[Chhanda Das]

If you have the time and energy to service your car by yourself then DIY maintenance is definitely possible. For example, we do most of the servicing of our Creta by ourselves at home with a few basic tools. I grew up in an old school way and hence I was not ashamed/afraid to service our car including oil changes, brake maintenance, joint lubrication, etc by myself despite being a female. DIY maintenance has resulted in the average annual service costs coming to less than INR 1500 for my car. Now my son has taken over and he does most of the servicing by himself. Personally, I feel that most of the current generation of car owners have become too lazy/ashamed/afraid to service their own cars by themselves compared to decades ago when many people could be seen servicing their own cars by themselves typically on a Sunday

Distance covered has very little to do with the maintenance schedule of low-usage cars. What matters is that you have to stick to the service schedule and as others have pointed out, your usage is not exactly low. Also, if we service our car by ourselves, we do not have to worry about shady service centres and all their nefarious tricks. Even with good service centres, we can never be assured of quality work. For example, I can guarantee that not many of us have seen a service centre (including authorized ones) use a torque wrench to tighten an engine oil drain bolt on a regular consumer car. The result is often overtightened bolts, cross-threading on the oil pan, etc. Hence, a proper DIY approach is always better. And the satisfaction gained from a good DIY service is priceless. I would also suggest trying and getting your hands on the workshop manual booklet for your car to help you maintain your car properly.

Wish you the best of luck for a DIY approach to maintaining your car

[viXit]

My honda's done 6 years, 35k kms. Pretty low?

There's a reason vehicle maintenance is time/kms based.

Whatever mark is reached earlier. Simple.

[slipperyslipped]

Thank you everyone, a lot of great information shared in the thread.

I will continue taking the car to an ASS/FNG for annual service.

I also got your point - my car has done typical mileage haha. However, I should have clarified the vast majority of that was done pre-pandemic. I believe it only does 30-50KMs a month these days.

Still, from what I've gathered from this thread, an annual service done by professionals is the way to go regardless.

Thanks everyone!

[nitinralli]

Originally Posted by slipperyslipped

I'm sitting at the Mahindra Service Centre as my XUX 500 is in for it's 20,000KM service.

The thing is, I have only driven it for 17,000KMs over a period of 2 years. Yep... If I recall correctly, the car has been serviced 4 times in this period.

My question is, what should be the ideal maintenance schedule if a car is being driven this rarely. And is it possible for someone not very mechanically inclined to do maintenance themselves?

Thank you.

Always read manuals.

XUV500 has a service schedule of 10000Kms or One year (whichever is earlier). So if your running is less than get it serviced from MASS every year.