Hi. I don’t know a lot about cars. I have one though, a 2009 Honda Fit.
I recently took it in to the dealer for an oil change, and they wanted to do a Brake Fluid Flush ($150), Combustion Cleaning ($150) and something called A/C Heat Disinfect ($90.)
That’s a crap ton of money, so I told him I’d come back later. Right now I’m trying to figure out if all this is really necessary. From googling, it looks like the Brake Fluid Flush is important because it could mess with my ABS. Are they asking a reasonable price?
Some sites online are saying the Combustion Cleaning is something you can do yourself for much cheaper - I’ve never done that before but I’m not mechanically stupid, either, so I figure I can learn if necessary.
The final thing just sounds like spraying some air freshener in my A/C.
Car folks, what do we think? Which of these procedures are necessary and which of them are not?
Oil change = good. Do it as recommended by manufacturer (not dealer).
Unless you’re like me and do it more often with only anecdotal evidence for it increasing the longevity of your engine. In which case prepare to catch hell (here) for single-handedly causing global warming and wasting the planet’s precious resources, etc.
Hard to recommend (or not) the brake fluid service unless you tell us how many miles are on the car and how old it is. If you’ve not gone through a set of break pads yet, you likely have not drive long enough for it to be needed but that’s not exactly a first guiding principal. Brake fluid tends to absorb moisture (water) over time, so leaving it too long can cause rust in the brake lines and you don’t want to deal with the cost of repair for those. So brake flush = possibly.
Combustion cleaners can help if there are performance issues with the car. Low power, stalling, hesitation. Here again, mileage would help answer that question and you can certainly do it yourself with the resources available on the web about how to do so. Material would be a fraction of the $150 they want to charge you but you have to figure out what your time is worth and evaluate from there. It may take you an hour or so to do it yourself the first time.
Unless there is bad smell or you suspect there is mold in your air vent system, the disinfectant is a waste of money. So, no.
Rotate/inspect your tires and suspension. Check brake pad wear. Check belts. Check fluid levels (coolant, power steering, brake fluid). All yes.
I consider a brake fluid flush to be worthwhile maintenance. In the absence of a specific recommended interval by the manufacturer, every three years is a reasonable interval.
“Combustion cleaning” is not a term I’ve run across, but presumably it’s decarbonizing the combustion chambers and (hopefully) intake valves. This had value on a lot of cars in earlier decades, but is not often necessary or helpful nowadays due to better use of detergents in most gasolines. If you don’t have a performance symptom (e.g. rough idle, hesitation, poor gas mileage), I’d pass on this. As an alternative, put a bottle of Techron fuel additve in the tank 3 or 4 times a year.
Likewise, if you don’t have a mildewy odor coming through your heater-A/C vents, there’s probably not much to be gained by the disinfect service. Note, however, that it’s meant to kill the mold, not just mask the odor like an air freshener.
Scheduled maintenance is what’s scheduled. The schedule is in the user manual that came with the car. Follow the schedule.
I would definitely not ever return to a dealer that tried to sell me a bunch of bullshit that’s not on the schedule without giving me a reason clearly justified by my car’s physical condition.
As mentioned, the AC/Heat Disinfect is probably a waste of money unless you have an odor or something. However, one thing you might consider doing is changing your cabin air filter. Those can pick up a lot of gunk.
Seconded. The manufacturer’s service recommendations (NOT the dealer’s or anyone else’s) are what matters. If you fall short of them, you imperil your car’s longevity; if you exceed them, in most cases you imperil your wallet and gain very little.
The A/C disinfect service is probably related to the fact that condensate gathers on the air conditioner’s evaporator coils. If you live in a humid climate and have the A/C on whenever you drive, the condensate can persist; add in a little organic matter, and you’ve got a nice petri dish where mold may grow. I’d guess this is less of a problem on late-model cars that are equipped with a cabin-air microfilter that takes most of the particulates out of the air. In any event, I’d say a disinfect service isn’t needed unless there’s, you know, an actual infection (symptom: stinky cabin air).
My wife has a habit of switching off the A/C thirty seconds before we reach our destination and turning up the blower speed. The idea is to warm up the evaporator and dry off some/most/all of the condensate, minimizing the chance for mold growth. She does tend to use the A/C all the time in the summer, so maybe this is a good habit? I prefer my windows down, so my A/C only gets used very rarely, on very hot days or when she’s in the car with me, so I don’t worry about this. Haven’t had a problem in all my years of car ownership.
The owners manual for 2009 Honda Fit says replace the brake fluid every three years. It will not show up on your Maintenance Minder.
Skip the rest unless they can explain to you a specific problem that you have noticed independently that requires that service.
I complained to my dealership and to Honda several times about their attempts to sell me useless crap and lie about what service is needed for my Civic.*
They toned down the sales pitches but still list it all as “recommended service”, so I quit taking my car there once the warranty was up and I’d found another good Honda mechanic.
It makes me angry not only because they’re trying to scam me, but because then I have to go through this rigmarole like you’re doing to figure out when I DO actually need to do something. Not to mention, why would I trust someone to work on my car when I know they try to cheat me regularly?
*IME, this is not a Honda issue, it is a dealership issue. They have to buy all the expensive toys, so then they push the services to keep expensive toys making money instead of sitting idle. Not all dealers do this, but it is very common. I was quite disappointed to see that Honda’s vaunted customer service still allowed these reprehensible tactics.
For the combustion chamber cleaning, you can add some Chevron Techron Fuel System cleaner every few months. That stuff is under $10 so it would take years to equal the $150.
To help prevent even needing to do go to http://www.toptiergas.com and try to buy gasoline that are formulated to not cause combustion issues in the first place.
In fact for my previous car, I did all my own maintenance; the dealer never saw the car except for a couple of warranty repairs and a couple of later pain-in-the ass repairs (like tie rod replacement, which required alignment afterwards).
My scheduled maintenance wants me doing these every 15 or 30 thousand miles. This just seems like a total waste of money.
Alignments are $80 and as soon as you hit a bump in the road it’s gone. Same thing for tire balancing for $50. I guess if you really wanted to do one every year you could get a “lifetime” alignment from one of the chain places that offer them. But paying for that every 15K at the dealer is crazy.
Right?
Also, tire rotations: Tires usually last 80K miles or so. Tires cost around $500 or so. If you pay $20 every 5K miles for a tire rotation you’re spending $320 over the life of the tire. The reason you do this is to improve the life of the tires, right? So, unless it’s doubling them that’s a waste of money.
I’m not a mechanic, so I’d be happy to hear how I’m wrong about this. But that’s how I’ve always looked at it.
