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Comment by soperj | Hacker News Reader

>You'll be there anyway for servicing every now and again.

I've worked at a car dealership before. Find a mechanic you trust, the car dealership will rip you off time and time again. I had to bring my car in for a recall previously, and they said right away that the brakes also needed replacing immediately. I brought it in to my mechanic instead to do it, they said I had at least another year on the back brakes, and 2 years on the front depending on how I actually drive. Ended up replacing the back after a year and a half, and am on year 3 for the front (will probably be replacing them shortly).

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my take on dealerships is that you just have to know the maintenance schedule for your vehicle, and like you mention, understand how to gauge wear items yourself, because they will try to sell you services ahead of schedule, or on the "extreme use" schedule. as long as you pay attention and are willing to say no, dealerships are reasonable places to get your car serviced.

I've had bad luck with independent mechanics taking on jobs they weren't capable of doing properly and ruining a car in the past. Although it sounds like you had an honest one, independent mechanics aren't necessarily above selling you goods and services that you don't need, especially if you don't know the maintenance schedule or have maintenance records.

as far as I'm aware what some Ferrari owners have started doing is purchase the after market ODB type of tool that lets you run the same diagnostics that Ferrari dealership does for several hundred dollars. The tricky part is that it voids warranty and you could very well brick your car.

However, it is great for people who wants to work on their own car and resell value isn't really a concern.

Adam saruwatari on youtube shows it in action.

Magnuson Moss ensures that it doesn't void your warranty in the US.

Ferrari owner.

Willing to risk destroying the car to save hundreds of dollars.

I don't get it. Those two things seem incompatible to me. Ferrari isn't about frugality, and cost of ownership necessarily means hundreds of dollars is not a problematic expense.

Agree, at my dealership they do get very pushy about early maintenance, high-priced tires, etc. But they've always seemed to take "no" for an answer.

Unfortunately they also have a habit of doing things in too much of a hurry, such as leaving fluid levels low (possibly from not letting bubbles settle out), misaligning hubcaps, and using incorrect (low) tire pressures. The last of which helps fulfill their goal of wearing out tires sooner so they can pitch replacements. This is sort of a risk with most garages, though.

>my take on dealerships is that you just have to know the maintenance schedule for your vehicle

The schedule on my leased vehicle is stretched out further per oil change than a local garage suggests (15,000km vs 5,000km).

A lot of mechanics still use the old recommendation of 5,000km/3,000miles while modern vehicles and modern oils mean that doing that is wasting resources.

HAHAHA Its only a waste of resources if you plan to have the car for 3 years and then swap to another new lease, perpetually 'owning nothing and being happy'. Same deal with "lifetime" sealed transmission oil. Its lifetime all right, 100K miles of it.

Err... I've been using the manufacturer's recommended (extended) oil change intervals since, well, when did Ford introduce the "bubble" Taurus design? Mid-1990s? I've been using the vehicle's "oil-change-ometer" since I first got a vehicle with it, which means 10-15K mile intervals for me. Admittedly, that is a small sample of 4 vehicles (said Taurus, 2 Ford F150s, and the 2002 'Vette I used to use for commuting).

I've never had an oil-related failure.

And before you ask, yes, they're all high-mileage; for a while I was doing 25,000 miles/year.

> Find a mechanic you trust

Very much easier said than done for most people. Assuming you aren’t lucky enough to have a mechanic in your circle, how do you tell whether they are trustworthy?

Trial and error in my case, cars need regular maintenance so plenty of opportunities to shop around. I've been to the main dealer, chain type garages and independents. A couple of the smaller indies get my custom all the time now.

Simple things like going for a replacement tyre and being given a choice of price ranges and an explanation of each option, then watching them do the change and hand torque to the correct spec.

Or an air con regas at £50 at a small garage vs £120 at the main dealer.

Most recently I had the discs changed, was able to order the parts myself and drop them off for fitting at the cost of labour only. That'd never be an option at a main dealer or chain type garage but is pretty common for smaller outfits apparently.

