Simple maintenance should be simple, right?

Routine maintenance day yesterday on my Mazda 6 and my wife's XV Crosstrek. Both cars needed oil changes and air filters, and the Crosstrek needed yet another pebble removed from the front brake rotor. Everything was straightforward until it came time to mess with fluids, as both cars had their first services done gratis at the stealerships.

I'm sure y'all know where this is going. I've never had to use a cheater bar to get a oil drain bolt off before, but did on the Crosstrek. And why do techs always crank down on oil filters? Haven't used a filter wrench in a while either, but needed it on both cars.

It took me three days to do struts on the daily that has never even heard the word salt.

Should be and actually are are completely opposed ends of the spectrum.

This is why I start all maintenance and repair work no later than 11am on a Saturday. Projects seem to blow up less if you expect them too.

Clearly you never had a 914 if you think simple maintenance means simple. If I could just teach a spider monkey to adjust the valves.

Reminds me of a joke regarding appearance and reality.

Kid comes home from high school, tells his father he is confused about what they talked about in school that day, the difference between appearance and reality. The father thinks a bit, then tells his son to go ask his mother if she would have sex with a random stranger for $500,000. Son goes and asks her, comes back and tells the father she said that yes she would. Father tells the son to go find his older sister and ask her the same question. Son returns, the sister would do it too. The father says, "Now son, the appearance is that we are sitting on a million dollars here, but the reality is that we live with a couple of whores."

In reply to Toebra:

Oh man that is gold!

My Grand Cherokee needed a new CHMSL bulb. Replacement required a Torx bit. Maintenance items should never require Torx. That should have taken a #2 Phillips driver.

I feel your pain. Today's oil change on the red XJ took me 2.5 hours, 3 trips to my FLAPS, and $59.37.

In retrospect, i would have just handed this thing off to walmart since i need to have my new tires installed anyways.

If oil changes weren't $80+ up here I probably should have done the same since its almost time to swap back to summer tires anyway. Both cars were overdue enough though.

I did a oil change in the Samurai today. It took 1 - 17mm wrench and about 15 minutes. Total cost about $16.

Also helped service the front axle on my son's Explorer and change the oil in it. That was a little harder, but not too bad.

Then since there was so much day left, I cleaned the front garage and hauled a load to the dump.

There is definitely an advantage to owning and working on older cars.

If they work on your car for free, is it still a "stealership?"

Kenny_McCormic wrote: This is why I start all maintenance and repair work no later than 11am on a Saturday. Projects seem to blow up less if you expect them too.

I do the same. Also I won't tackle a plumbing project after work in the evening. Only Saturday mornings.

Today I cut off the first of 4 nuts that need to be cut to get the rear sway bar links off my Corolla. Not only has it never been anywhere near winter, but these links were removed and reinstalled about a year ago and it has under an hour of driving on it in that time.

DrBoost wrote: If they work on your car for free, is it still a "stealership?"

No it means you gave them an interest free loan when you purchased it.

As a guy that wrenched in a dealership for a long time, I get sick of the internet mentality that dealerships are crooked. I've wrenched in both a dealer and an independent, from my exerience, you will be treated far better at a dealership. And the irony of a prick term like that coming in the same breath as free maintenance didnt escape me.

Dusterbd13 wrote: It took me three days to do struts on the daily that has never even heard the word salt. Should be and actually are are completely opposed ends of the spectrum.

When springs and struts were an all day affair last weekend, I was wondering wtf I was doing wrong. Glad I wasn't the only one. Didn't help that the very first part I attempted to remove was the biggest pita, before I had any momentum.

In reply to DrBoost:

The cost of an oil change was more than built in to the price of the car. I don't trust the independent shops much at all either, and I've generally had better experiences at dealers honestly, but being at the end of the road and having literal hundreds of miles between here and the next closest alternative hasn't given the local dealers much incentive to be worth a damn. I've found a tire guy I like but no one for general maintenance yet.

I hear ya. I always plan for the worse. Like today I've been meaning to see what is causing the noise when I roll down my window. Had about 3 hours of daylight left, should be a 20 minute job. Then I thought to myself how many times has a 20minute job turned into an all day ordeal. So I will wait until tomorrow.

I still can't believe it took me two hours to change one front endlink last night.

The first one took five minutes, but the second one...

My strategy is just to have a redundant array of inexpensive vehicles so I can still get to work after ruining a car at 6:30 PM on a Sunday.

Ever try to get the oil filter off certain Peugeot 505s? Yes, you need to move the alternator out of the way.

Too much wine for the French engineers at lunch I think.

By the time I traded in the Forester I had the oil changes down to under 10 min thanks to Fumoto and a quality oil filter socket. My Mirage is still almost half an hour.

In reply to oldopelguy:

I was cynical about the Fumoto until I finally tried one. Now I get what all the fuss is about.

Still takes awhile to drain it out, with any luck I'll be in the ten minute club one day too. Forester is cheating since you don't need to drive onto ramps/jack it up like an Impreza, though.

Toebra is right on about 914 maintenance. Oil changes, spark plugs, ignition points are reasonably easy but valve adjustment? Holy cow. It is done from underneath and is no fun at all. Everything else = engine comes out. Subaru SVX's are like that on spark plug replacement, you pretty much have to lower the engine to even get the damn wires out of the head.

Engineers are driven by cost constraints, that's a huge part of why you go to do something and wind up scratching your head trying to make sense of why something is assembled the way it is. Then there are things that are just plain dumb; for instance on many Japanese 4 bangers (ex: Isuzu 2.3/2.6) the distributor is installed with cylinder 4 at TDC on compression, not on cylinder 1. I have never figured out why the hell that is done, it just makes no sense. Don't try to fudge it, ain't gonna happen.

EDIT: I had almost forgotten about the Plymouth Arrow I had with the drain plug stuck in the pan. I will never understand why the damn thing was so tight, it took the cherry red wrench to loosen it. Why?

some cars are a giant pain in the as regardless, Ive had oil changes that turned into using a pipe wrench to remove a drainplug. we get a lot of wal mart customers after wal mart declines to do the oil change because the drain plug is too tight or stripped even when they did the previous oil change.

we had a cummins come in that was a regular customer, he had the previous oil change done at the local ford dealer who did his brakes. they put the drainplug back in with an impact. since the drain plug is just a 3/8 drive square that was real fun to get back out!