Subaru Honoring Warranty w/ non-dealer oil change?
 

Hi all,

Long time lurker, new member here.

My '16 WRX is due for an oil change soon and it's the first brand new vehicle I've owned - been doing my own oil changes for my previous cars. I'm not sure if there is a clause for Subaru that all services must be performed at dealer in order to retain the manufacturer warranty - if those that are knowledgeable on this subject and could chime in, that'd be much appreciated.

I've tried reading the owner's manual, but the lack of ctrl+f makes it easy to miss out - will search keyword after finding PDF version in meantime.

Thanks.

Edit: follow up question: if services were performed at an independent shop, will Subaru Honor the warranty?

As long as you have the receipt/proof of oil change, they will typically honor it.

I always wondering ^
I usually bought engine oils & filters in bundle.
Storage them in garage. DIY oil change whenever its due.

How to proof it ?
Just the sales receipts from engine oils & filters good enough ?

I don't know how DIY will prove oil change, I heard it should be valid too as long as you have receipt but when push comes to shove, they can argue you don't have a proof on kms or it wasn't done correctly blah blah blah...

Also keep in mind...

The dealership will always try to rip you off. They will almost NEVER follow what owners' manual says.

They will sell more service than what owners' manual says.

So for example, Subaru Legacy's oil change interval is every 12,000kms. Which is standard for many cars nowadays.

But they will try to push 3 months or every 5,000kms standard. This is not only waste or your money, but waste of our limited resources.
Mobil 1 says that you can push 24,000kms if you use synthetic.

The dealership will typically set up their own maintenance schedule to make more money.
They usually call it Type A service, Type B service, etc...

Yea how will they prove km? I do my own maintance too and I like buy oil filter gasket etc in bulk.... How will they know when I changed it?

True, I was with my wife the other day and she tells me she needs to get in for an oil change. I ask her, didn't you just have one not that long ago? Yes but every 5,000KM's I have to get it done....... I'm like uh what? grab that manual I bet you dinner it say's 10K or 12K intervals. Sure enough, I'm just pissed I didn't notice she was going in this often earlier, she's had the car like 3 years.

Stealership will always try and get you in more then needed. I never use them for service unless it's warranty related.

For my bike I buy the oil and filter, I keep a log and staple the receipts to the log. The log will say X amount of miles, the date and what I did. I've never had my bike serviced at the dealership but I have had 2 warranty issues, hasn't been a problem either time even though I don't service there.

Do you guys ever change the oil based on time lapse instead?

I did my first oil change at 1600km, 5W-20 in Dec.
Put 5W-30 in May. Plan to put 5W-20 in again in Nov.
And just going to continue in that pattern in 6 month intervals.

My car is daily driven, but I'm only averaging just under 1000km/month

Maybe I'm just trying to find an excuse to work on my car more frequently??

6 months might be overkill.

A lot of car manufacture say 12 months. (although some Subarus are 7.5 months for mineral oil)
If you use synthetic, you can go 2 year and 24,000kms interval.
In fact, a lot of Ford vehicles have 2 year interval in Europe.

Unless you are using your car for heavy use, such as hauling something or on race track, where the engine will be revving up to the redline almost 2% of the time, the oil will de-grade quicker.
But for daily use, most engine will see the redline like 0.00001% of time, so it's not a big deal.

I once went to Acura dealer to do an oil change, they kept selling me this Type C service or whatever. (Dealerships make up their own chart to show customers for maintenance)
They also told me that I need oil change every 5,000km and all that crap. Which is complete BS.
They had several things that aren't even recommended on owners manual, or something that's way too early to check.

For example, if your owners' manual tells you to inspect brake fluid every 30,000 kms, the dealership will include that inspection every 15,000 kms or even 10,000 kms to make more money.

Same thing happened at motorcycle dealership.
Kawasaki recommends every 12,000km oil change for their motorcycles, but they insisted 3,000km(yea, i know) interval.
Needless to say, Kawasaki dealer had their own chart for maintenance too.

Anyways, I actually called up Honda Canada and asked if those BS maintenance is necessary to keep my warranty, and they said no.
Also Kawasaki Canada told me the same thing, just to follow the owners manual and I won't have a problem with warranty.

