Spark plugs

how?

 

You serious Clark? You’re wasting money by taking it to the dealer. 24.00 every 30K is cheap insurance. Gives you time to clean the throttle body and maf sensor.

 

Your friend would be incorrect. Brake fluid is hygroscopic, it’ll absorb moisture from the air and this will over time corrode the steel parts in the brake system. And as the brake fluid gets older, it will get darker which is an indication of contamination. That’s not to say you can’t get away with extending the service intervals without an obvious issue, but you’ll never know if a sticky caliper or master cylinder failure could have been prevented; you’ll just chalk it up to “things go bad on cars”.

Power steering, trans fluid, etc. are indeed more variable. If you’re just commuting your truck, not doing lots of short trips and/or towing, then you’re not heating up your tranny fluid as much and it can go longer between changes. The cost of doing the maintenance vs. the cost of component repair/replacement is a fair trade-off to make, and the costs you mentioned would cause me to extend the service intervals as well. But since I can do all of these services myself, that trade-off is easier to make and I’ll do mine when it seems appropriate. I will be putting few enough miles on my Taco that I will replace the tranny fluid in 60K, because that may be 8-10 years from now. I flushed my power steering fluid because it was ten years old and it was pretty darned easy to do (not to mentioned quite inexpensive).

 

how am I wasting money by getting an idea of all the preventive maintenance services that they'd do at 60k? I'd like to have this list so I know what I can do myself but idk about every 30k... I feel like a lot of these things can go much longer

 

There’s not much to these trucks. Plugs, diffs if it hasn’t been done and xfer case, transmission to make you feel you’re on top of the world. Power steering i syphon every six months with oil change. Brake fluid every three years.

 

I wouldn't know any of that unless I had contacted the someone. And it seems there's a ton variables from dealerships, online, friends etc when each of these things should be done - if ever. apparently diff is a one and done which is why first few dealerships don't even mention it.

 

I don’t trust dealerships. Even if you do the maintenance yourself on the whole vehicle you’ll save a ton of money doing it yourself. I’m pretty much by the book other than oil changes which I extend and transmission fluid changes which the book doesn’t even mention about changing.

 

I need to call my dad and tell him "THANK YOU!". He had an excavating business and did all of his own maintenance. I think I rebuilt my first carburetor when I was 14.

 

sometimes the dealerships are trustworthy (to get an idea of ranges when things need to be done) than when randoms online tell you that you need all kind of maintenance every 30k xD - that wastes ton of money too thinking you need to do all kind of things that frequently. To your point though, it couldn't hurt. I just don't like the idea if I don't need too.. frugality and all.
It's good to get different perspectives. I think most things can wait a lot longer than both google/yters and dealerships say though.