This will be to do with the uniair module on the twinair- it is a similar unit and technology to that of the multiair used in Alfa mitos, giuliettas amd puntos.
The units are very sensitive to correct oil, and a there have been a lot of failures with a lot of theory surrounding the oil not being good for 18k or 2 years.
Service intervals on multiair powered cars have also recently been cut, so most probably a precautionary measure.
Was always best to change oil yearly if it's a keeper anyway, so no biggy.

On some Alfa's they've switched to 9000 mile intervals, but it's just an inspection at 9000 miles - the oil (still) doesn't get changed till 18,000 miles. Does the Panda manual give any details about what the 9000 mile inspection entails?

Tbh if it is a full service every 9000 miles then they need to serious reduce their servicing costs. Parents paid £375 for the service on their 500 TwinAir - steep every 2 years/18k miles but a definite no-no every 9k!

I may have misread this. Posted the relevant bits for the petrol versions.

Oil change is 30,000 Km's so just over 18k miles but if it's in for annual / 9k inspection, I'd get the oil & filter changed anyway.

Oil is definitely Selenia Digitek PE 0w/30.









Cheers,

Simon

Thanks for posting your pics there, that's really helpful.

Well, you've been helpful anyway! Fiat certainly haven't...

When you actually read through all of the mandatory dots for the first 9k/1 year service, they don't actually replace ANYTHING. No oil, filter - nothing. They are literally checking your car over. I'd love to know what they are planning to charge for that!

It's only if you do less than 6,000 miles per year that you have to have an oil and filter change (I note they have changed the wording from "should" to "must", which is fair enough).

And you might need your spark plugs changing each year according to note 2 at the bottom, although it doesn't say what the conditions are. Great!

I literally have no idea what goes on in Fiat's mind. The existing 18k/2yr service schedule for the petrol engines was a little bit vague in places, but somehow they've managed to make it even more confusing?

Well, as I have now done over 2,000 miles in "Po" it won't be too long before I can tell you what this 9K "service" entails. Pricing it might be problematical as I am on a service plan.

Still waiting for new nose bits by the way, Fiat's parts delivery their usual inneficient selves

im going find it hard keeping up with a 9K service, [once a year i can cope with] but i rather have it around the same time each year, doing shift work i find it really hard making app for things for when im off.

Bogwoppit said:

Well, as I have now done over 2,000 miles in "Po" it won't be too long before I can tell you what this 9K "service" entails. Pricing it might be problematical as I am on a service plan.

Still waiting for new nose bits by the way, Fiat's parts delivery their usual inneficient selves

Click to expand...

Shame you're still waiting for the bits . Have you got / posted a picture of the damage?

I haven't posted a pic for the simple reason I took a pic for my insurer and unless you squint and stand on one leg it looks just like you would expect a Cross to look. In reality it needs a new bonnet n/s head and fog light, one towing eye and a complete bumper/plate assembly. The Juke was a complete mess and undriveable with a totally borked n/s front wheel and suspension assembly. Probably not written off but a lot of suspension geometry work required. Doubtless the lacklustre handling of a non-clobbered Juke will forever be denied this example.?

A compulsory 9k mile inspection service with no oil/filter change is just money for old rope. Bet they charge over £100 for it. Con merchants.

Its amazing how much that service schedule has changed from that in the handbook for my late 2013 4x4! I won' t post photos of that as it may confuse, but in my version it says replace TwinAir spark plugs every 18,000miles but with an asterisk linked to a a lot of statements about how critical it use to use the correct plug, to ensure the same type and brand is used and talks of this being 'vital to... prevent serious damage to the engine' -- seems Fiat are 'nervous' there?

Curiously, in my handbook there are no 'blobs' for any mileage/age for changing the engine oil on the diesel - but a statement with an asterisk saying wait for the warning message to show up, or do it every 24 months if the message doesn't show. (Because of the way the DPF is regenerated - the rate of degradation of the oil is affected by number of regens). This means the first things that say 'replace' rather than just 'check' don't happen until 42,000 miles!

Sorry to resurrect this.

I've just had the service reminder from my dealer. The car is 1 next month & will have done just under 6k miles.

Looking at what I posted above, I think my car just needs a whole load of checks plus fresh oil & filter (even though the current oil looks new as in very clear).

Anyone with a TA had one of these shorter dealer visits yet? Any thoughts?

Cheers,

Simon

I took mine in and other than the singing brakes (totally cured) and a good wash I couldn't tell what if anything they had done. On a service plan so no immediate wallet trauma. They gave me a 500 with the 1.2 motor which was nice enough but confirmed my TwinAir choice had been the right one. Now approaching 14k and other than the noisy pads which only piped up occasionally this has been a zero defect car.

The 9k service really does appear to be an inspection, the oil is still as it left the lab and though it's damned hard to tell due to a crappy dipstick it doesn't appear to have diminished in quantity one jot, they certainly didn't change it.

It's definitely only an inspection at 1 year/9000 miles (or 1 year/12000 miles on diesels). If you want the oil & filter changed then you have to ask for it & (undoubtedly) pay extra.

Personally if I was going to the effort of driving to a dealer for an inspection then I'd get the oil & filter done at the same time just so the trip seems worthwhile, but I think the service intervals are an utter nonsense. Why they can't just go with 12 month/12k intervals for a full service (including oil) on all engines and have done with it, instead of all this annual inspection, low mileage and full service bol*ocks, I'll never know

With communication as poor as Fiats, you need to keep things simple, yet they go completely the other way. Madness.

