Car Servicing

Independent car servicing on every make and model: interim, full and major services, carried out with manufacturer-approved oil and OEM filtration, and backed by over 30 years of combined automotive and electrical experience.

We did not start out doing routine servicing. We started with the difficult work: the electrical faults, the module problems and the diagnostic jobs other garages had already given up on. The same technicians and the same equipment now look after scheduled servicing too, which means your annual service is carried out by people who spend the rest of the week solving faults most workshops send away.

Every service here includes a full diagnostic scan as standard. Not as an extra, not as a line on the invoice.

Everything we do under car servicing is below, with what it costs and how long it takes. Which one your car needs depends on its mileage, its age and what its own schedule asks for. Give us the registration and we will tell you.

For your average car we recommend servicing every year. Not necessarily a big service, but definitely an oil change.

Advances in technology for items like spark plugs, moving from nickel twenty years ago to platinum and now iridium in many cars, mean you do not need to spend big every year. But even if your manufacturer tells you "every 2 years", it is sensible to do at least once a year. That is especially important for vehicles with turbos, timing chains and wet belts.

A turbo runs its bearings on your engine oil, at temperatures that cook it. A timing chain runs on oil pressure and oil film. A wet belt sits in the oil, and when it breaks down the debris blocks the oil pickup. On any of those, tired oil is not a saving.

If you cover more than about 12,000 miles a year, an interim service at the six-month mark keeps the oil inside its intended life. If you cover very little, the twelve-month interval still applies. Oil ages with time and cold starts, not only with distance.

Car service intervals — what your schedule is actually asking for

Most modern cars run variable rather than fixed intervals, adjusting to how the car is really driven. A car doing short cold journeys will ask for attention sooner than one covering motorway miles.

We read your car's own service requirement rather than working to an average, and set out your car service intervals for the years ahead: what falls due, and when. It means servicing becomes something you plan and budget for rather than something that arrives as a surprise. There is no charge for that advice.

This is the question underneath almost every servicing question. Below are the figures the trade works to. Your own handbook wins where the two disagree. But as a picture of what a car costs to keep on the road properly, it holds up.

Every service

Longer intervals

Wear items — condition, not calendar

One note on that last row, so nobody arrives expecting something we do not sell. We check tread depth, pressures and tyre condition at every service and tell you exactly where you stand, but we do not supply or fit tyres. There is nothing in it for us either way, which is rather the point: when we tell you a tyre has a year left in it, that is what we found, not what we are selling.

Three service levels, and the difference between them is a list, so here is the list rather than a summary of it.

Where an item falls due on your car's own schedule, it is carried out whether or not it appears above.

Every figure above is a starting price, not a fixed one. A service is priced against your car rather than against an average, and until the car is in front of us we are working from what its schedule says rather than from what we have seen.

What moves the number is straightforward and there is no mystery in it. An engine specified for six litres of a long-life oil costs more to fill than one that takes four. A schedule calling for two filters costs less than one calling for four. And if brake fluid or spark plugs happen to fall due in the same visit, that is work being added, so the figure goes up; equally, if something we expected turns out not to be due yet, it comes off.

So the exact number is the one we give you after we have looked at the car, and anything added to or taken off the job is a phone call before it happens, never a surprise on the invoice. Call with the registration and the mileage and we will get you very close before you even book.

This is the question we get asked most by owners of cars still inside the dealer warranty period, and the answer is better than most people expect.

Under the UK block exemption rules, having your car serviced at an independent garage does not invalidate the manufacturer's warranty, provided three conditions are met. The manufacturer's own service schedule has to be followed. Parts and lubricants of matching quality have to be used. And the service has to be properly recorded.

We meet all three, and we can show you each one:

• The schedule — we read your car's own service requirement rather than working to a generic interval.

• The parts — manufacturer-approved oil, not oil that merely meets the grade, and OEM filtration. More on that below.

• The record — we stamp the service book and update the digital service record in the manufacturer's system. Increasingly it is the digital record, not the stamp, that a manufacturer actually checks.

One thing worth knowing: this covers the manufacturer's warranty. If your car is on PCP finance or a lease, the finance company may have its own separate conditions about where the car is serviced. That is a contract question rather than a warranty one, and it is worth checking your agreement.

Simply put — we have the skills and experience to do the job properly, and we don't cut corners.

We use approved oil. There is a very big difference between an oil that "meets the grade" and one that is approved by the vehicle manufacturer. Meeting the grade is essentially self-certified by the oil company. Brands like Fuchs, Shell and Castrol have undergone testing by the actual vehicle manufacturer to be certified for use. These are often factory fill — at the point your car was new, this is what was in it.

Our filtration comes from OEM suppliers. Brands such as Mann, Hengst and Mahle are regularly on our shopping list. A filter is not a commodity. It is the only thing standing between abrasive debris and your bearings, and the cheap ones fail in ways you do not find out about until much later.

