Oil change at a "Kwik-Fit" style garage- am I mad?

Thanks Scary, you're right - I like to support independent shops and things, so I should really give the guy a try. He's a really decent chap and I know he won't muck me about. Often he'll talk me out of giving him work and come out with "oh come on, if you can do all that on your car then you can do this easy!" ;D But maybe work has thinned out a bit and he could do with the trade.

What about when the garage don't tighten up the filter, making the car dump its oil, smoke comes into the car, and somebody calls out the fire brigade, and all of this is happening on a very busy roundabout, and every kid at school leaving time is walking past making comments. THATS how badly it could go ;D




The incident involved my mam and her car....

how longs it gona take ? 30 mins to know youve done it right

you can always nip away and do something while its draining

id rather poke about at night with a torch that let some quick fit monkey at it

Or they could put the jack through the floor pan of your car rather than using a jacking point to jack it up as happened to a guy I worked with at a "fast fitting" outfit near where we worked.

Also also a lot of them don't actually drain the oil. The stick a vacuum down the filler (or dip stick I dunno) and suck out the oil that way which only gets 60-90% of the oil out depending on the car and the nerdlinger operating the oil sucker thingy.

I'd ask the local guy to do it.

Well, I will buck the trend here a little - (granted this was a while back too, I havent looked to see if these offers still happen) but a big chain - might have been HighQ - in aberdeen were doing oil and filter change all in for £9. Simple fact is I cant buy the oil for so little, never mind the filter too. Ok, the filter wasnt a big brand name, and the oil was basic castrol stuff, nothing fancy either, but for the convenience and price, it was great...

option 1 - drive to motor factors and spend £15 or so on oil and filter, drive home, crawl under the car on a wet driveway, get 95% of old oil into the basin, 3% on the driveway and 2% up my sleeve, spend 5 minutes wrestling with tight oilfilter and poor-quality filter wrench, give up, stab screwdriver through the filter and unscrew, getting 60% of the oil into the basin, 30% down the engine block and 10% on the driveway. Refit new filter, crawl back under car to replace sump plug, fill with oil. Spend 5 minutes faffing with funnels and stuff, trying to get old oil from the basin into an old bottle to take to the tip, getting 80% in the bottle, 15% on the drive and 5% on my hands.

or

option 2 - drive to garage, sit in waiting room and watch as the car goes up on a 4-post ramp, and the chap does the whole job in 5 minutes. Pay £9.


I would never trust a big garage to something delicate to a car I loved, but something as unscrewup-able as an oil and filter change on a daily hack, they are the obvious choice.

My last experience witk Kwik Fit put me off for good. Sent the wife's Skoda Felicia in for a pair of front struts (as I didn't have the time to do it myself) got the job done on time and at reasonable cost.
About 3 months later we got a puncture on the motorway, and found that the spotty oik that fitted the strut, rather than look in the glovebox for the locking wheelnut key, hammered a socket onto the wheelnut, rendering it useless, and me unable to undo it with the key.

With a local specialist I find that they take more pride in their work as they need to keep up a reputation, whereas at Kwik Fit and the like, you may get a good time served mechanic, but you run the risk of getting a ham fisted YTS working on your motor, and making a mess.

Well, I had hoped that you guys would talk me out of taking it to one of those places, and you have!
Reanimation - that's exactly what it is! I feel guilty every time I work on the Bimmer with the Merc sat next to it not having progressed in months and months. But, getting the time and enthusiasm together to drop the oil is a bit easier than getting back into the swing of a full-on weld-a-thon...

The local parts place just called and said my oil filter is in. So maybe I should quit procrastinating and get on with it.

Thanks for the advice, and the horror stories!

Can you not do it yourself but skip the filter as a one-off? I've just done this on our Volvo as the change was long overdue and I forgot to get hold of a filter.

Have to say I had a brilliant experience of Kwik Fit here in Wolves the other week, totally against my expectations.

I've had experience of bad chain workers and bad independents, car garages are a minefield. For me it's just trial and error with what's available locally.