Dealership "scheduled maintenance" musings

....and having the cabin air filter changed was very reasonable as well
$22.50 is probably what an OEM filter costs, not to mention the labor. I suspect it's one of the easy ones to change though, not like my G35, wife's Fusion, etc which both require disassembly of the dashboard !! If I had a car at the dealership and they offered to change the cabin filter or engine filter and I knew they were truly due, I'm willing to pay a reasonable rate. I've seen Honda dealers charge $99 to change them when all that's required is opening the glove box, release the hangers, and open the filter door. Nope !
 
I wouldnā€™t have cleaned them this early. Especially if they were charging for it. As for the oil change goes Iā€™m glad to hear of all these dealerships allowing customers to bring their own oil and filter when I worked at a dealership we couldnā€™t use anything a customer provided we had to tell them it was for insurance purposes but it wasnā€™t.
 
This is the dealership requirement for the free oil changes, it has nothing to do with FCA warranty requirements beyond having the oil changes recorded, which I do per the OLM, which is a much longer duration than the dealership recommends.

I've wrenched on all my own vehicles over the years, this is a vehicle that's still under warranty, so I like to keep all of these services recorded in case it matters in the event there is a warranty claim. Once it's out of service, I may start doing some of it myself, but we'll see.

If you think this is expensive, you'd lose your mind as to the price of a brake job on the Jeep.

The dealership labour rate is $120/hr BTW, so the brake service was roughly 2 hours.
BUT, is it in the FCA owner's/service manual ? If it is, and it is referred to in the sales contract as a term for free oil changes, then they can require it.

If it is not in the FCA manual, and not spelled out specifically as to procedures and intervals in the sale contract, they cannot require it.

Either you did, or did not agree to this specific thing at the point of sale. They cannot add terms not detailed in the contract that are unique to them for free oil changes.

Frankly, it seems a bit counterproductive to me to have to take it to them and wait, when you are supplying your own oil and filter anyway so it would take less time to DIY and then you don't risk them screwing anything up, unless you live somewhere that prohibits even this minimal level of vehicle work. I mean you don't even have to jack that vehicle up to do the oil change, right?
 
$22.50 is probably what an OEM filter costs, not to mention the labor. I suspect it's one of the easy ones to change though, not like my G35, wife's Fusion, etc which both require disassembly of the dashboard !! If I had a car at the dealership and they offered to change the cabin filter or engine filter and I knew they were truly due, I'm willing to pay a reasonable rate. I've seen Honda dealers charge $99 to change them when all that's required is opening the glove box, release the hangers, and open the filter door. Nope !
When I had the timing belt on my Accord replaced, the Honda dealer (not the one here) told me my cabin filter was dirty and they had changed it. Wanted to charge $80 labour. I said I didn't ask for or want that done and that I changed it regularly myself.

It only takes a minute (literally) to change it so they put the old one back and took it off the bill. Seems like a juicy profit center for the tech and maybe the service writer too.

A Toyota dealer drained the recently replaced synthetic lube out of my Solara's manual transmission and replaced it with conventional lube. That was just added on to an engine oil change. I made them replace it with synthetic and take it off the bill. I usually changed the engine oil myself but the need for a change came up in the middle of a cold winter.
 
BUT, is it in the FCA owner's/service manual ? If it is, and it is referred to in the sales contract as a term for free oil changes, then they can require it.

If it is not in the FCA manual, and not spelled out specifically as to procedures and intervals in the sale contract, they cannot require it.

Either you did, or did not agree to this specific thing at the point of sale. They cannot add terms not detailed in the contract that are unique to them for free oil changes.

Frankly, it seems a bit counterproductive to me to have to take it to them and wait, when you are supplying your own oil and filter anyway so it would take less time to DIY and then you don't risk them screwing anything up, unless you live somewhere that prohibits even this minimal level of vehicle work. I mean you don't even have to jack that vehicle up to do the oil change, right?

To be clear: The oil changes are NOT an FCA service, they are a dealer service, the terms of which have nothing to do with FCA and everything to do with the dealer. FCA only requires oil changes per the OLM and a few other small things for warranty, the dealer's list is far more extensive and the oil changes far more frequent if you use their free service schedule, which we don't. Yes, we signed on the line that noted that we were responsible for abiding by the terms for the free oil changes. However, the only risk of breaking those terms is no longer getting the labour covered, so they are not dire consequences to say the least and given I'm friends with the owner, he'd likely let it slide anyways.

It's not like the BMW free oil changes under warranty thing, this has nothing to do with the OEM and this has no relationship with the factory warranty terms and their requirements.

