OT; Service intervals

Mine is 19200 miles or two years

I think two years is what they deem the maximum life of the oil.

Mileage = Wear and tear due to usage

And/or more wear and tear due to infrequent usage, always running cold etc.

Mine is one year or when the oil life indicator reaches zero.

The year is to allow for the usual brake checks and to replace the brake fluid which is still hygroscopic even in two year servicing vehicles.

Mr Ford thinks that is how long brake fluid requires to pick up enough water to be a problem.

Nope. Startups are very hard on I/C engines and time is a reasonable proxy for that.

Yep! That's so true. Many years ago when I was looking to buy another secondhand car to replace our clapped out Cavalier, I test drove a couple of candidate vehicles, both Ford Sierra models.

After trying the older of the two with more mileage on the clock, when I test drove the newer one with less mileage, it became quite obvious that the newer one must have done most of its mileage on local roads with lots of potholes and junctions since the way it handled strongly suggested a lot of wear on the suspension and steering, a sensation completely absent from the older and cheaper model which was the one I chose to purchase.

I believe it was one of the last of the rear wheel drive versions with the revamped trend setting jellymold and headlamp styling - just about every other make of similar sized hatchback, it seemed to me, was indistinguishable from the Sierra without benefit of a closer inspection.

You know how you start noticing the particular model of car you've just bought that you'd never noticed previously? Well, I started noticing other makes of car as well as my own (I noticed an awful lot more cars than I did as a Beetle, Golf, Cavalier driver/owner).

Hah. You'd think that with an electric car most of these problems would be history. But no. My I-MIEV is 10,000 miles. or one year. (WTF?) There's no oil/air filter. But they want to change the oil in the simple reduction gearbox/diff unit. Sounds like job creation to me.

Nope. Lets say the van's only used very occasionally, for whatever reason. It's 10 years old, and still only has 20k on it. By your logic, it would never ever have seen the inside of a workshop in all that time.

Apart from anything else, brake fluid should be replaced at two year intervals.

Why is brake fluid hygroscopic? I have distant memories of issues between the fluid used in French cars and the brake piston seals on others. Vegetable/mineral origins etc.

Surely things have moved on in 50 years?

My Hyundai Getz says nothing like that, just INSPECT the brake fluid every 2 years.

I think the main reasoning is that, with a mineral oil, water which condenses in the system works its way down to the lowest region, i.e. the cylinders. These will then corrode. Also, because the boiling point of glycol is significantly higher than water, if you get the brakes really hot (e.g. during a long descent with a caravan?) the water boils sooner, giving you a steam bubble in the pipe (and hence no brakes).

The classic Citroen system which uses mineral oil for suspension and brakes is a circulating system (although ATM I don't recall if it circulates down to the brake cylinders).

No. A vehicle which does short journeys - say mainly start stop in town - needs more frequent servicing than one which cruises the motorway. And the one doing short journeys will inevitably cover less miles.

I've lost count of the cars that I've owned over the past 44 years. I have never ever changed the brake fluid on any of them, and guess what? I have never had brake failure.

Obviously those who owned the car before you looked after their brakes.

It's called preventative maintenance.

Present car is now 10 years old, it has never had the fluid changed. We bought it 8 years ago. I owned taxis for too many years, the fluid was never changed. These vehicles were doing around 1000 miles per week.

I know what it is called.

How many slave and master cylinders have you had to replace tho?

Perhaps brake fluid has improved over the years or seals have got better?

I recall a number of slave cylinders that have shown rust and failed in, thankfully, a graceful manner, but not known any recently from failing this way.

I had one car where the foot brake failed, the pedal broke at the pivot. I have had two where the clutch failed one where the cable broke and one where the pedal broke. I suppose that over 1.5 million miles its not too bad.

In article , Tim Lamb writes

DOT 4 is much better - but still needs to be changed from time to time.