No more dealer oil changes after the first!

Might be easier to call out the dealership service departments that are good... The number will be much smaller.

 

West herr Toyota of orchard park. Where they damage your vehicle, make it right, you go back again for another service and they damage it again and then make it right. Mines going to the body shop Tuesday.

 

"HA-HA........we lured in another sucker with our catchy ads! Imma dent his fender my-SELF this time."

 

Lol is the the ceo

 

A lot of good independent mechanics at one time worked in dealerships, saw the lousy work they do, and left to start their own shops. Seek them out, you get much better quality service.

 

Dealerships are in no way looking out for your best interest. You ARE a number, nothing more. And surprisingly this is where the bulk of a dealers money is made, in service. Are they out to get you? No. They aren't that smart. They have sales quotas just like new and used cars sales, but in the end, they are the ones providing you a service you are paying for. My advice is ALWAYS find a good local shop to do your work. I ahve one here when my regular small shop mechanic doesnt ahve the time or tools to do something.

 

And if you do like your dealer, stick to the maintenance schedule in the owners manual. Not “their recommended” plan which contains upselling.

 

A tad of oil residue, I guess it will happen.

the scratches, that really sucks… nobody will ever treat your stuff as good as you would, and that’s unfortunate.

Sadly, my first oil change on the 4Runner last month at the dealer went a something like this after I got home and found oil pooling in my garage… loose oil drain plug leaking into the factory skid plates. Glad I caught it later that day rather than the wife catch it a week later with even less oil in the pan…

 

I bet you it’s not leaking because it’s loose. Chances are they ruined the thread, possibly by over tightening, or if they might have cross-threaded it. Seen it before…

edit: if it continues to leak, you could take it back and tell them it’s leaking. Or do the oil yourself next time, but be ready with a new drainplug, and washer.

It might get tricky if the thread on the pan itself is ruined. Im not sure id want to try to chase it with a tap while it’s on the car and get shavings in the oil.

 

Found one of those shops when I had my Audi and it was great. They'd let me hang out in the shop while they were working on my car and let me bug them with questions to the point that I started feeling pretty confident I doing some of my own work. They made it look a lot easier than it was though! They'd even grab lunch and bring extra for me once in a while. Not that I liked being at the shop with my car spending money, but they made it a good experience. Learned a lot and met some good people.

 

Yikes! What dealer was that??

 

Wowww...what was the end results just a loose plug somehow or some stripping / cross threading?

 

Unfortunately one of the ABQ, NM toyota dealerships…

 

Same day i noticed the leak. Took off the access panel and oil poured out. Drain plug was barely on there. I tightened it with my hand to stop leak. Torqued to 10ft lb to get back to the dealer to yell a bit.
I will probably end up working on the rig myself moving forward.

 

I think I am going the same route myself. Can’t even trust the dealer for a simple oil change.

 

How are you all doing service on your own and keeping record in case warranty issues come up? Buying everything at a dealership and saving invoices? Auto zone/Napa parts and saving invoices?

Buying elsewhere and saving the invoices is all I have ever done on my motorcycles for years, but the darned things never have air conditioning cooling issues or power windows that stop working before warranty is long gone

 

Yeah. I haven’t done my own maintenance in over 20 years. But I’m going to start doing some of it with the 4Runner.

 

We used to take our '99 4R to a quick change place close by, until I noticed oil dripping on the garage floor for three days straight. I crawled underneath and traced the leak to the oil filter, which was barely on! It took two full turns to get it to seat, and would have probably worked its way off on the road trip we were about to take. Since then, we switched to another oil changing place and never had another problem in the 12 years since I've paid someone else to deal with disposing of old oil.

 

Started doing my own mx too after toyota care was over, and i always said no to their carwashes.

 

I had to repeatedly tell them to not put mine through, only touch less for me or a nice microfiber hand wash. When I was in the service managers office I saw on his computer the camera in the wash smacking the cars.

 

I got that first phone call yesterday from the dealer "we see that you're at 10K miles on your new 22 TRD Pro. Time for your first free oil change and tire rotation! Shall I put you on our schedule?"... Ummm... no. I've changed my own oil and rotated my own tires twice already and plan to continue to do so. "But, sir, these are no cost to you!". Ha... Please remove my name from your call list.