I take it to them to have the work documented while under warranty for the peace of mind that provides. If I drop it off, I usually take the owner's vehicle and bring it back when it's done, so it's not a big inconvenience. Up until recently, he was driving a Trackhawk, so it was actually pretty fun, lol.

And yes, the truck is very easy to do the changes on and can be done in the driveway, like I've done on the Jeep. It's just nice to have them do it and the record of it being done while the vehicle is under warranty. That may change once the vehicle hits 5 years and is no longer covered, assuming my wife hasn't traded it on a TRX or something, lol. :ROFLMAO:
 
Since I use Top Tier fuel only, I see no need to ever do a fuel injection service.
Yes, that was my reasoning. That's why I was hoping for Trav's feedback, being the Injector guy, as I expect he'd confirm that and was hoping he'd weigh-in.
 
Since I use Top Tier fuel only, I see no need to ever do a fuel injection service.
I've never had this service done myself either.

The last time I ever installed new injectors was installing the #60lb injectors( Siemens Deka) in the supercharged mustang šŸ˜‰
 
I've never had this service done myself either.

The last time I was r

Last time I ever cleaned injectors (and I did it myself, lol, actuating them in a vat of injector cleaner with a battery in the basement, a light switch and a chunk of injector harness) was when I was retrofitting a 302HO into my '88 F-250 and the engine I got, which was for a song, had been on fire and then sat for several years. It had several injectors that weren't pulsing, and this technique got them working and the engine running. If Trav reads this he's going to be shaking his head, lol.
 
On some vehicles, while the manufacturer never calls it out for maintenance, it can definitely end up being needed. I have a G35 with Nissan's VQ35 engine and occasionally experienced the RPM dropping low enough to cause the engine to shudder (it would typically do this when going from speed and slowing/stopping at a stop sign, red light, etc). Or, 1-2 times, it started, sputtered, then died but would immediately restart and run good. I cleaned the throttle bodies and the build-up was definitely having an impact. Since cleaning, it's idled perfectly.
Good to know! Thank you! šŸ‘‡
 
My brother-in-law is a service manager at a dealership and I asked him about the injector cleaning one day...if he sold them...he said, Iā€™d only sell them if I didnā€™t have a soul. And Iā€™m a tech, I feel exactly the same way.

The brake service sounds nice. Cabin filter is a good price at 20 something bucks.

Iā€™d stop using this dealer for my ā€œfree oil changesā€ as soon as you possibly can, because Youā€™re going to be way behind the eight ball as these services add up.
 
My brother-in-law is a service manager at a dealership and I asked him about the injector cleaning one day...if he sold them...he said, Iā€™d only sell them if I didnā€™t have a soul. And Iā€™m a tech, I feel exactly the same way.

The brake service sounds nice. Cabin filter is a good price at 20 something bucks.

Iā€™d stop using this dealer for my ā€œfree oil changesā€ as soon as you possibly can, because Youā€™re going to be way behind the eight ball as these services add up.
I've bought a LOT of vehicles there and probably saved north of 100K because of the deals the owner, who is a friend of mine, has given me. Definitely not going to stop using the dealer, but I will mention my issue as to the necessity of this "service" to him the next time it comes up.
 
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I've bought a LOT of vehicles there and probably saved north of 100K because of the deals the owner, who is a friend of mine, has given me. Definitely not going to stop using the dealer, but I will mention my issue as to the necessity of this "service" to him the next time it comes up.
Well, to be honest, if your friend has saved you $100,000 dollars...I wouldnā€™t ask him about a $130.00 dollar injector cleaning service. Haha.
 
Well, to be honest, if your friend has saved you $100,000 dollars...I wouldnā€™t ask him about a $130.00 dollar injector cleaning service. Haha.

I might tease him about it, he doesn't set the service policies, his service manager would have been who had done that and the guy in that position has changed relatively recently so I don't know if this was a result of a previous SM or the current one.

When I traded in my 2014 SRT Charger for example, I got a fair bit more on trade than what I had paid for it a year earlier. He's a good friend and has given me some amazing deals so I am certainly not in any way inclined to jeopardize that relationship.
 
Ive never cleaned an injector or throttle body on any car I've ever owned.

Cabin air filter is fine.

Brakes probably needed.

Not a biggies either way.
Throttle body on many vehicles are very dirty after 50,000 miles.
 
Apparently the service manager isn't aware of your BFF status with the owner. Yet. ;)
He knows, I doubt he had any knowledge about what we were billed for unless he's actually a believer in said injector service, in which case he may have thought it was the right thing to do. I've considered that perspective as well.
 
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