Service Intervals

[bschoon55]

Hey Guys,

I know the car has an owners manual, but I wanted some personal opinions here. So I have a 2019 FiST..... it's a second car and doesn't get out every day.... it's going to average about 5,000 miles a year and I want what is best for the car as always. With it's low yearly mileage, do you think it's acceptable to do only 1 oil change/general service a year? I know it's a turbo-charged engine, so I don't want to really stretch things out too far on it. The saving grace as you know, is it's such a light car... that I really don't feel like the motor is really that stressed with the turbo strapped to it.

I've had it in for it's first oil change/maintenance a couple months ago when it hit 4,000 miles.... only because it already went about 8 months with no service on it.

In short, do you think a once a year oil change/maintenance is sufficient enough for this car, if we hit on average about 5,000 miles a year on it?

Thanks for your time an I appreciate any feedback!

 

[Alkoran]

Yes it is. I do the same; change the oil when I take the car out of winter storage, no matter what's the mileage. If you do hit the mileage for the oil change, great. If not, once a year is fine.

 

[Capri to ST]

I also think a once yearly service is sufficient, and I also do the same thing, and I'm a maintenance fanatic, I would rather over maintain than under maintain. I would definitely recommend using full synthetic oil. My car's averaging about 4,000 miles a year, so I've been taking it in once a year around the anniversary of when I got it and doing an oil change every year and doing other things as needed. We have a state inspection here and that also allows me to do that on schedule.
As far as other maintenance items go, I will do brake fluid every other year, coolant every 3 years, an air filter every year because they're cheap so why not. I'm not sure when I'll do transmission fluid, probably by 20 or 30 thousand miles.
Excellent question, it's always good when someone wants to take care of their car properly. I have kept cars as long as 16 years, so regular maintenance definitely pays off.

 

[bschoon55]

I also think a once yearly service is sufficient, and I also do the same thing, and I'm a maintenance fanatic, I would rather over maintain than under maintain. I would definitely recommend using full synthetic oil. My car's averaging about 4,000 miles a year, so I've been taking it in once a year around the anniversary of when I got it and doing an oil change every year and doing other things as needed. We have a state inspection here and that also allows me to do that on schedule.
As far as other maintenance items go, I will do brake fluid every other year, coolant every 3 years, an air filter every year because they're cheap so why not. I'm not sure when I'll do transmission fluid, probably by 20 or 30 thousand miles.
Excellent question, it's always good when someone wants to take care of their car properly. I have kept cars as long as 16 years, so regular maintenance definitely pays off.

VERY good stuff! Do you know if most Ford dealerships use full synthetic oil? I guess I could always go check the paperwork and see what they used when it was in for service. I know my other car a Mustang GT was in for normal service a few weeks ago and they definitely used full synthetic.... 10 QTs to be exact (that's how much a Coyote V8 requires... that's a lot of oil!!!!)

 

[Capri to ST]

Thanks. I only did one oil change at my dealership, because it was free, and they used a Motorcraft synthetic blend, not full synthetic. My guess is that's what most dealerships use unless you specify full synthetic.
Since then, I've had all my service work done at an independent shop with a mechanic who I have known for a long time and trust. They are nice enough to let me bring in my own Mobil 1 Extended Performance, which has a slightly more robust additive package than their standard full synthetic. Please note that while I'm definitely recommending that everybody use full synthetic oil, I'm not recommending which one you should use even though I use Mobil 1. As you may know, the topic of which oil to use on car forums is like the topics of religion and politics, except more controversial.
This topic of service intervals for a car that doesn't get driven a lot of miles is a good one for me because, like the OP, I don't put a lot of miles on my car every year.
This is really geeky, but because of that when I get a new car, I make my own service schedule, which is always more frequent than the one in the manual, which tends to assume about 12,000 miles per year. For example, the manual recommends doing a timing belt at 150,000 miles. For me, that could be 30 to 50 years, so I'll probably do a timing belt at 8 to 10 years from new, not to mention that if I'm still driving the car in 50 years I'll be 114 years old.

 

[Fiestig]

I am a bit excessive on maintenance, but for good reason.

- Royal Purple every 4 months no matter the mileage
- I did plugs every 6 months previous to using ruthenium. But with the ruthenium, they pulled quite clean after 6 months and no need for re-gap so I will keep them in for the year
- I do brake fluid yearly
- Trans fluid every 30k, so I am on 1 thus far

 

[Capri to ST]

That's some serious maintenance. How many miles a year are you driving?

 

[Fiestig]

That's some serious maintenance. How many miles a year are you driving?

About 10k/year.

I did similar intervals with general on my 06 Focus (bought new) and sold that with 518K on the odometer in Feb.. Still ran amazing. I was extremely sad to see it go. But it had basically no value due to the mileage

The way I see it if I am going to buy something new (fiesta was bought new as well), I am really going to make sure it lasts. Otherwise it feels like a loss

 

[Ford ST]

To each their own but I've never seen a vehicle that's just generally took care of fail / fall apart because of the engine. I've seen spark plugs go 200,000 miles I don't recommend that but I've seen it.

You're changing your spark plugs more than your transmission fluid that doesn't make any sense.


Normally it's everything else that falls apart suspension, steering ect.

Why did you get rid of a vehicle because it doesn't have any value? I don't consider any vehicle with over 200,000 miles to have any value. The value is you don't have payments and you get to drive something you don't have to pay for.

Once again to each their own I just don't understand.

Sent from my LG-LS997 using Tapatalk

 

[Fiestig]

If something just sits and is not driven as my focus was, it becomes a paperweight for concrete. The term "value" is relative. Being over 500K It barely had monetary value and yet I sold it anyway because it had more personal value to the kid down the road. Any component that needed to be replaced on the focus was, be it suspension or otherwise. This sure helped getting to 500k, for obvious reasons.

I do, as I mentioned initially, quite excessive maintenance. I do this simply because I can and I enjoy it. There doesn't have to be a rhyme or reason to it. But I do not believe that is not what the op was in regards to. I could have gotten much more in depth with my regular maintenance, but didn't. I don't think that was the point.

The good part is that nobody needs to understand my process. Just trying to share my experience.

As you said.... "To each their own"