Because they just bought the car last year, they “still owe a ton of money on it”, and a car with 61,400 miles and an engine that doesn’t work is of no use to anyone.
1 Like
All synthetic oils except extended life oils have the same amount of additives as other oils. They should be treated just as you said. If someone uses an extended life oil, it is possible to go much longer, but no auto manufacturer will own up to that. The auto companies assume that their customers don’t know enough about oil to understand that difference, and for the most part they are right. FWIW, I don’t use extended life oil, but regular, full synthetic, and I change it when the OLM gets to 20% life remaining.
Your Toyota Highlander uses synthetic and recommends you extend the interval to 10k miles. They would not recommend that with conventional oil.
I change it at 5k anyway, as do you I’d assume.
We’re on my wife’s second Hyundai (both purchased new) and we’ve been thoroughly pleased by the dealership, both sales and service.
And your proof that this is the synthetic oil and NOT the design of the engine.
I think the term should be allows you to extend to 10,000, me never.
1 Like
Pacific Northwest, western Oregon for the last 6 years. Before that I was in the Puget Sound (Seattle/Tacoma) area for 25 years.
I haven’t worked at a shop that had labor rates of $70/hour since 2000 or so. You may have heard but along with the general rise in wages lately it’s getting hard to find good mechanics. Some of our guys were getting offers from other shops, so last month we raised our rates by 18% in order to afford the increased salaries we need to retain good help. We have also been busy, booked out 2 weeks for some time now and are using price to control the work flow. It’s a good position to be in.
Our labor rates are close to and sometimes higher than the dealer. In general our service is better than the dealers around here.
Anybody charging $70/hr while the competition is charging $100 is foolish. If the goal is to be the cheapest, all you need to do is be $90/hr.
3 Likes
Where is your proof that it’s the “design of the engine”? Do you even think that yourself?
My car dealer charges $59.99 with either Mobile 1 or Toyota full synthetic and a Toyota filter.
Why so cheap? For the upsell and the opportunity to find other work.
The recommend a new air and cabin filter every time you visit and I saw them charge a lady $90 for battery service on her 2 year old Camry because they saw a little corrosion on one of her battery terminals.
My battery usually has a little corrosion on it., it is 10 and a half years old.
Once I got my two free oil changes, the only thing my Toyota has been back to the dealer for has been for a wheel alignment. I prefer to do all the maintenance and repairs that I can handle myself.
Now that I am living in an apartment I will have to change that. I may have to buy a wheelchair van for my wife anyway.
I don’t need to prove anything. You’re the one who’s making the assumption. So prove it.
The shop I use ($70/hr) used to operate out of old fire house, then they had a new shop built (about 5 years ago) about 3 miles away from their old shop. New shop is pretty nice, they have six bays with lifts, and three without lifts, one of which has an alignment rack. It’s pretty nice the the whole shop has A/C. I’m wondering how they can afford everything given their low labor rate, and the fact that they don’t really mind if you bring in your own new parts (to a point, you can bring in your own brakes, or a clutch or something similar, they wouldn’t allow you to bring over a junkyard transmission for example). There is a caveat with them though; for really specialized work, particularly on higher end European makes, they’ll refer you to someone else. My mom took her old Benz to them because it was make some odd noises and running a bit warm. They looked at it, tried a few fixes, but couldn’t solve the issue, admitted that it was beyond their expertise and recommended another show that specialized in European cars and only charged a diag fee. We took it to another shop the specialized in MB/BMW and the owner there looked at if for a two days and couldn’t come up with a fix that hadn’t already been tried, he didn’t charge for anything. Then she took to higher priced shop ($100/hr) who were able to fix it.
Apparently (and I’m not 100% sure about this), they ended up cleaning out the EGR passages in the intake manifold, and replacing the water pump and thermostat. The EGR valve had already been replaced by the first shop. The shop that that did manage to fix the issue is about a 1/4 mile from the first shop, and is humongous (about 220 ft x 110 ft ), with about 20 bays total, the owner has some his cars on display in the large reception area, it even has a conference room.
[quote=“MikeInNH, post:30, topic:182384”]
I don’t need to prove anything. You’re the one who’s making the assumption. So prove it.
[/quote
You won’t offer any proof, why should I provide any proof for you to try to poke holes in? Go ask the oil companies.
I’m NOT the one making the assumption that the manufacturers are recommending extended oil change intervals because of synthetic oil. You’re the one making assumptions. It’s up to you to PROVE your point. It’s not up to me to disprove you.
I think that’s the next step they need to take in their transformation.
