75,000 km PM service for my Honda Civic FD2

It's been roughly 10 months or ~5000 traveled kilometers since my car was in for preventive maintenance. Not that I'm saving cost or anything like that, but this is really due to the low amount of mileage I'm clocking on my Honda Civic FD2.

Having a routine job = boring life is one of the secrets behind the really low rate of odometer advancement. Obviously, I'm not in the sales line, otherwise I'd probably be in just the opposite predicament. Even with the occasional drive down to the capital city of Kuala Lumpur, there's just not enough distance between my home, work place and frequented venues to rack up the kilometers. Not that I'm complaining. Besides the funny feeling of not having serviced my car for as long as I can remember, it does help to keep the monthly expenses low, which is always a good thing in times where everything goes up except one's salary....

Well, back to the subject matter. As usual, I made a service appointment earlier that week by phone to the GS Tay Honda Service Center at Muar, which, adhering to the legal speed limits, is roughly 45 minutes away from my home. Always good to do so, as it may significantly reduce your waiting time.

Upon my arrival in the morning earlier today, I found that there was practically no space to park my car in the area surrounding the service center, as there were many cars with the red triangle numbers on them, in queue for service. Hmm, I thought to myself, it was going to be a long wait here today.

I finally stopped my car by the road side near by and walked to the service reception. Was greeted by the friendly staff who then took my keys and proceeded to log in the necessary documentation while I waited in the next building. The customer waiting lounge was packed with fellow Honda owners, so I stood around briefly before I was approached by the staff, who needed some help to locate my car (it was really THAT crowded today). Good thing about the staff here - whether there was no other people around or when they were overloaded with customers, they were always friendly and helpful. Having observed how their techs go about servicing cars, they are also very competent and not sloppy at their jobs. For these reasons, I have no qualms about driving all the way here to service my FD2, as I'm confident my car is in good hands over here.

There was no place to sit at the customer waiting lounge, so I just got myself a cup of coffee and sat down at one of the unoccupied tables in the showroom area. Right next to the table was a bright red CRZ on display. I peeked inside at the gear lever to see if if were the manual or auto. I was interested to try out the gearshifts and feeling of the clutch, had this been a manual - unfortunately, it was an auto, so it dropped out of my attention faster than school from a schoolboy's mind after the bell rings....

45 minutes after my arrival, I saw my FD2 being driven into the service bay. Roughly 1 hour later, I was back in the driver's seat on my way home. That included confirming a change of windshield wipers and paying for the entire service.

The oil that goes into my engine is the standard issue oil from Honda, albeit the fully synthetic variant - never had any issue with using this so far. 4.x liters, so the balance engine oil was returned to me to keep for my next service (hope that there's no expiry date on this).

At the rate of which I'm using my car, my next preventive maintenance service would likely be some time in 2014. Which is quite long, as my feeling is that besides mileage, one should not go too long without doing some checking and servicing on your car, irrespective of how far it has traveled  Imagine if I were to service my car after every 10,000 km instead of 5,000 km.... :)