Full service History - crap!

[fla 9]

Just serviced the Audi today. FSH, and fully stamped book. But the sparks were done up toooo tight, almost couldnt remove one. There was oil all over the inside of the undercover guard, and down the back of the engine, loads of clips missing, oil was as black as sin and the aircon compressor doesnt work (this is about £500 to get sorted :( ). This is a service from the dealers.

Oh and the air filter housing was fully of debris, i was scooping it out by hand - there were some dead wasps, a snail shell and general crap. On the face of it it looked pretty good and tbh it is. Its just that FSH means jack all to me. I had a similar thing with my wife's Corolla - first three years with Toyota and when i did the service in the fourth year the air filer was choked, pollen filter was TOTALLY choked and oil was shocking.

 

Engine is running very nicely now, just need to change the front brake pads and its done. Then all the OCD cleaning and polishing to be done :cuckoo:

[Kevin Bacon 5]

Indeed. I was working on a mate's A6 Quattro today, doing his rocker gasket and one of the multi-link arms on the front suspension.

Rocker looked like it had be varnished and had loads of carbon chunks caked all over it. That long life servicing is bad. Found snapped off clips and things too. Seems par for the course these days doesn't it.

 

And I tell you what, no car on this planet is without faults :bad-words: . This car is a beaut. Solid, handles well, goes well, rattle free and quiet. But it makes this horrendous graunching / clunking noise under braking, steering and acceleration! It could be any one of the sevently billion multilink BJs or bushes, ranging from £90 to £150ish each time :?

 

Did you know the MK5 GTI has 14 seperate bushes just on the rear suspension? :cuckoo:

 

Sorry for waffling..... it just made me thankful I have a basic car that's simple and cheap (compared to an Audi quattro!!!) to maintain :clap:

 

Honestly, if you bought an A4 or A6 Quattro with shagged suspension, you may aswell scrap it.

[fla 9]

yeah thats the culprit - long life service. Seems to get them out of doing anything. No wonder garages get an almost deserved bad reputation. My wife was saying how long i spend on tinkering with the cars (ok perhaps a lttle obsessed with the C, arent we all), but i told her that i dont trust anyone to do it anymore except myself or my mate in Slough.

[Kevin Bacon 5]

At least you know it's done properly if you do it yourself! My missus doesn't seem to understand that. She paid VW something like £750 to replace a snapped spring and do a cambelt change and service. Could have done it myself for a lot less than half of that and to a better standard, but she wanted the stamp in her book!

[Abdul 0]

My audi a3 1.8T i had (was a minter), had full audi history and had over 2k of bills from audi in that last year yet the car was a bit under par tbh... Jerked around like the A6 above... Oh and it was on a long life service plan, biggest BS ever.

[Wullie 1]

The wifes Tacuma died at 57,000 miles (thank you whatever diety is out there, was a petrol guzzling monstrosity) Got a 51 plate Corsa with full service history, 31,000 miles only to find the timing chain is bu**ered, umpteen other annoying things like bushes, drop links and wheel bearings are dying rapidly. Roll on Arnold Clark, warranty???? this is normal wear and tear and not covered. I almost feel sorry the Tacuma has gone. A service history is just a stamp in a book and means that there is a stamp in a book. I can get a stamp on every page of any car I want from one or two disreputable garages around here for the price of a pint.

[awright182 0]

The long life service thing is just storing trouble for someone further down the line. My 1.8T will be three years old next week. It has had one oil change and nothing else. According to the drivers console it needs another service in 5,500 miles or 350 days. I will take it in when it tells me. It will have 38000 on the clock. Next summer I will be looking to change it and someone else gets to find out whether longlife oil is any good.

 

Meanwhile I change the oil on my Corrado on my birthday which is approximately every five thousand miles.

[8vMatt 1]

Years ago I had an Audi 80 with 60k on it and FSH. I wanted to keep up with the stamps in the book. So off it went to Audi, had the service. This was the first car that I had taken to a dealer for a service as I had got my mechanic brother to do all previous works. I was curious to see what they had done for the £150, so I asked my brother to check the car. Turns out they did very little. The oil was black, air filter wasn't changed, no new spark plugs. A disgrace really and I'll never waste my money like that again.

[junkie 0]

I have only ever took 1 car to be serviced at the main stealers and that was the TT, it only went there as my sister was buying the car and wanted the sacred stamp in the book. It cost £199 for the 60k service and in all honesty the car really did come back driving so much better, it's not longlife though. So yes alot are really bad servicing but not all.