18,600 miles for first service

[Harrihealey02]

I thought I’d check into the cars service schedule and found that my car is saying the first oil service is due in over 9000 miles from now! It’s already done just over 8000 miles now. I thought for the first service on a car it needed to be done at 12,000 miles or 10,000 miles to be safe because of the extra strain on the wearing in of engine. I did change the oil myself (only the oil using the syphon tool from the dipstick hole) at 3000 miles. I’m surprised VW think that 24 months or 18,600 miles is acceptable! Either way I’m going to change it at 9,300 miles which I’ve found is what the fixed service interval schedule states but I’m a bit shocked that others may be happily driving around following the built in flexible schedule that tells them to change it at nearly 20000 miles. I wouldn’t want an engine that’s had that long between service schedules but is perfectly fine according to the flexible service schedule. I wanted to hear your thoughts on it and what you think?

[lancslad1985]

There’s two service regimes, long life and standard. Long life is 18000 miles or two years and standard is 10000 miles or one year. All of the cars seem to come set to long life now unless you say otherwise when you collect. Seems daft as the average person only does about 7000 miles a year in the UK.

Mine was set to long life despite me asking for yearly on collection but they rang me at the year mark and serviced it before changing the regime. Just ring your dealer up, explain you wanted yearly and they should service it for you despite no service light.

Also be aware it differs between manufacturers. Mazda is 12500 miles or a year, my previous Volvo was 18000 miles as standard. With modern engines and oils, they’d be perfectly fine if left that long IF you were doing the mileage in a year. I wouldn’t want to wait two years for my oil change.

[SRGTD]

I’m also not a fan of flexible / long life servicing, which I think was originally introduced by VW around the mid-2000’s to help fleet operators with a number of vehicles ‘manage’ the servicing costs of their fleet.

I know that oil technology has moved on and modern engine oils are much more advanced these days, supposedly retaining their lubrication and protection properties over these longer time / distance intervals. Also, there’ll no doubt be long term car owners on this (and other) forum(s) whose cars have been on flexible / long life servicing since new and they haven’t had any issues with mechanical reliability or unexpected repair bills over many years of ownership. However, I wouldn’t want my car to go up to two years between oil changes; I still prefer that my car gets an annual oil / filter change, which is also an opportunity for the rest of the car to be checked over once a year by a workshop tech for any faults / issues.

For those who have their cars on lease or PCP contracts and who hand them back at the end of the contract term, the subject of flexible / long life servicing versus fixed (annual) time and distance probably isn’t something they give much - if any - thought to (apologies to @lancslad1985 and others who do!). If they do consider the issue of servicing frequency, then IMHO many may consider any potential cost savings from fewer services / trips to the garage during their short period of ownership as more important than the long term mechanical health of a car they’re likely to own for no more than three years.

Just my opinion though, and it’ll be interesting to hear the views of those owners who are fans of flexible / long life servicing…………

[lancslad1985]

The way I look at it @SRGTD, I always push for a two
- three year service plan and it’s gone before it gets past three years anyway. So I get it serviced yearly to get the free plan in then let the next person worry.

However I am currently testing cars this weekend for a longer term change and servicing will come into it. Even then I’d still keep it on yearly just to ensure the cars in tip top shape.