An up!date on @volkswagendown - servicing

I bought my Volkswagen up! for the princely sum of $3000, so I was hardly going to head to a VW dealer and shell out heaps of coin for a service, was I?

Nah, instead I decided to do my research and do some maintenance myself on @volkswagendown, including an oil change with new oil filter, new spark plugs, and a new air filter. 

The previous owner had neglected to do his bit when it came to maintaining this beautiful little black hatch, and the last service stamp in the log book was at 74,800km. At the time of my work on the car, the odometer was reading 98,800km. Well overdue!

The previous owner had neglected to do his bit when it came to maintaining this beautiful little black hatch. (image credit: Matt Campbell)

It had been about six years since I’d last owned a car that I was willing to work on myself, so I was a bit nervous that I would get things wrong when I popped my head and hands under the bonnet. But the beauty of cars like my little VW are that it’s very hard to do the wrong thing - especially when you have resources like the upownersclub.co.uk site. 

There are step-by-step forums, and if I can find these sorts of pages for an up!, there’s every chance you’ll be able to find them for whatever car you own. So after heading to my local Supercheap Auto and two different Repco stores to get what I needed (parts for the up! are not that common - only 2292 were sold in Australia!), it was time to get servicing.

I referred to the HOWTO: Service the Up! (basic guide) article, which showed me everything from where to jack the car up (I already knew having prioritised coil-over suspension over basic maintenance) to the sort of oil sump plug I’d need. 

The comprehensive guide was a godsend, especially when I was trying to make sure I didn’t break anything as I pulled apart the air filter assembly (you need a T20 screwdriver/key for this!). You have to get the airbox out to access the coilpacks, and - unlike the last car I serviced, a 1998 Subaru Forester - I had absolutely no trouble getting my hands to fit in there. And no leads makes for a much less fiddly engine bay, but you have to be very cautious when unbedding the coilpack, as they're pretty fragile and not cheap to replace.

It could well have been the first time the spark plugs had been changed, and it showed - they were caked in carbon. The air filter, too, was filthy, and the oil was the same colour and consistency as molasses.

So, in went the new plugs, the actually-breathable new air filter (yes I was tempted to do a pod filter for better thre-cyl induction noise... maybe next service), and a few litres of Castrol 5W-30 oil (which was the most expensive ‘part’ of the service, at $85 for a 5L bottle), plus a new oil filter.

All up, it took me about two hours, which I was really impressed with given I hadn’t got my hands dirty under the bonnet for a while. 

Here’s what the bits cost me:

Oil catch pan: $9
Oil: $85
Oil filter: $15
Air filter: $62
Spark plugs (3): $27
Total: $198

I probably wouldn’t have serviced it myself if it was still under warranty (an informed guesstimate at what it could have cost me at a genuine VW dealer: $550). It’s just a whole lot easier to justify the ‘who cares’ attitude when you only paid three grand for the car in the first place.

The performance difference due to the improved breathing and sparking wasn’t like stepping up from a Golf GTI to a Golf R, but it was notable. It felt zippier at lower revs, and while I was already getting good fuel consumption (around 5.0L/100km), I’ve seen as low as 4.1L/100km since the service.

There’s more to come, including a quick fix for a rear window replacement, and new brake pads and rotors… because stopping is as important as going. Or even more so.

Stay tuned - and be sure to follow @volkswagendown for more.

Do you service your car yourself? Let us know in the comments section below.