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Who has gotten they're 30k mile maintenance done? I just called and my dealer said its going to cost $350![IMG]i/expressions/face-icon-small-mad.gif[/IMG] I was like wtf? I better get like a whole new ride for that much! I am pretty sure the manual says what is involved with this but if anyone knows off the top of their head what exactly do they do at 30k and can I take it anywhere else? Thanx.

 
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Best to get it done by the dealer if you still have a warranty, anybody else doing it might cause your warranty to be voided. The Nissan place I work for is doing mine, only because I don't have a warranty le.ft. Some of it though you can do yourself if you are familiar with turning wrenches to save some money

 
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At Houston-area dealerships (John Eagle, David McDavid, Sterling McCall / AJ Foyt, Russell & Smith, Clear Lake, Goodson), here's what a 30k on a 7th gen Civic includes:

- change oil + filter
- change transmission fluid (on automatics only)
- rotate/inflate tires
- check/adjust brakes (replace pads if worn to <= 20%, additional charge for pads)
- change coolant
- change brake fluid (including bleeding the brake lines/calipers)
- change air filter
- change A/C filter

There may be some other stuff listed in the Helm's manual, but this is pretty much all that they do. Mechanics are always looking to upsell, so they'll probably inspect your CV boots, engine mounts, et al to see if there is anything else they can sell to you.

You're right - $300-400 for a 30k service is a complete ripoff. It takes me about 30 mins. to do all of this stuff... the 7th gen Civic is a really easy car to do a 30k service on. This is because you rarely have to perform a valve adjustment on them at 30k, as is the case with older model Accords and Civics (just FYI - Honda Passports are probably the most difficult Hondas to perform 30k services on).

I know guys who work at all of the Houston dealerships, so depending on how far you want to drive and what your/their schedule is like, I can hook you up with one of these guys. They'll usually do side jobs for about 1/3 or 1/4 of what the dealership will charge you. Actually I could do the 30k myself for you, but I'm extremely busy nowadays and probably don't have much time (incidentally, I don't work at a Honda dealership anymore).

If you do decide to take it to a dealership, DON'T take it to John Eagle. That's the dealership I used to work at, and they take so many shortcuts it's not funny, not to mention that they are a bunch of cheap asses. Instead of using genuine Honda motor oil, coolant, tranny fluid, and brake fluid, they just use the cheap *** Quaker State stuff that they buy in bulk from the distributor. The only genuine Honda part they use is the Honda oil filter. In addition, none of the mechanics at John Eagle bother to bleed the brake calipers / brake lines when they replace the brake fluid. Yes that's right - they just take an air vacuum and suck the brake fluid out from the master cylinder, leaving all of the old brake fluid in the calipers and brake lines.

A really quality shop in Houston is McDavid Honda. They use all genuine Honda stuff, and they don't take shortcuts. Expect to pay out the ***, though, if you do go to them. Also, the entire shop closes down from noon to 1 pm while everyone is out at lunch. McDavid gets tons of work, so it's sometimes difficult to get an appointment with them.

If you're interested, just drop me a line at aaronechang@email.com and I'll hook you up with one of my friends who works at a dealership who can do the 30k really cheap for you.

 
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yo htown, i know u work for honda but dont they reseat the valves also on the 30k maintanence? thats what i was told.

 
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Are you serious?? I bought my car from John Eagle and I just recently got my oil changed and I thought it was kinda funny that the "next oil change" sticker said Quaker State. I just thought that maybe it was specially formulated for Honda. That's really messed up. Thanks for the the heads up. I will go to the Happy Honda from now on. I think they use Genuine Honda Parts. Its just easier for me to get it done their since I live like two minutes away. Will McDavid take my car even though I bought it at JohnEagle?? I heard that some dealerships won't take a car if you didn't buy it from them.

 
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Man! I got my car from John Eagle too and I always go there for service. Thanks for the heads up man. I just got my transmission fluid changed bacause I was in some high water and I just replaced my brake pads and shoes. So the other stuff I can just get done elsewhere right? It should be alot cheaper I am guessing? Thanks again.

 
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At least at John Eagle, we didn't do valve adjustments on a 7th gen unless the engine was rattling like crazy and it definitely needed it. It's really up to the individual shop and mechanic - the shop has to decide what they're going to do and if they're going to enforce it, and it's up to the mechanic to actually do it. Put simply - if the shop isn't going to make sure that all their mechanics bleed the brakes when changing the brake fluid, you can bet that no one there is going to bother to do it. The only way to make sure that a mechanic does what you want is to tell him what to do, and then sit there and actually watch and make sure he does it.

There is a lot of B.S. going on in the automotive service industry - on a few occasions I was told by my service manager to do some things that I considered unethical (which was one of the reasons why I decided to quit). I can't help but think that most of the B.S. can be eliminated if shops would move away from the hourly/flag format and go to a salary format. In the hourly/flag pay scale, you're guaranteed ZERO pay and are paid the same for each job whether it takes you 1 hour to finish it or 3 hours to finish it. So 99% of mechanics are going to take the most shortcuts possible to finish the job in the absolutely least amount of time, regardless of whether they're doing it the right way or the way that's best for the customer.

If shops paid mechanics by salary, then it would be infinitely better because: 1) mechanics would stop their constant bitching every fall and winter when business is slow, 2) morale would improve dramatically because mechanics have at least some guarantee of financial stability, and 3) customer satisfaction would improve by leaps and bounds because mechanics could afford to take some extra time to make sure the job is done 100% right.