Honestly, just ask around for the most honest mechanic. Anyone you know, people on the street, doesn't matter. You'll get a list pretty quick, and you'll notice some names said far more frequently. Then give them a try, you should be able to find one you trust.

I just went on fb groups for my local neighborhood - highest upvoted pick I chose. That was 4 cars ago still take my cars there. Was a dealership user before that myself.

I knew he was trustworthy because I asked him to explain what he was doing and why. He went into great detail. Brought an unidentifiable problem to him and he found a corroded wire vs 700 in repairs the dealer suggested. Just little things like that will let you know. Check their certificates, make sure at least ASCE (sp) certified.

Also take a look at the shop and see what cars are in the lot. Bunch of 5-10 year old cars in great shape seems to be a good sign IMO as people who take care of their cars trust the mechanic

>Find a mechanic you trust, the car dealership will rip you off time and time again.

Car dealerships are mechanics, nothing special about them, and I've had incidents with small paces as well.

>I had to bring my car in for a recall previously, and they said right away that the brakes also needed replacing immediately.

So what? Say no if you don't want the work. Done. Do you get mad at every salesman who pushes their product on you?

>Ended up replacing the back after a year and a half

You can ride bad brakes pretty much forever if you want, nothing stopping you (pun). As he says, depends on "how you drive".

I'm still trying to wrap my head around why you're so upset about your dealer suggesting you get your brakes done...

> So what? Say no if you don't want the work. Done. Do you get mad at every salesman who pushes their product on you?

Non-functional breaks mean death. If its okay for an expert to lie to you to sell you unnessesary service, then it's okay for a doctor to tell you you need urgent surgery when in fact you don't?

>a doctor to tell you you need urgent surgery when in fact you don't?

I have had exactly that happen to me when I visited a very fancy dental clinic, replete with photos of household name celebrity clients on its lobby's wall.

After doing a fancy 3D scan of my teeth they've concluded that I urgently needed to remove a wisdom tooth that had been lying dormant in a horizontal position in my mouth or else.

That "else" hasn't happened in 10 years since my first and only visit there.

Did you work for a high-end dealership?

This is definitely true for most car dealerships (Ford, Honda, etc) but I've found it not the case at all for higher end cars.

When I took my Porsche to my trusted mechanic they recommended I take it to a Porsche dealer, and advised me not to even adjust the oil myself. I've owned less expensive cars for most of my life and am used to doing a lot of maintenance myself. It took me awhile of owning a Porsche to realize things are a bit different with more expensive cars.

I imagine this is even more true for a Ferrari.

>When I took my Porsche to my trusted mechanic they recommended I take it to a Porsche dealer

They didnt want the added liability of replacing oil and then having you come in a month later with (unrelated) blown engine.

I don’t think this applies to high end sports cars like the Ferrari

I’d say it probably applies more since they have more money and probably less specific Ferrari knowledge. Better to trust the experts!

The Ferrari dealership is going to have much more expert mechanics in working on Ferraris that just about any other mechanic you'll find (I'm sure there are exceptions to this, but that's going to be rare).

If you're selling cars $300k+ minimum, you're selling much more than the car. Your dealership is going to be treating you the same way enterprise software companies treat a corporate account (dedicated sales, customer success, etc).

Ferrari dealer service departments are at their best when servicing newer models, like less than 10 years old. Anything older than that, dealer expertise and factory support drops off precipitously. In that case, you are much better off going to a reputable independent Ferrari specialist. Many of these shops will be staffed by ex-dealer employees. It's still important to go to a Ferrari specialist, as a general purpose indy mechanic will probably cause issues or do things in an inefficient way.

That's an interesting example, as brake pads are not expensive, and you can view the wear easily. Perhaps it's a signal to them: if they can get away with this, they can get away with more expensive "repairs".

Labor. And the chance to "find" a lot more problems.

