that ‘home servicing’ has on the value at resale time. On a car like the Z4, the difference in resale value between having a full service history with all stamps present, or just having the owner tell you that he ‘changed the oil myself every year’, can be up to £1000. That’s the cost of at least 2 dealer services and probably 4 or 5 of ours!

So, make up your own mind – and if you decide to go DIY, make sure you wear some latex gloves, as modern synthetic oils play havoc with your skin!

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