Fuelly for Maintenance?

[brandonrossl]

I LOVE Fuelly! BUT I want to track maintenance by miles, dates, costs and get notices on projected maintenance due dates. Has anyone found a site (not application, I want my data secure and accessible anywhere) that works as well as Fuelly but does repairs and maintenance?

[mathowie]

At the moment, we just have the open notes option (Add a Note page) where you can enter in the odometer reading and a short note. We may add categories for maintenance and then send out reminders on a schedule of your choosing.

[brandonrossl]

any recommendations in the meantime?

[VWJunky]

you could get down to cost of ownership as a catagory if someone put in all the things they have to do to there car? Maybe a future item? I know it is all about milage but I had to throw that one in! LOL!

erick

[mathowie]

any recommendations in the meantime?

In the meantime, I'd say use notes and we'll eventually have scheduled reminders that you can set.

[cee]

..might have to use your (personal) email calendar to send you a reminder on this, brandiniman..it is a great idea, but it seems a bit beyond the (current) scope of Fuelly, especially since it would vary so much from model-to-model & year-to-year..

..of course (as it'd be a great help to me, too), we can always hope for enhancements that add stuff like that..if there was a setup section under our Garage/vehicle profile where we could input the Mfr recommendations for service times, all owners would have the opportunity to note that stuff (& maybe get an automated email from Fuelly, who knows?)..

..with enough owner participation, some general "norms" would be established for given makes & models, so that even newcomers would have a guesstimate of when they need to go for a tune-up, oil change, etc...

..again a good idea, but maybe difficult to implement right now..

i'm rooting fer it, though!

[rem83]

I kind of think a lot of maintenance intervals need to be adjusted for driving conditions. Following the standard manufacturer suggested interval is better than nothing, but if you subject your vehicle to harder than normal use you really should decrease your intervals.

[pb]

yeah, I think cee nailed the heart of the problem with adding a scheduled maintenance feature here. Every model has its own recommended schedule, and that information is usually tucked away inside an owner's manual. If car manufacturers made that information available to the public in a digital format, we could probably match things up here and easily send reminders based on odometer readings.

Without access to that data, the best we could do is allow Fuelly members to input their own maintenance schedule by hand which is no small task. While I'm sure a number of people would do it, I'm not sure enough would do it to make developing that feature worthwhile. That's something we'll have to weigh.

[brandonrossl]

I'd just like to be able to login to Fuelly and input: I did this service at X mileage and it's due again in X miles or every X miles (trackit: Vehicle Edition for blackberry does this perfectly). Forget all the automatic stuff. If someone wants to type a couple of numbers from their manual and setup a schedule they should be able to do it easily (unlike on the BB's tiny keyboard).

rem83 is right but I use products that go way beyond what my car will take out of them for the sole purpose that I can rely on them and still keep a 6000 mile base service schedule. Every 6k I do oil drain and refill and I rotate & balance tires. Every 12K I do a drain and refill on the ATX, clean my air filter (it's an aftermarket one), and change my oil filter. Every 30K as per warranty I do a trans flush even though it's not required due to the drain and refill interval (I will not continue to flush until I have significant proof by doing fluid analysis to contest any warranty denials). Also about every 30K I'll change brake fluid because dot3 absorbs water. Every 60K a coolant change and water pump replacement.

It'd just be nice to have all due service e-mailed to me as I approach a mileage milestone so I can plan the day without a car and get a ride setup after ordering all needed fluids and filters.

[aksease]

I track my maintenance in a multi-tabbed spreadsheet; my reminders come by way of my Google calendar and the sticker on the vehicle's windscreen.

For Fuelly, I'd be happy to see a way we can enter cost per/(month or whatever) so the site will calculate a cost-per-file that would include maintenance. While we're looking at that option, a way to add insurance premium costs would be excellent too, again so we can see a cost-per-mile that included expenses.