I’d be surprised if even 3 out of 10 drivers could make a confident conclusion from looking at their brake pads whether or not they should be changed in the next few thousand miles. If you’ve done a brake job before, you know, but that’s something many (most?) people imagine is beyond their ability, despite being one of the easiest maintenance jobs IME.

Most vehicle manuals state a specific minimum thickness to replace brake pads, so why not just measure them? Also some have wear marks I believe.

1. The same people who can't judge a brake pad by looking at them probably aren't going to know which points to measure between. [Though the common error here would be to assume there is more brake pad left than is the case, by incorrectly including the backing plate in the measurement.] If the min spec is 4mm and you measure 4.5mm, they're clearly legal/safe, but for how much longer? If you don't know how a new set of pads measures, you have a hard time estimating.

2. This is not in the context of "no one knows whether these pads are above minimum spec" but rather in the context of a dealership recommending service before the pads have worn down to minimum spec. There are valid reasons (mostly convenience) why someone might choose to have brake pads replaced before they're at minimums and valid reasons why others would choose to run them all the way out.

> Find a mechanic you trust, the car dealership will rip you off time and time again.

The dealership is doing work under warranty, so are motivated to fix things quickly and permanently. A freelance mechanic is motivated to find more things wrong and to never really fix them so you have to keep coming back.

This is opposite to reality.

The car dealership is doing work under warranty, so they don't make any real money from you (they can put in the work/time/labour for whatever the manufacturer wanted them to fix, but that has a set margin that's determined by corporate - who for sure have counted their beans) - the real money is in upselling - getting you to do brakes while you get the warranty repair done, selling you new windshield wipers while you're there, etc.

Hey while you're in for servicing, why don't we do a fuel system treatment too? it's only $50 and we'll get your car fixed for the warranty and get it to run better too!

The other side for car dealership warranty repairs that I've also seen is that they get so many repairs in the shop that they can't do each one properly cause they are under pressure from corporate to do the servicing for a certain dollar amount, and they can't spend any additional labour hours/time to do it right.

this happened on engine recalls, due to the complexity of an engine recall, the mechanics didn't get allotted enough time to do each one, so basically, corporate tried to shove 4 hours of work into 2 paid hours - the end result is shoddy workmanship due to the mechanics only doing 2 hours of work on a 4 hour job (so rushed, loosed bolts, parts left over, not installed correctly, etc) - there ended up being a 2nd recall on top of the first recall because it wasn't the dealer mechanic's fault - they weren't being given enough time to do each one

Maybe my warranty is different to yours, but tyres, brakes, wipers, fluids, fuel system are all under my warranty. They only need changing on schedule that is in the manual, not by their suggestion. They've never suggested up-selling anything at all.

Most likely an extended warranty they added on when you purchased the car - no car manufacturer includes those wear items in their limited warranty.

Tyres aren't included in any kind of car manufacturer warranty. It might be on a lease agreement (where you can only use their pre-determined brand of tires installed at their pre-determined mechanics)

Even for high end race cars, tyres you need to pay out of pocket for - since they are total wear items.

Maybe it's different in different countries - but looking at my warranty they do replace wear items during the warranty period.

There is also the aspect of customer relationship building, as far as Ferrari are concerned, their customers are there for the duration.

The idea is that you buy several normal cars from them, then, if you are lucky and really, really on best behaviour, they will let you on to the lottery to get an allocation for one of their special edition models.

If you get the special allocation then you can't 'flip' it, you have to play by the game because otherwise Ferrari won't sell you another special edition model.

If I was a dealer and I had to replace 1000 fuel filler widgets free of charge in my own time in order to keep those customers happy enough for one of them to come back and spend a million, then it would not be a problem. Getting those 1000 customers through the door again (or even a dozen of them) is all good.

Funny how few of these Ferraris get to put in any miles. It isn't range anxiety, it is mileage anxiety. If you had to drive 400 miles you would not do it because of the miles and how that affects the value. Hence these cars spent their time in garages, connected to wall chargers, turning a wheel once or twice between services in order to ensure everything is mechanically peachy.

