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[fathemi]

Ahh. . . to each his (or her) own.

For some automotive enthusiasts, the experience of owning a vehicle is not complete until they service the vehicle themselves as well. I happen to be one of them. I also happen to be quite mechanically inclined and find the experience of performing simple maintenance on my cars quite relaxing.

As far as why now: well. . . she had about 2K miles on her and I wanted to get the factory fill out and some synthetic and a better filter in there asap.

Incidentally, I've owned a couple of cars that I allowed the dealer to service exclusively, including my first 300M (a 2001 PHP), and have never been overly pleased with the inconsistent quality of the work performed on the car. Usually, a casual inspection on an exclusively dealer serviced car will reveal quite a bit of oil drippage, especially around the filter area, which they rarely clean properly and some degree of stripped, rounded, or otherwise mishandled bolts. Dealer mechanics often need to do things fast, and they often pass off "easy work" like oil changes to the least experienced mechanics, which eventually often results in a poor job. I would virtually guarantee that those 10mm bolts that hold on the bottom engine cover plastic and perhaps the plastic itself would be damaged within the space of a few oil changes.

Not to mention that you need to give up control of your car and trust that it won't be damaged or dirtied while being serviced (I've had that happen a number of times) and, at the end of the day, you don't know what they even put in there.

Oh. . . and then there's service cost. I own 4 cars. . . 3 of them brand new (2003 and newer). . . the savings per oil change isn't a ton, but it does add up.

. . .and disposing of oil these days is easy: Get a 5 gallon can with a tight sealing lid. Dump oil from your catch pan into the can. When the can is full, take it to your local auto parts store and have them recycle the oil and give you back the can. With 5 gallons, you can make the trip about once every 2 or 3 changes.

fathemi