 
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Amen to that Htown! If I don't get that done at the dealer is my warranty voided? Can I use my warranty if I take it elsewhere?

 
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It shouldn't affect your warranty at all if you decide to do it yourself or take it to a non-Honda service shop. But just to be on the safe side - if you ever have a problem with your car in the future and you take it into a dealership, just don't mention anything about you or anybody else working on the car. No need to give the dealership any additional reason to deny your warranty claim.

The funny thing is - some dealerships seem to warranty any and every thing that comes through the shop. For some reason, the service manager at John Eagle wanted the overall repair #'s of the service shop to be really high on the monthly district report. So he approved basically every single warranty request that came through. I saw some transmissions come in where it was obvious the owner absolutely abused the car. One manual tranny I worked on had the synchros on all of the gears totally gone. I mean - how could you mess up the first gear synchros?? Haha... Anyways, John Eagle covered it under warranty and if the owner keeps driving it that way, I fully expect that transmission to be back in the shop in a year or so. Other shops, on the other hand, are dicks about it and are always looking for an excuse not to cover a repair under warranty.

Every mechanic I worked with always complained about having to do warranty repairs. The way the pay system is set up, a warranty job pays the mechanic about 1/2 (or less) than if the customer paid for it out of their own pocket. For example - a transmission replacement on a Civic would normally pay the mechanic roughly 4 hours under CP (Customer Pays), but if it's a warranty job, you only get paid about 2 hours for the job. What the mechanics fail to realize, though, is that if it wasn't for the manufacturer's warranty policy, they'd automatically lose about 30-40% of their business. If you tell a customer he/she has to pay parts + $60/hr labor they'll either just decline the repair or take it to an independent shop that's a lot cheaper. I don't think I ever saw a customer decline a repair that was covered by warranty. "Why yes, ma'am... you don't have to pay anything. Your busted motor mount is covered under warranty..."

 
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No,it's just regular old conventional Quaker State / Pennzoil 5w-30. They have a huge tanker full of it at the oil change station, and every week and a half or so, a big oil truck drives up and fills the tank. John Eagle uses conventional 5w-30 on all their cars, except for S2000's (they use genuine Honda conventional 10w-30) and Insights and Civic Hybrids (the IMA engines get genuine Honda 0w-20).

Occasionally we'd get customers who bring their own oil, and in those cases I would always use the customer's oil and then leave the motor oil bottle containing the leftover oil on the passenger side floor (just to assure the customer that yes I remembered to use his/her oil and that I didn't just put Quaker State in his car and steal the good oil for myself). We'd also get customers who didn't bring their own oil and requested us to use synthetic oil. And then the service dept. would charge the customer about $7/quart for the Quaker State synthetic oil, which was probably inferior to the $4.25/quart Mobil-1 synthetic you can buy at Wal-Mart.

On one occasion a customer requested sythentic blend oil in his/her car, but the parts dept. was out of both synthetic blend and synthetic oil. So the service manager just told me to put regular conventional oil in the car. "The customer won't know the difference," he explained. I don't think the service advisor ever told the customer or made a mention of it on the ticket (switching conventional for synthetic), and I was pretty upset. As I can imagine anybody would be if a shop used conventional oil in their car but still charged them for synthetic.

And I just feel I have to mention the Leading Edge oil dumping program. For some odd reason, John Eagle ended up with a humongous surplus of Leading Edge synthetic blend 5w-30 and 10w-30 oil at their warehouse. We all referred to Leading Edge as "Leading Sludge" - because after 3000 miles of using Leading Sludge, your valvetrain developed this huge mass of sludge on it. I think what happened was that some parts guys at John Eagle originally thought Leading Sludge was the **** and bought a huge order of it to sell to customers. But after one of the parts guys actually used it on his car, he found out it really was ****. [IMG]i/expressions/laugh2.gif[/IMG][IMG]i/expressions/laugh2.gif[/IMG]

So anyways, we were stuck with this gargantuan order of Leading Sludge that we had to get rid of somehow. So we all had orders from our service manager to use Leading Sludge on all of our loaner guys and all of the used cars that customers traded in. "Get rid of that **** as fast as you can," were his exact words. Sometimes when I did a used car inspection (prepping a traded-in used car to be sold again), I would forget and use the Quaker State oil and I would usually get bitched at for not helping to get rid of the Leading Sludge.

So moral of the story - if you buy a used car from John Eagle Honda, do an oil change immediately (don't wait 3000 miles).

To this day, I'm not sure if John Eagle still has any Leading Edge left. I've still got a ton of it lying around in my garage. It's actually an extremely good oil for dyno tests and for drag strip runs. The reason is - Leading Edge is probably one of the thinnest oils I have ever seen in my life. Which is GOOD for producing power but BAD for protecting the engine. ImportBuilders has done tests on all of the motor oils, and they've concluded that Leading Edge produces the most power. So I guess if you do decide to use it, just use it for the day you want to dyno or go to the drag strip, and change it out immediately afterwards.

 
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[QUOTE]Quote
[hr]Originally posted by: htowncivicEX
Sorry dude I got carried away and failed to answer your question. Yes - any dealership will still take your car. I mean - it's $$ for them either way (regardless of where you bought it), so they'll take it.

David McDavid really is a good shop with high quality standards. They use all genuine Honda fluids in all of their oil changes and services. At John Eagle, what happened was that all of the mechanics would use the cheap *** Quaker State stuff in the customer cars and then keep the genuine Honda stuff for their own cars. Like I said before - if the dealership isn't going to tell their mechanics to use genuine Honda stuff, then you can bet that they're not going to do it.