In the UK the likelihood of finding a Ferrari is high in London where the average speed is in the single digits. Some of these cars don't get to escape the capital, they don't drive at speed, they just sit there as a speculative asset.

Some people (like me) keep their cars after the warranty expires, for us it doesn't make sense to go to the dealer at that point if you have a good independent mechanic. Being a good mechanic includes not finding unnecessary repairs to charge you for and depending on repeat business from happy customers.

Car manufacturers are not without blame in this situation. Their products are designed to be difficult and expensive; bordering on impossible to service.

I have a mid 2000s sedan from the Ford motor company, recently the air conditioning stopped working; initially I engaged with a few different freelance mechanics, one billed me for a pressure system check / recharge, another said they didn't know what was wrong but could do "diagnostics" until I cried uncle on the costs. The car is worth maybe $3,000 so I can't justify a lot of repair costs on it, but at the same time the powertrain is still in great shape. The Ford dealership was able to pinpoint the actual problem, which was a $25 ambient temp sensor-- but it's buried in the center of the dash requiring $1000 worth of labor to replace.

Ultimately I was able to find the ambient temp sensor pins on the glove box wiring harness and bridge them with a 47 cent resistor, tricking the computer into turning my AC back on.

Cars could be so much better. We'd generate less waste if perfectly good vehicles weren't getting thrown away because Ford and GM designed them to fail in opaque and unserviceable ways, unfortunately things have been trending the opposite direction with BEVs and Tesla in particular.

This is by design. How can it be that newer versions of the same electric car can't simply be fitted with a new battery? Instead the whole car has to be scraped.

It's no mystery of course, if you think about it from the manufacturers perspective - it all about greater sales. The environmental perspective is just another sales angle really.

I'm not big on cars. I would happily drive an open source car.

> How can it be that newer versions of the same electric car can't simply be fitted with a new battery? Instead the whole car has to be scraped.

Which car are you thinking of? All of the EVs I know of let you replace the battery (granted, it may be an ordeal like the new Model Y with structural pack, but at least it's still possible and officially supported).

I'm believe I'm thinking of the Nissan Leaf (was a little while ago). And I'm talking about upgrading the battery, not replacing like for like.

The scenario is that an old battery can only store so much charge, which limits your range. However newer versions have better batteries and therefore longer ranges.

The kicker is that the better battery cannot be fitted into a perfectly functional older car.

Don't forget that the functionality of older batteries decreases too, with a loss of range. So you can fork out for a very expensive battery but it is for the old version only. Feels like a lose-lose scenario (expense and poor range).

Frankly the electric car economics in general don't make sense for anyone that actually needs to cover some miles - the older cars lose range and will be an expensive headache in the future, and the newer versions are way too expensive for what they do.

That was my analysis anyway, when I looked into buying a second hand EV.

> And I'm talking about upgrading the battery, not replacing like for like.

It's quite rare for this to be possible in any component of anything you buy these days. Why single out EV batteries here?

That's not true. Standard batteries can be switched in or out, and there are different types, brands, etc. I know EV batteries are bigger etc, but I think it's comparable. They are just batteries.

In EVs though, replacing the battery is so expensive - thousands of pounds/dollars - it makes no sense to do it. So once the battery starts degrading after only a few years, the upgrade is incredibly expensive - essentially the cost of a car.

If by doing so you could at least extend the range and see a benefit, perhaps it would make sense. And why couldn't you do it. Because its a design anti-pattern. If you stick to a certain space in the car for the same model, you could easily make this a feature. But you wouldn't if you just want to sell cars.

As it is, I think these cars will have a shorter life span than non-EV cars - they will be scrapped earlier as they are not economically viable. I don't see how they not far less environmentally unfriendly than non-EVs.

My EV is going in for a new battery in a few months. Takes about a day. Are there any EVs today that can't have the battery replaced? I get that the Model Y makes it a bit harder than most, but AFAIK most of the 'skateboard' designs have relatively easy to replace battery modules.

