Understanding Preventative Maintenance

Your mother always told you that a ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, this is no truer than as applied to your vehicle.

3ZERO3 Motorsports thinks you need to listen to your mother. Or at least listen to our blog writers.

Maintenance and repair are two terms often lumped together in our industry, but perhaps not always adequately explained or understood.

Unscheduled service and repair can be disruptive, expensive, and generally unpleasant. Preventative maintenance is a proactive process, and can also be defined as scheduled maintenance. It is the goal and scope of preventative maintenance to identify when specific components will need to be replaced so as to preclude fundamental failure, damage, and expense.

VW, Audi, and Porsche manufacturers all create maintenance schedules based on specific vehicle design and hardware in their product. The maintenance schedules also play a factor in their quality assurance process. To ensure that your vehicle is operating as you expect it to, it will require preventative maintenance on a regular  basis.

The benefit to adhering to these maintenance schedules is two fold:

It is your best guarantee to prevent unexpected repairs.

It is your best guarantee that your ownership experience will be as positive and cost effective as possible.

Often these preventative maintenance schedules are referred to as 20K maintenance, 40k maintenance etc. Preventative also includes simple services like oil and filter changes, tire rotations, and inspections.

In keeping your best interests at heart, we constantly integrate updated maintenance schedules from the manufacturer for all VW, Audi, and Porsche vehicles into our service protocol. While it is important to understand what these recommendations are, our perspective is in no way dogmatic and inflexible. For example;

You bring your 2008 Audi A4 in for a 40,000 mile service. As part of this service, Audi recommends that all of your spark plugs are replaced. At 3ZERO3 Motorsports, we will certainly remove and inspect each of these items, but if they are inspected and determined that they still have a significant amount of life left in them, then replacement at that point will be your option.

Another factor in understanding preventative maintenance is understanding the climate in which your car lives. In Denver and Colorado,  we experience extreme temperature change almost everyday. The heating and cooling of rubber and plastic components coupled with the arid climate means that we see items like CV boots, and timing belts dry out and crack much sooner than in humid and temperate climates.

Consider how many times you have driven up and down from the mountains thru winding and twisty roads. Now compare that type of driving with someone in the midwest where elevation change only happens in elevators, and tight turns are only experienced in Costco parking lots.

Now you begin to see why your Colorado car will require a unique perspective to proper vehicle maintenance and care.

Our experience, passion, and personal ownership of these vehicles benefits you for exactly these reasons. VW, Audi, and Porsche as manufacturers cannot detail a maintenance schedule for every state and climate. However, that is exactly our approach when it comes to your preventative maintenance and quality assurance.

Our use of factory special tools, and OEM parts as well as understanding your unique vehicle needs are just a few reasons why 3ZERO3 Motorsports is the best choice for your vehicles preventative maintenance needs, regardless of age or mileage

Comments

Aug 13, 2009
Jonathan Smith
The only shop you may EVER go to where you know if they say you need to get something taken care of, they are not pulling your leg. Honest guys, with a Quattro heart. You can always trust these guys.


Aug 14, 2009
phil
My a4 has collected water where are the drainage plugs located? please can you help


Aug 19, 2009
Max
Phil,
I would love to help you with the water collection issue you are having with you A4.
Have you received my emails ? If not please contact me at max@3zero3motorsports.com
For now a few questions :
When you say that water is collecting near the drain plugs, do you mean in the battery box at the base of the windsheild ?
Also, what year is your Audi A4 ? and do you park it outside ?

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