I think Fiat dealers have been a bit naughty.

It isn't uncommon for manufacturers service schedules to change in the sales life of a vehicle, particular when a new model has been on the road a year or two. (I'm thinkng Alfa's TS cam belt going from 72k to 36k), but the dealers have thrown a confusing spanner in the works, their own "annual inspection".

For warranties to stay valid you are required to follow the manufacturers service intervals, not the dealers schedules!

My guess is the dealers weren't too happy with the first set of figures (pre April 2014) and introduced an "annual inspection" of their own with the hope of some extra income on the basis on fullfilling some of the "Periodic Checks" mentioned in the handbook.

I too got the letters and calls from my dealer after one year of ownership for both our March 2014 cars with 18k intervals.
I called Fiat uk and they confirmed the handbook was correct but were a little sheepish on why the dealer was insisting on an annual inspection, "ask them" was the closet thing to an answer I got on that.

I phoned my dealers service desk and they were a little uncomfortable and could not state what sort of work they would be undertaking other than an "inspection" and why my handbooks state something different.

They also couldn't explain why one of my cars needed an inspection now, then a proper scheduled service in around 3-4 months time (at 18K).

I offered to come in with my handbook and discuss it with them and they started to backtrack and waffle on about how owners like to have their cars checked every year no matter what the handbook states and they were offering them that service.

I was told someone "obviously mistyped" my letters and made them sound like it was a nessecary scheduled service needed rather than an extra check, but that excuse started to fall apart when I mentioned the various calls and messages left on my answering service stating the same as the letters, did someone misspeak?

So keeping to what the manufacturer states, with both servicing and periodic checks (the later you can do yourself) will keep your warranty valid and even that is open to a little interpretation, low mileages, high mileages, towing etc are all in the mix (and in the manufacturers favour).

Personally I think the 18k service is ok on our 1.2 (the one still in warranty).
But my TA 4x4 has a towbar, I do tow a little trailer and it does go off road a little (it's caked in Kents finest top soil and cow **** at the moment), so I get the oil and filters changed at 9k on that one and it's proper 18k/2 years one on time.

Bogwoppit said:

I took mine in and other than the singing brakes (totally cured) and a good wash I couldn't tell what if anything they had done. On a service plan so no immediate wallet trauma. They gave me a 500 with the 1.2 motor which was nice enough but confirmed my TwinAir choice had been the right one. Now approaching 14k and other than the noisy pads which only piped up occasionally this has been a zero defect car.

The 9k service really does appear to be an inspection, the oil is still as it left the lab and though it's damned hard to tell due to a crappy dipstick it doesn't appear to have diminished in quantity one jot, they certainly didn't change it.

Click to expand...

What did they do to cure the singing brakes? Is it an official warranty fix?

So, inspection & an oil / filter change which I'll ask for.

Any guesses as to cost then?

Goudrons said:

I think Fiat dealers have been a bit naughty.

It isn't uncommon for manufacturers service schedules to change in the sales life of a vehicle, particular when a new model has been on the road a year or two. (I'm thinkng Alfa's TS cam belt going from 72k to 36k), but the dealers have thrown a confusing spanner in the works, their own "annual inspection".

For warranties to stay valid you are required to follow the manufacturers service intervals, not the dealers schedules.............

Click to expand...

It's true that some dealers for a long time have tried to get people to go in for annual inspections or services, even with the 2 year service interval. However what's happened now is Fiat themselves have actually revised the interval so that whilst a full service with oil change is 2 yearly/18k/21k (petrol/diesel), vehicles registered from part-way through the UKs '14' plate (around June 2014 onwards) have got interim annual inspections, which don't include an oil change.

The service manuals and on-board service counters have been updated to show 9000 miles between dealer visits for petrols and 12,000 miles for diesels, so if you have one of these vehicles you'd need to stick to this more frequent inspection level to maintain the warranty. Personally I don't mind annual services, but I think it should've been annual/12k full services, not just an expensive 'check over' with nothing replaced

Squadrone Rosso said:

So, inspection & an oil / filter change which I'll ask for.

Any guesses as to cost then?

Click to expand...

Good plan.

Pretty certain someone was charged £80 by a dealer for the inspection, so I reckon £130-£150 including oil & filter on a TwinAir. Parents paid a bit less than that for an interim service at 1 year on their old 2012 500 TwinAir at a dealer in Warwick. Whilst that was a couple of years ago now, I believe LC Motors in South Wales are often more reasonable than most, so may charge that even now

Squadrone Rosso said:

So, inspection & an oil / filter change which I'll ask for.

Click to expand...

Me too. Maybe I'm old fashioned, and I don't expect to change modern synthetic oils as often as the old mineral oils, but I was bought up to believe that oil is cheaper than engines and with how hard that little TwinAir has to work, it needs all the spoiling I can lavish on her.

triumph7 said:

What did they do to cure the singing brakes? Is it an official warranty fix?

Click to expand...

Should have asked but I didn't and so far not a peep out of them, the fact that they were making a noise certainly didn't surprise them either. Rather think they fitted the "damper" mod which is supposed to be the official fix.

Bogwoppit said:

Rather think they fitted the "damper" mod which is supposed to be the official fix.

Click to expand...

Does this involve anything more than the application of Blue Peter-style sticky-backed plastic (or some similarly low-tech solution) to the back of the pads?