Tesla stans showing up to defend their sunk costs in the sibling replies should be some kind of internet constant. Like rule 42.

Too true, My sister-in-law had a VW. She took it to a dealership to replace a headlight lightbulb. Cost several hundred dollars, it involved removing the bumper.

Honestly not sure if it was a scam by the dealership or if the car was really that poorly designed.

My wife had to have a headlight replaced on a new car, about 2 years after owning it. There was a ton of work to replace it. Unlike my first car (ahem) years ago where this was a routine thing and took all of 5 minutes.

So yes, it is now ridiculously complicated to replace lights. But here’s the kicker — my wife’s dealer had never had to do it before. They are so reliable that this was the first time they had to replace a light in that model. We walked in and asked them to replace it as if it was routine. They didn’t believe us that it was out.

So, my guess, not knowing anything about the VW in question is that it really was that complicated, but not something that is expected to happen often.

Exactly the same thing is gradually happening with lights at home. In the past, light bulbs always had some variant of the standard screw-in socket because the bulbs would wear out so often; with modern LEDs, the lights last far longer so making them easy to replace is less important. At the same time, LEDs are so flexible in size and shape that forcing them into an easily replaceable form-factor is a much larger imposition. Between these two aspects, lamps without replaceable bulbs make a lot of sense from a purely practical design point of view.

Sometimes (see my comment upthread), it can't really be helped. I had the same reaction to the Service manual when a headlight on my 350Z went out: what do you mean I have to remove the bumper to change a lightbulb? Makes no sense.

However, while it's possible to do it without removing the bumper (I go in through the wheel well), it's harder that way. The reality is that there isn't a lot of room in the first place, and headlights can last a very long time, so for an infrequent service it does make sense.

FWIW, this sounds very similar to how the climate control in an old Volvo 240 works. There is a rheostat buried deep under the dash, and when it fails you can only select between ambient temperature air or Swedish Sauna Hot. If you find someone who has done this exact repair before, it will take them about 4 hours. If you DIY it as a decent mechanic, count on spending a whole weekend.

Example of that $1000 type labor job to that sensor. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=S-eK5fH9f3s . Insanely poor design for repairs.

Exactly like this! In my case, the center console + shifter assembly and driver side instrument panel all needed to be removed to access a sensor that is positioned behind the passenger side air bag.

> Their products are designed to be difficult and expensive; bordering on impossible to service

I've worked most of my career writing software to control physical objects. Nobody designs like this, it wouldn't even make sense.

The reality is that there are always competing interests. The Service team wants things to be easy to repair, but the Sales team wants it to be cheap and easy to sell, while Marketing wants it to never breaks at all. You can't reconcile all of those.

Sometimes engineers screw up. OK, often engineers screw up! But more often than not, functionality wins over everything and the engineer puts the sensor in the best place she can, given the constraints that she had to work with. Someone runs the reliability analysis and says that the sensor isn't likely to fail during the car's expected lifetime, so service isn't a big concern. Sometimes your specific car falls on the wrong side of that reliability curve, sometimes the engineer who did the analysis screwed up, or sometimes Shit Just Happens.

But no one designs things to be hard to service: that would mean it's hard to build in the first place and just take too big a bite out of profits.

>Someone runs the reliability analysis and says that the sensor isn't likely to fail during the car's expected lifetime

Why exactly does the 'expected lifetime' of durable goods keep getting shorter?

Forest, meet trees

Does it? Which goods? What predicate behavior are you comparing to?

>The Ford dealership was able to pinpoint the actual problem, which was a $25 ambient temp sensor-- but it's buried in the center of the dash requiring $1000 worth of labor to replace.

not ambient, Im guessing Evap Temperature Sensor. You can cut a hole in the dash to get to evaporator, JB weld compatible temp sensor to the side of it, and patch it to the wiring loom. One hour and a $10 thermistor to fully working AC.

>bridge them with a 47 cent resistor, tricking the computer into turning my AC back on

tricking your AC system into permanently engaged compressor clutch

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