The Importance of Car Servicing when you’re Driving Locally

If you’re anything like us, we only do two kinds of drive; seriously local or hundreds of miles away. This year we’ve already driven to Bath, Shropshire, the Brecon Beacons and the New Forest, but I’m here to talk to you today about all those short journeys we do. We use the car maybe once a week to drive 5 minutes down the road to Mike’s parents, or 10 minutes down the road to my parents or if we are really going for it, 15 minutes to the local shopping centre. It’s these little drives that can do the most damage to your car as you’re not giving the alternator enough time to refill your battery so you won’t top up the power you’ve just used.

With this in mind, you should get your car serviced locally to ensure it’s running at its best.

A car service should be done yearly or when your car alerts you that it’s needing one. There are four types of service that your car can be booked in for:

The Oil and Filter Change

An oil and filter change is one of the most important parts of a service and is the one that should be carried out the most as these are areas that get used up the quickest. Changing the oil and filters can help your car to run reliably and helps increase fuel efficiency so you’re spending less time in the petrol garage.

Basic or Interim Service

The basic service will typically include an oil and filter change as each level of service will include the services that are lower than them in the list. This service will also include a visual inspection, and there will usually be a top-up of all the key fluids in the engine such as your washer fluid, brake fluid, antifreeze and steering fluid so you don’t have to check these as often yourself. There will also be a check of all of the key components to ensure your car is in tip-top condition.

The Full Service

The full service is the one we’ve just done on our car to make sure it’s safe for all of our local driving and this includes all of that from the basic service plus an extra 15 to 30 additional checks on the car’s key components.

We had a fair amount wrong with our car as we hadn’t had it serviced in quite some time so we were stung with just under £500 worth of work that needed doing including new brake discs and new front suspension, but had we looked after our car better when driving locally we wouldn’t have had these costs in one hit.

The Major Service

A Major Service will include everything covered in the above full service but will also include a change of spark plugs, a change of fuel filters and some other general wear items that are recommended by the manufacturer’s schedule for your car make, model and year. These kinds of service do take a good few hours but are well worth the time spent on them.

I have a lot of friends that live up north in Yorkshire, hence why I am heading back up there next month, who also do a lot of local driving to and from work so I’ve recommended that they should enhance their car performance while driving locally and get car servicing done from Wakefield at a local facility like Ossett Tyre House. It can really make a difference in the way your car drives and costs of petrol!