Car Maintenance

Does the severe service schedule apply to city drivers?

Manufacturers publish two maintenance schedules. The second, usually called severe service,specifies shorter intervals and applies to frequent short trips, extended idling, stop and gotraffic, and extremes of temperature. That description matches ordinary driving in Queens andManhattan almost exactly.

Most owners never read it, partly because nobody thinks of their commute as severe. But acar that shuttles between Long Island City and Midtown, sits in traffic on a bridge approach,and rarely runs for forty uninterrupted minutes is operating in exactly the conditions thesevere schedule was written for.

What gets checked during car maintenance?

• Oil and filter on the time based interval, because oil that never reachesfull temperature retains fuel and water that would otherwise boil off.
• Brakes measured rather than eyeballed, since brake life here tracks thenumber of stops rather than the mileage.
• Tires and alignment, because curb contact and potholes move geometry thatis set within fractions of a degree.
• Fluids including brake fluid, which absorbs moisture from the atmosphereand loses its boiling point regardless of how far the car is driven.
• Battery and charging, since short trips rarely fully replace whatstarting consumes.
• Suspension, which city road surfaces consume faster than open road use.

The point of a schedule is that most of these are inexpensive on time and expensive after afailure. Brake pads caught at the wear indicator cost pads. Caught after grinding, they costpads, rotors, and sometimes a caliper.