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By KEN LEVINE

Hammers and Prybars and Bmw's Ohh My!

Posted 12:14 p.m., May 14, 2008

Would you let somebody, whose main tools are a big hammer and pry bar service your expensive automobile?

Unfortunately that’s what happens every day. The motoring public thinks an oil and filter change is a simple job and they are letting people with little or no mechanical experience practice on their vehicles.

My goal is to help educate you on the proper maintenance steps that you can take to help keep your car running longer than you would like to keep it for!

It was not long ago that if your car made it to 100,000 miles you were doing well. Today’s cars with proper service easily obtain 250 to 300 thousand miles.

To help you reach a quarter of a million miles, these are the most important preventive maintenance items: oil and filter change, radiator service and transmission service. I consider these three the bare minimum.

The First Step: If you do not want the agony of having to replace your motor, seek a competent shop that specializes in your vehicle’s brand to perform the oil and filter change.

It’s important to use the original factory oil filter. They are superior in quality to the after market filters, which can come apart internally and leak. The main difference between the two filters is that the aftermarket filter uses a square cut seal and the factory uses an O-ring. I had a turbocharged Toyota MR2 that was towed into my shop. It had just been serviced by a quick lube place. The customer had gotten on the freeway at Hampshire Rd. and before he reached Lindero Canyon Rd. his motor had blown up. Our inspection revealed that the cheap oil filter that was installed had not sealed correctly, all his oil had drained out on the freeway. At a considerable cost we installed a new motor and turbocharger unit for the customer. Unfortunately, the lube shop did not accept responsibility for their mistake. It caused grief for my customer and he had to take them to small claims court to get his money back.

A competent technician will double check to make sure the drain plug is tightened. About a month ago we had to replace a customer’s motor that was damaged from a quick lube shop that had left the drain plug loose.

Another thing most places don’t do is to install a new factory drain plug gasket. It eliminates having you, the vehicle owner, come back upset because there are little spots in your drive way.

I have found that a good oil and filter change interval is 5,000 miles or 6 months It gives the average driver about three months between oil changes.

Second step: To avoid having your vehicle do a nuclear meltdown it is imperative that the cooling system is serviced at regular intervals.

Coolant becomes acidic when it ages. It starts eating into the aluminum cylinder heads, damaging them and the head gaskets. It needs to be flushed out to prevent this damage from happening.

A three year old Toyota Camry came towed in. The customer stated that it overheated when he was trying to get to work. The motor had gotten hotter than Three Mile Island. Just walking by the car you could smell burnt oil. Our inspection revealed the customer had never serviced his cooling system. If he had done his scheduled services he would have avoided the severe engine damaged that occurred, requiring a new motor to be installed.

Third step: If you do not enjoy pushing your vehicle, have your automatic transmission serviced.

Everybody knows about changing your oil but few people know how important servicing your transmission is. Your transmission is more likely to fail than your engine.

Transmissions produce a lot of heat that breaks down the fluid that’s why it’s important to drain or flush the fluid.

We don’t normally work on anything besides Lexus and Toyota vehicles but we made an exception to a good customer whose other car is a BMW three series. This customer did everything right in getting his vehicle serviced at the exact mileage intervals BMW recommends and the shops that serviced it did the repairs correctly and to BMW specifications. Then, why did this customer have to replace a $5000.0 dollar transmission when his car only had 120k freeway driven miles on it? The fault lies with BMW they insist that their automatic transmission fluid is good for the life of the vehicle and not to change it. I guess they consider the life of their vehicle to be only 100 thousand miles. I checked with shops that specialize in BMW service and they all said every three series that has the life time fluid, burns out transmissions and that my customer was lucky to get to 120k miles out of his transmission.

I am very skeptical of so called long life or lifetime fluids that vehicle manufactures are using. These fluid intervals are unrealistic. Talk to your service shop about what service intervals they recommend and why.

We rely on our vehicles to get us were we need to go! We want to be able to turn the key, throw it in drive, mash the accelerator and get to work. By doing the oil and filter change, cooling system service and transmission service on our vehicles we will substantially reduce the chances of our cars being stuck on the freeway waiting for the tow truck to come.

There is a saying “quality is never cheap and cheap is never quality”.

For the sake of convenience or to try and save a couple of dollars it is not worth testing out if your car can be serviced with just a big hammer and pry bar.

I hope this article helps you. I am Ken Levine, the owner of Ken’s Quality Auto Repair in Thousand Oaks, where we specialize in Lexus and Toyota vehicles. If you have any car questions, please e-mail me at kq@verizon.net, visit www.kensqualityauto.com or call 805-494-4344.