An oil change is part of my pre-flight checklist.

My car has also only been driven by a grandma to church every Sunday and to the market once a week.

 

If you go drive it, you can usually tell right away if the car was taken care of or not.

 

ask for receipts or records, plain and simple - i have an excel running with tabs of literally every event that's happened with my car since day one; and instead of keeping the paper receipt, i take a pic with my phone after i've recorded the odo/trip/avg readings. yeah, it's a little ocd haha

*edit* and this:

 

As stated already, not everyone saves reciepts or makes an excel spreadsheet.

 

I bought mine from someone who had atleast an inch to an inch and a half of all receipts forms anything ever done to the car. Was nice to know what has been done to the car before I got it.

 

I change mine every 2900-3k with royal purple I don't keep receipts I do it myself. I only use 91oct from chevron that's it.

 

Saving receipts is not difficult for anyone with basic organizational skills... no OCD required. Honestly, I would walk on any car for $10k+ that had no service records. Maybe I am crazy, but I have a folder in my filing cabinet with all maintenance, mod, and gas receipts since I bought it.

 

Bought my car from the original owner about a year ago had 108k miles , records of everything since date of purchase. Also a mid aged women. The car's maintenance was always done on spot according to records. Since then I have done all my oil changes every 3k with castrol edge. Also since i have 136k now I have done the 120k service on time and will continue to do so. This is the problem though because i do not have records of doing my service because I did all the oil changes myself and I had some of my mechanic friends do the 120k for me.

 

I have the same for the first 120k. Since... not so much. Lol.

 

I wonder how many people even bother to do a compression test when they buy a used car.

 

from working at a shop i can tell you its probably close to 5%. maybe its higher for the specialty shops.

compression and leakdown should be part of the buying checklist.

 

^agreed on compression and leakdown, especially with subarus / enthusiast driven cars (but i suppose it's needed on any car)

so far of the last 6 vehicles i bought, the last 4 came with folders full of photos, receipts, etc of vehicle history (one guy gave me a photo album, organized like 'baby pics', 'first mod!' , 'first crawl!' (it was a 4runner), 'first oil change!'

 

Id make sure this is done even if ur buying a used car from a dealership. I bought my 07 sti from john l. sullivan chevy in roseville on feb. 1st this year. june third i spun a bearing caused by two badly cracked ringlands. when i called the dealership to see all the compresssion and leak down numbers i was told that they take trade ins on a "act of good faith." as long as the car pass' a safty and smog test they clean them up and toss them on the lot..

 

Adding oil more than my mom did on her Dodge. Never got the oil changed on time and when she did it was JiffyLube. Never did any of the big maintenances until something broke. Never got CELs fixed until it was time for smog. When she got rid of it the original motor and tranny were doing just fine and had over 325k miles on them

 

I still have all the receipts and some pictures of my car. I have yet to put it all into a little binder like I want though.

I still even have the window sticker.