Introduction

At our garage we are frequently carry out servicing on a very large range of different vehicles. With that said, some car owners might not know what they need to bring with them on the day of the service.

This article has therefore been written to help you, when you are booking your car in for a service with us.

Car Service Records

A lot of car owners like to have their car service book stamped by us, when they have a service carried out.

Therefore, with this book, the car owner can simply flip open the book, and they will know exactly when the car was last serviced.

Also, when you sell your used car, sometimes the person or company that’s purchasing the vehicle will like to see the service records, that’s to show that the car has been correctly serviced at the correct intervals.

This makes a lot of sense, as if a car has jumped service intervals by a lot of miles, with no record of a service, well this might be a sign that the can hasn’t been maintained. Engine oils can therefore deteriorate for example over time, for example, lets take mineral oils as an example, they can build up deposits and become less effective at protecting the engine.

For example, if there are large leaps in-between servicing, for example a large amount of mileage with no stamp to show a service was carried out, well this can sometimes be an indicator that the car hasn’t been looked after.

Everybody normally has a bit of a horror story of going to see a used car that looks great, that’s in terms of the body work, but then on closer inspection they may notice discoloration on the engine oil cap and excess smoke being emitted from the exhaust! This is not a good sign when buying a used car!

This is often why when someone is looking for a used car, they like to see regular service intervals.

Locking wheel nuts

This is definitely something you don’t want to lose on your car, it’s often a very small piece of metal, which will be formed into a unique shape, this will fit exactly into than your alloy wheel locking nuts.

Without this our mechanics will not be able to easily remove the wheels.

The purpose of the locking wheel nut is so that there’s an extra security measure in place so that the alloy wheels on your car are better protected.

With that said, the locking wheel nut is often something that some car owners can easily lose in say the boot of their car, however when you go to the garage and you ask the mechanic to check your brakes over for instance, sometimes they need to take the alloy wheels off to do the check, so this part is required.

If you have lost the what locking wheel nut, then sometimes it can be quite expensive to replace this car part, so this is definitely something that you should put in a safe place.

Although the locking wheel nut might not be needed when we service some cars, its just good practice to keep it handy anytime you go to a local garage.

Do you have the password for your stereo on your vehicle?

It’s worth checking with us at the booking stage, prior to any work being carried out, or servicing work that we might carry out, if we need to remove the car’s battery or not?

As you can imagine on some vehicles depending on the make and the model of the car, it can be extremely restricted in terms of access under the bonnet of a car.

On some cars therefore the cars battery may need to be removed to allow for access, while working on the car. However, on some cars, not all, there will be a password that protects the radio, so do make sure that you have kept your password.

Various servicing options

When customers call us, occasionally they will say “they want to book their car in for a service”, however there are various types of servicing options to choose from.

For instance, your car might be due a “full service” an “interim service” or maybe just a routine oil change.

It is therefore dependent on the manufacturers specification as to when servicing should be carried out, and also when you’ve covered a certain amount of mileage. Sometimes on some cars, not all, it will occasionally tell you exactly when a service is required. We can offer advice over the phone if you are unsure which servicing option that you require, and when it is due for your vehicle.

Other car repair work

There are some garages situated here within Cardiff that only specialise in servicing of cars.

Now, that is all well and good, if you only require your car to be serviced, however, often a customer may ask for additional work, such as asking one of our mechanics to check over the car’s brakes, or let’s say if the exhaust on the car sounds a bit unusual?

That’s to say the exhaust may sound a bit louder than normal, then you may wish for our garage to check this over for you, so when some cars are dropped off for a service, sometimes the owner will wish to discuss another problem with the car that they may have.

So often when a car is brought into us for routine service, the car owner will ask our mechanics about something else they would like looked at.

This is worth bearing in mind when choosing a garage to service your car, as some garages, when the customer asks for say a “brake check”, the garage may well be unable to offer this, as some garages only specialise in the servicing of cars.

However, when requested, we can also offer car repair services, such as fixing faulty exhausts, brakes, batteries, electrical faults, DPF issues and much more, when asked to do so.

Book well in advance

We are a very popular garage; we regularly have a huge amount of repeat business, and a lot of customers come to us for our garage for servicing of their car.

Therefore, we recommend booking your car in with us for a service as far as possible in advance, then you can ensure that your car will have an allocated time and date your car to be serviced.