What's interesting is though, both Honda and Kawasaki didn't seem to care that dealerships are selling more frequent interval to the customers.
Because each motorcycle shop or dealer can do whatever they want as long as it's meeting the warranty standard.
They said as long as my oil change interval is more frequent than owners manual, they don't care.

So in theory, I can do an oil change every 1km if I wanted to, and still keep my warranty.
I know what they're saying but still...it's a rip off.

Anyways, oil nowadays are so well engineered. If you do Google search, you will see many people running 15,000 mile(24,000km) on synthetic and taking old oil to the lab, and finding out that it barely de-graded. Also apparently the black color doesn't really tell you much.

Just to add, when I called up Honda Canada and Kawasaki Canada, the service guys seemed they were actually surprised that vehicles nowadays don't need much maintenance to keep the warranty.
So I guess that's how dealerships train their employees? or maybe they were just trying to act dumb, I don't know.

I just did a quick Google search and found this:

Stop Changing Your Oil! | Edmunds.com

"The majority of automakers today call for oil changes at either 7,500 or 10,000 miles, and the interval can go as high as 15,000 miles in some cars."

so yea..7,500 miles to 15,000 miles seems like the standard.

Car manufacturers can't legally say you HAVE to do oil changes with their dealer unless it's provided free of charge.

Warranty will be honoured contingent you kept receipts from a shop of your choice or a receipt of oil and filter along with the date and kilometer reading you of when did your own oil change

There is no reason you should be void warranty unless you have done something (mods) that caused the issue where it wouldn't have otherwised failed; or the car is a rebuild.
It'd be in favor of the dealer to perform that warranty job anyways since they get paid for the job from the manufacture. ex:Subaru, Toyota, Honda, BMW.
As for timpos statement, I would go with whatever the owners manual says. I wouldn't risk going over 2yr/25k per oil change just to save 30-80$ you spend per oil change.
I personally change my own oil once a year after i take it out of storage even though im well under 5k kms. The oil degrades over time and you dont want to be running old degraded oil in your car.
Also don't know what acura dealer you go to thats telling you to change oil every 5k but late model (early 2000s and up) honda/acuras have a oil life gauge which tells you when your next oil change is due.

I only change the oil on my SUV once a year, it's an annual thing. I ride my motorcycle whenever it's not raining and I live close to the office so I'm only putting 9-10K a year on my vehicle. I change the oil on my motorcycle more often.

It was very long time ago.

Acura dealership in Victoria, I think they're gone now and turned into Kia dealership.

http://i.imgur.com/NFJPtOw.jpg

lol

:thumbs:

That's the perfect example of dealership BS.
That chart was NOT made by Nissan Canada, it was made by the dealership itself.

If dealership ever tells you that you need to do those services to retain your warranty, call up Nissan Canada just like I did.
They will tell you exactly what needs to be done, and how often.

Check out Nissan Canada's Maintenance Schedule: Nissan Owners - Vehicle Maintenance

The interval for Schedule #1 and #2 have been shortened significantly, and looks like they have added mysterious #3 and #4 maintenance. :okay:

Nissan Canada has following maintenance:
Schedule #1 Maintenance - Every 8,000km or 6 month
Schedule #2 Maintenance - Every 16,000km or 12 month

The Dealership chart shows this:
Schedule #1 Maintenance - Every 6,000km or 3 month
Schedule #2 Maintenance - Every 12,000km or 6 month
Schedule #3 Maintenance - Every 24,000km or 12 month
Schedule #4 Maintenance - Every 48,000km or 24 month

Am I the only one doing my oil changes every 5000km? :S

If you get your oil changes done by another shop, try to get them to write your KM onto the invoice every time. This is fine for warranty usually, unless you're on lease stating that you have to bring it in to the dealer everytime.

On another note, for Subaru's warranty you can't have any modifications if anything happens to your engine, like intake, exhaust, etc. My friend's 2012 STI did blow up a few weeks after he tuned it, was running stage 2 and then he just swapped everything back to stock, using all the original bolts and parts and he got a new engine from Subaru lol. Up to you if you want to risk warranty with that though

I do mine every 5000kms as well =p just cuz i can (work at dealership)