Every car gets scanned, with the right software. We hold manufacturer diagnostic software rather than relying on a generic code reader: ODIS and VCDS for VW, Audi, Skoda and SEAT, ISTA for BMW and Mini, XENTRY for Mercedes-Benz, Pathfinder for Land Rover and Jaguar, Techstream for Toyota and Lexus. Alongside those we run Snap-on, Launch, Bosch, Autocom and Autologic, and for the awkward faults a Picoscope 4425A. Most expensive faults started out as cheap faults nobody looked for.

We stand behind the work. Every job carries a minimum of 12 months or 12,000 miles' warranty, and we have 44 five-star Google reviews from customers who have been through it.

Does this cost more than other garages?

As an independent workshop our focus is absolutely on the best service, the best quality parts and the best work. Could we save ourselves money by sacrificing those three principles? Yes. Do we want to? No.

Take a look at some of the large fast-fit chains. A "full service" from them does not include spark plugs, pollen filters or fuel filters. If you ask me, that is absolutely outrageous. Calling something a full service and then leaving out the filters is a pricing decision dressed up as a service level. We would rather explain an invoice than pad one.

Servicing a car that is out of warranty

Once the dealer period ends, both the maths and the car change. You are free to have it serviced wherever you like, and the question becomes simpler: who has the equipment and the experience to look after it properly, at a price that reflects the work rather than the showroom.

That is when most cars arrive here. It is also when a car stops needing only an oil change: the electrical faults, the sensor problems, the "sealed for life" fluids that were never going to last the life of the car.

Most garages can change oil and filters. Far fewer can tell you why a warning light keeps coming back after the fault has supposedly been fixed.

This is the part of the business we built first. Intermittent electrical faults, modules that will not communicate, cars stuck in limp mode, blocked filters, gearbox behaviour nobody else can pin down. These are the jobs that arrive here after somewhere else has run out of ideas.

That capability is not in a different department. It is in the bay next to yours. So if a service turns up something bigger, your car does not need to go anywhere else:

• car diagnostics — finding the cause, rather than replacing parts and hoping

• auto electrician — wiring, charging, parasitic drain and module faults

• dpf cleaning — blocked diesel particulate filters, cleaned on the car rather than removed

• gearbox repair — manual, automatic, DSG and dual-clutch

1. You book — by phone or through the contact form. Give us the registration and the current mileage.

2. We confirm — we read what your car is actually asking for and tell you what is due before you arrive.

3. Service and scan — the scheduled work is carried out across our six ramps, and the car is scanned for stored and pending fault codes at no extra charge.

4. We call first — if anything outside the booking turns up, we stop and ring you. Nothing gets done, and nothing gets charged for, until you have said yes.

5. You get it in writing — what was done, what was checked, and what is worth keeping an eye on before next time. The service book is stamped and the digital record updated before the car leaves.

A courtesy car is available and needs booking in advance. Collection and delivery is sometimes possible depending on the job and where you are, so ask when you book.

Technical Vehicle Solutions Ltd 10a The Moor, Melbourn, Royston SG8 6ED

Telephone: 07535 919 160 · 01763 230 411

Six ramps, a courtesy car available if you book it in advance, and 44 five-star Google reviews. We are on The Moor in Melbourn, a few minutes from Royston and within easy reach of Cambridge and north Hertfordshire. For the towns and villages we cover, see our locations page.

About the workshop, and who wrote this

Daniel — Owner, Technical Vehicle Solutions Ltd

I have been in the motor trade since 2008, eighteen years, nine of them here. I trained with my father rather than in a main dealer, across every part of an independent aftermarket garage, and qualified in several disciplines along the way: NVQ Level 3, IMI accreditation and IMI ATA, and City & Guilds 2365 in electrical work. I also hold the MOT tester qualification. We do not offer MOT testing here and never have; I mention it only because of what sitting that qualification teaches you about how a car is actually assessed.

What I specialise in is diagnostic work. That is what the business was built on, and it is why a routine service here is carried out by people who spend the rest of the week finding faults other workshops have given up on.

People ask why I started Technical Vehicle Solutions. The honest answer is that I was bored of making money the easy way.

The workshop itself

A company number and a named insurer can be checked in about a minute. "Fully insured" cannot, which is why it is written this way round.

If you take one thing from this page, take this: the right car servicing interval for a car you intend to keep is twelve months, whatever the schedule on the screen says. Everything else on this page follows from that one line.

Under 12,000 miles a year, in a car with no turbo and no wet belt, a full car service once a year is the whole story. Over 12,000 miles, or short cold journeys, or a turbo, a timing chain or a wet belt in the engine, and an interim service at the six-month mark earns its money by keeping the oil inside its working life instead of well past it. Every second year, whichever of those two patterns you are on, the major service items come round: spark plugs, brake fluid, and the fuel filter on a diesel.

And if you would rather not work any of it out, you do not have to. Give us the registration and the mileage, and we will tell you what your car's own schedule is asking for, what it will cost, and what can safely wait until next time.