Those of us who were driving back in the 90’s remember Hyundai’s reputation as that car you bought because you couldn’t afford anything else. They were true rolling crapboxes back then. Then Hyundai decided to change their ways and are now turning out some amazingly good cars, and have taken a position at the forefront of mainstream electric cars to boot (with their latest, the Ioniq 5 and its Kia sister the EV6 being judged superior to Tesla’s Model 3 by many in the automotive press).
But their dealership network is still erm… Less than optimal. Not all Hyundai/Kia dealerships are terrible, but enough of them are that it’s hurting the reputation of the company. It’s especially bad with the Genesis line of vehicles. Those are fabulous vehicles, but their price is creeping closer to Acura/Lexus. That’s not so bad, except they’re sold out of Hyundai dealerships, and that means Genesis customers have to deal with the same BS that the guy buying an Accent puts up with. Meanwhile the Lexus buyer gets an absolute royal treatment from their dealerships, and if they don’t, Lexus will be happy to flog the dealership’s owner.
It wouldn’t at all surprise me if Hyundai starts renegotiating dealership contracts to where if they want to keep selling Hyundai/Kia/Genesis, they have to stop doing business like Crazy Larry’s Used Car Emporium.
The Hyundai Excel and the Yugo both hit the US marketplace at around the same time, so Consumer Reports did a side-by-side test of them. Their summary opinion was something along the lines of… a 2 or 3 year old used car in good condition can be bought for about the same price as these two new cars, and that used car would be much preferable to either of these new cars
And, that was before the very poor reliability of those two models had surfaced!
3 Likes
When Datsun began doing business in The US (mid-late '60s), they were awarding franchises to essentially anyone. The one where my sister-in-law bought an SPL-310 was Rick’s Used Cars the day before the Datsun signs were placed on the building, and they continued to operate in the manner of the sleaziest used car lot that you can imagine.
Even their “service department” was a joke because it consisted of one elderly man who washed the cars and took the plastic off the seats prior to delivery. As we found out, everything from a warranty issue to a repair for which the customer paid was farmed-out to a Gulf gas station about one block away.
The guy at the Gulf station had neither the specialized tools, nor the training, nor the interest in doing anything more involved than changing oil & spark plugs, and as a result Rick’s customers learned that they couldn’t have any of their many legitimate warranty issues taken care of.
When Rick’s lost the franchise about 15 years later, I assume that Datsun/Nissan was finally cleaning-house, and I think it is probably time for Hyundai/Kia to do the same.
1 Like
You’re apparently making the assumption that this isn’t the case, though. And you certainly can’t prove that either.
It doesn’t really matter. You got me. I can’t “prove” it. But I can make observations and draw a reasonable conclusion.
Such as:
No oil brand that I’m aware of claims 10k mile protection with one of their conventional oils, yet they do claim that (and sometimes more) with synthetic.
No auto manufacturer that I’m aware of ever specified an arbitrary 10k mile or longer oil change regimen for one of their vehicles with conventional oil, yet many do with synthetic.
Pretty much a moot point anyway. I’m changing the oil at 5k regardless. I do agree with you that if a manufacturer says to change the oil at 5k (for example), they’re not going to say it’s ok for you to extend the interval just because you use synthetic, for obvious reasons.
If I HAD to use an extended oil change interval, I’d certainly rather use synthetic oil, again, for obvious reasons.
It’s not that hard to prove. You just read the manual and find out whether or not they say “change the oil every X months or Y miles unless you use synthetic, in which case change the oil every X2 months or Y2 miles.”
Out of curiosity, I looked at the manual for the new version of one of my cars, and it doesn’t say anything like that.
The manual is obviously not going to say that. They’re either going to recommend conventional or synthetic and the corresponding interval. They’re not going to complicate it.
My Toyota manual does say you can use 5w20 (doesn’t specify conventional or synthetic) if 0w20 isn’t available. But you must change it at 5k instead of 10k. I imagine that’s more for CAFE/mpg purposes more than anything, though, rather than “proof” that manufacturers use synthetic for their extended change intervals.
Reading Comprehension problem. I ASKED a question. And you’re right I don’t know if either exists. Thus the reason I never said one to be true. You on the other hand made the claim that the extended oil changes is because of oil. I don’t think that’s right based on past experience.
There’s a difference between a conclusion and a statement of fact. You made a statement of fact. All I did was ask for proof.
And based on my past experience I’m changing my oil every 5k miles also. We tend to keep our vehicles 300k+ miles. From past experience I know the 5k oil change interval has a high probability of getting us there. Not sure the 10k oil change interval will. I know BMW has had sludge problem with their extended oil change intervals using full synthetic.