Right here is my dilemma. My 4.4 Vogue is due a service in 1200 miles. The car has FSH from a mix of main dealers and independents. She's up to 93k miles on an 04 reg. Now i plan to keep it for a good few years and i'm more than capable of servicing and have a RAC to keep check on faults. Now should i pay the £300+/- to get it serviced at an indy and get the stamp or save the money and do it myself keeping good comprehensive records to show the work? I'm stuck. I know there wont be much difference in resale value come the time of sale but will it make much dsifference to joe blogs?
Opinions welcome. 04, 4.4V8, Vogue Oslo Blue with LPG.
"You can sleep in your car, BUT you can't race your house!!!!"

If something can't be fixed with a hammer....... You have yourself an electrical fault!

if your planning on keeping it a while then id just service it yourself ....keeping recipts of all the parts and a log of when you did it .....but if you have frrsh then id stick with them as it is always easier to sell a car with full main dealer history  "RANGEISM WILL NOT BE TOLERATED"
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Pretlove says , '' I want my car back "

Rob2529 wrote:

Right here is my dilemma. My 4.4 Vogue is due a service in 1200 miles. The car has FSH from a mix of main dealers and independents. She's up to 93k miles on an 04 reg. Now i plan to keep it for a good few years and i'm more than capable of servicing and have a RAC to keep check on faults. Now should i pay the £300+/- to get it serviced at an indy and get the stamp or save the money and do it myself keeping good comprehensive records to show the work? I'm stuck. I know there wont be much difference in resale value come the time of sale but will it make much dsifference to joe blogs?
Opinions welcome.

I had the same situation when I bought my Supercharged at 78000 miles - full comprehensive main dealer history and all receipts (some of the labour costs were horrific for basic stuff like pads etc)

I didn't consider it too long !! Went to my local dealer and bought genuine LR filters etc and did it myself.

I bought 8 litres of the correct Castrol for £48 at Halfords where it was on special - the last service at LR had a charge of £115 for oil alone.

I also wondered why the handbrake was so crap given that it had new discs etc 5000 miles previously - when I took the rear discs off I soon found out - the near side handbrake cable wasn't even connected......enough said.

Then there was the air filter - it was so black and full of $hit, obviously hadn't been replaced.

So there you have it, easy decision for me..........I will keep all receipts etc for parts and mark the book myself - each to their own...... 2006MY Supercharged LPG Autobiography - Zambezi Silver with Sand/Jet/Jet Oxford Leather.....

you mention £300 +/ -

but that isn't the true additional cost as even if you service yourself its going to cost you for the parts + the hastle when you possibly could be earning money elswhere.

So I would look at how much extra is it going to cost to get a dealer/independent to do it. If its a £150 ish let the dealer do it, its worth it to save the hastle and get the all important stamp in the book. IMHE it makes it significantly easier to sell a vehicle with stamps in the book.

There will be those who feel different, but then their vehicles probably dont have FSH and they have to justify it to themselves...

having said that nothing beats the satisfaction of servicing your own vehicle and knowing its been done properly! rather than letting some grease monkey touch your beloved! in the cold light of day though s/h buyers love dealer history - franchised or not, and that rubber stamp counts for a lot.

Vogue wrote:

having said that nothing beats the satisfaction of servicing your own vehicle and knowing its been done properly! rather than letting some grease monkey touch your beloved!

I do the oil change/filters myself. Have always done that on every car I have owned. Other repairs/maintenance I either do myself, or use either my friends garage or specialists. Reformed

For me, never main dealer. I'm not paying £ XXXX per hour when they pay kids £ xxx per hour - it's a matter of principle . . . . . oh, and the cost ! The servicing bills paid for mine by the previous owner were horrendous (ie £200 for an 18" tyre).

My car goes to a top notch independant - (plug: DLS Wirksworth, Derbys). They do the servicing and repairs and have done on other LR's owned by me for the past 20yrs - it's all about trust. Crucial, I believe when you run something as complicated as a FF.

If I were replacing mine with another FF, i'd look for stamps from a decent independant - "you pays your money etc"

 Where do you go after one of these . . . ?

You do appreciate that FSH stamps have a habit of mysteriously appearing in service books when cars are presented for sale even though the cars have been self serviced by owners for a number of years.
Even new fully stamped service books have been known to appear.
If you are capable, much better to self service imo and mark up the service book accordingly. Surprisingly, even for a RR the servicing requirements are pretty basic and well within the capabilities of the home mechanic. If you have the time of course.

a record of warranty work by the dealer yes,
servicing by the owner with receipts and dates yes, shows the owner looked after the car..

you can buy dealer stamps from ebay for a few pounds , my son did , so i'll say no more....

Me being a donkey were mechanics are concerned , thats why i use dealerships , that and Lazybastiridus

I tend to stay away from dealers, once you've stripped a renault 5 head down a few times most things aren't too hard but i do shy away from rebuilds and big jobs, servicing never scares me, i used to even cheap out and use the £25 service at National a while ago until prices went up as i could watch them do it as well which was a bit more confidence inspiring but it was more for cheapness than stamps or history

One thing I would recommend everyone should do - I think it was Scarey who first mentioned this - CHECK YOUR AIR FILTER. My car had an Insp 2 at main dealer two months before I bought it last year.

Checked air filter before holiday this year - filthy. Probably not because they hadn't replaced it, the lazy beep beep beeps had only fastened three of the six bolts for the housing. Result ? Intake housing full of all sorts of carp. It took all of two minutes to fasten it properly - and I've never done one before !  Where do you go after one of these . . . ?

Here's why I'll no longer let any of my vehicles anywhere near a garage for routine servicing. This air filter came out of a bike that had had a "full service" less than 3,000 miles earlier. Not easy to get scale from this but that mound of dirt is over a centimetre thick in the middle.

Click image to enlarge

Click image to enlarge

As we have already discussed and all the above are valid reasons. As a compromise you could buy the oil from Costco and get the likes of Russ (4x4 specialist) to do the service and then at least it is transparant what you are paying for. The garage I took it to was 120 labour, which equates to 2 hours labour and Russ is 40 an hour and has the 4x4 stamp. Like previous posts have said they charge a fortune for oil and you know you can get Mobil 1 for about 50 pound for 10L.
The only difference is that when you get the receipt they will usually write carry out service using customers oil etc as provided.
It is also good to get the cars serviced by the specialists as you never know when you need them to pull you out of the sh*t or pick there brains and they would always be more receptive if you are a customer, plus you don't get your hands dirty.

Adam