Poor man get's charged $2200 on 27,000 kilometres.

[mebius9]

Q&A: Overcharged on Passat servicing? | ask the experts

This is ridiculous.
service should be strictly based on the mileage not years driven.

[Tim]

well not necessarily. Fluids need to be replaced based on their age not their usage. Same with a rubberised timing belt. These items can deteriorate without use. Sometimes moreso than if the car had have been used

[golfgti101]

Tim is correct! a car sitting can sometimes be worse off than being driven.

even internally, seals, gaskets, rings etc can all go hard without lubrication.

[brad]

Components deteriorate with age, not just mileage.
Brake fluid is hygroscopic & needs changing every 2 years (personally I think 1 year but that's me).
If you ask the tech department of any major lubricating oil supplier what the shelf life of oil is, they will tell you 2-3 years.
Rubber components perish.

You do wonder at the logic of buying a diesel (or even owning a car) if you are only doing 7,000km a year.

[mebius9]

That can't be right... my engine oil had 10 year expiry date...
and rubbers and vinyls take 2000 years to degenerate.

[Lance B]

That can't be right... my engine oil had 10 year expiry date...
and rubbers and vinyls take 2000 years to degenerate.

The issue is with contaminates that get into the oil with infrequent driving. With engine oil, condensation occurs with short trips and the water sits in the oils unless it is boiled off by heat from a long drive once the oil gets to operating temperature. This water mixes with impurities from burnt gases, such as sulphur to form sulpher dioxides and other acids, which eat away at metals and seals etc. Also, due to the fact that more fuel is used at start up - choke - much of this fuel does not get burnt and finds it's way into the oil which also forms with water vapour to cause contanimnates that are not good for the engine. With long drives, this is boiled off with the heat of the engine, but with short trips, it cannot be boiled off. You may think the engine gets up to operating temperature by looking at the water temp guage and seeing it at it's normal temp, but the oil in the sump takes much longer to reach it's operating temp and even when it does, it needs time continually circulating at it's operating temp to boil off water and contaminates.

To a lesser degree, similar things happen in gear oils.

This is why they say that you should avoid short trips in your car and do a minimum of a 30minute drive and then also do a good highway run at highway speeds on a regular basis to really keep the contaminates at a minimum. A car that is driven every day for long periods will last longer kilometre-wise without an engine rebuild than a car driven infrequently. You see many taxis, and trucks, that go for many hundreds of thousands of Kms without needing an engine rebuild, whereas cars driven infrequently need to have their engines rebuilt after much less mileage.

[brad]

That can't be right... my engine oil had 10 year expiry date...
and rubbers and vinyls take 2000 years to degenerate.

Oil: Only going on what the men from castrol & Shell told me when I was asking about some oil that a mate was giving away in a garage clean-up. We used it to paint the fence.

Rubber/Vinyl: It hardens with age. I've bought several low mileage but old age vehicles (20yr old Wolsely 24/80 with 30,000miles; 30yr old EH Holden with 12,000miles + a few others) & rubber items (brakes, accessory belts, engine pipes, windscreen rubbers, tyres) were buggered. On both vehicles, the braking systems required a full rebuild because the barke fluid was full of water, which corroded the internals of the brakes & then the corrosion "cut through" al the rubber seals. Both vehicles had been kept under cover, it would have been worse if the UV had got to them.

[noone]

having the same dilemma...

2006 Polo GTI with 32ooo kms on the clock, due fir a new timing belt...

It would be awful if it broke, but with such low k's...

[brad]

DIY or a decent independant?