The Advantages of Having Your BMW Serviced Properly

In spite of the fact that having your BMW serviced properly can extend the life of the vehicle and help to keep it's resale value up, many people simply fail to do so. Then there are the owners and you may be one of them, who fail to recognize the difference between a tune up and a full servicing of their vehicle.

A tune up basically helps to maintain full performance and ideal fuel mileage but a full servicing helps to prolong the life of the vehicle and it's various components. This is with the exception of a tune up that includes an oil and filter change. Keeping clean oil in your car is very important.

So then just what are some of the items that you may want to put on a to do list for a more extensive servicing? Maintenance tasks that will help to keep your car in top shape and also to keep its resale value up? Items that if left unattended to, can lead to major repairs further down the road?

Of course everyone is familiar with an oil change. Oil is like the blood of the engine and if gets old and worn it won't do near as well a job of keeping all the moving parts lubricated. However; did you know that other fluids in your car can become degraded over time? Brake and power steering fluid for example.

If you live in a damp climate, they can degrade even faster. You see even though the reservoirs under the hood have tight fitting caps, they still breath in air as the motor heats up then cools. Each time bringing in a very small amount of moisture. One telltale sign of degraded fluid, is a brown milky color.

Of course these fluids do last a lot longer than motor oil but every five years or so, it doesn't hurt to have them drained and replaced. Leaving old crudded up brake or power steering fluid in your cars system means that seals aren't being properly lubricated and protected.

Another fluid that is all too often left in too long between changes is automatic transmission fluid. Let the fluid in an automatic transmission go bad and neglect to change it and in time some type of malfunction will result. Also even if you have a standard transmission it doesn't hurt to change out the gear oil in it every five years or so.

The gear box on the back end of your car is filled with gear oil and many people never change it out for the entire life of the vehicle. This gear oil in the rear differential should be changed out about every 40,000 miles or so. Particularly if you live in a rainy damp climate. There's a drain plug on the bottom and a fill hole on the side.