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The trick to look out for is dealership recommended service vs manufacturers recommended service. I owned a Chevy Equinox and took it to a dealership for work
by giarc 5y ago
The trick to look out for is dealership recommended service vs manufacturers recommended service.
I owned a Chevy Equinox and took it to a dealership for work around 80,000km (my numbers might be off, this was 5 or so years ago). They told me the transmission fluid had met it's suggested replacement. I wanted to keep warranty valid so I approved the work. Somehow I then found out that the manufacturers recommended interval was like 200,000km. I was only required to follow the manufacturers schedule not the made up dealers recommended schedule. If you ask, they give you some BS about the "local climate and amount of construction dust so we recommend different intervals etc etc". Either way, you aren't required to follow those schedules.
- rasz 5y agoThey actually did you a favor. Modern transmission fluid management is a joke, with some even claiming lifetime oil. They just mean the lifetime of the car transmission, which is exactly the warranty period.
- ok123456 5y agoThose transmissions are garbage. They shed a lot of clutch material. It will fail before it gets to 200,000km. By the time it gets up there, if it's still working, the dirty fluid is the only thing giving it enough friction to shift. If you tried changing it at that point, it would just start slipping. A drain and fill ever 50k is the thing to do with those.
- calvinmorrison 5y agoYeah, then again dealers have service bullitens regularly and lots of experience with common failures across a model. Hard to know hence why some dealers can rip people off. Happens in any scenario where trust is high and information low
- giarc 5y agoI generally agree with your point, but no one has more information then the manufacturer. The local dealership (franchisee) only has their own information. So what's more likely, the manufacturer grossly over estimating the lifespan of their product, or the local dealership squeezing out more money from their customers? Unfortunately I feel like it's the latter.
- twobitshifter 5y agoI had the opposite experience, I bought my car 2nd-hand with low miles and I went to Volkswagen dealership for the transmission service on the Dual Clutch transmission as shown in the manual. I said I’m here for the 40,000 mile service - ignorantly thinking that they follow their own manufacturers recommended maintenance. Changing the fluid in the transmission is complicated on cars with a dual clutch transmission and must be carefully done. If the transmission is damaged it’s very expensive to replace. They charged me almost $2000 and then I looked at the receipt and they didn’t change the fluid at all - in fact they did almost nothing besides jiggle the wheels and change the oil as far as I could tell! I was angry about this so they sent a tech out who tried to tell me that since it’s an “automatic transmission” it should be good for 80,000, Volkswagen just tells you to change it early. I never returned to that dealership or any other with the car because it was clear that although they sell the cars they know almost nothing about them.
- nikau 5y agoThey did you a favour - lifetime transmission oil is technically correct, it just leaves out the part that not changing the oil earlier reduced the transmission lifetime massively.