Hi Guys,

I was just curious on this...I brought my car recently in for it's first oil change...and as I was waiting to sign off on the first free service I was looking over the work sheet. There was quite a bit of things quickly checked off by the service technician during there "inspection" they do with each oil change.

It got me thinking, do they actually perform all these checks? The whole oil change took 30 minutes, and that included a car wash. Everyone was really nice, and the whole experience was painless. I was just sort of wondering if it was just a bunch of crap all the things they check off. For example I know the Tire PSI should be 35 in each tire, and I have about 30...I didn't see any increase in the PSI...

Thanks,

Brad

 

Was just wondering this today as well.

 

I'm almost positive, they don't look at half the stuff on there if any at all. The way the dealership is designed by me, you can actually look into the shop through a window that's in the waiting room. From what I saw all I saw him do was take out some leaves from my hood, add windshield fluid, and change the oil.

 

A few days after my first oil change, the check tire warning appeared on my dash. Obviously the dealer did not check the air pressure in the tires. My previous car was a VW Passat and the dealer, while expensive, did check everything they were supposed to.

 

They probably just do a gloss-over and it only takes a couple minutes to check fluid levels and do a quick look at the brake pads. One thing I'd never let them do is wash my car Unless it's white or light silver it'll be a swirl-fest or at the very least hard water spots. Thanks, but no thanks!

 

Actually, a good tech will at least do the visual inspection. It doesn't take much to check the fluid levels, or examine wear marks in areas that shouldn't be there. If anything is out of the ordinary, it could lead to warranty or other paid work.

 

swirl-fest on white too.

 

When looking at used cars, the salesman showed me the sheet their tech uses to check the car over.

One of the items was an air filter - ok.

As I'm looking the car over, i pop the air filter clasps. It looked like it hadn't been changed in 20K miles. Beyond dirty and filthy. They did do the claimed oil change as that looked brand new.

Your best bet, if you have any mechanical ability, just do the oil changes and minor services yourself. You'll know it's done, and done right.

 

First oil change? Almost no chance they checked anything.

On the other hand, at least they didn't try to upsell you any service on a brand new car.

 

^ Truth. It's a sad state of affairs when one has to be thankful for not getting screwed or up-sold at their dealer. Too bad a guy needs to take a "glass half full" approach and have lowered expectations.

 

The one good thing you can take from this. If they checked off and signed off on everything and something (related) goes wrong later on, you have a piece of paper that says Infiniti inspected the car...even if you don't think they didn't. It's a little more piece of mind for you as the owner in that regard.

However, this doesn't do you much good if your car has a break down in the middle of nowhere because the tech didn't notice your engine coolant was below low. We should always check the engine fluids our self.

 

On mine they give a f/r brake pad thickness.

 

You say its the first oil change. I am going to take a guess the technician was thinking all those things on the checklist wont apply since its new and not much chance to sell any services since it is new.

Then again that same list can be used against someone at 30K, 60K, you need to flush this, maintenance that, replace this as a preventative measure.

I am a little jaded towards dealership service.

 

You will be amazed if you knew how grossly incompetent some of the dealer technicians were. There's no way I would allow any maintenance works done by dealers unless absolutely unavoidable. You can do a much better job changing your own oil known what has gone into the engine.

 

you can never really be sure . but at my dealership we do. its a 27 point checklist.