My 1st non-Ford service

[JasonACT]

Some may know, I'm annoyed that Ford used the I6 non-turbo oil in my FG2 XR6T last service, so I've decided not to go back. It's actually not the first time they did this, at my first (free, 3k) service I asked them to change the oil and filter (which I paid for) and they used the wrong oil then too. All other services were with the correct oil. But I had no idea until I read the service manual.

So I went looking for quotes... I also noticed that my coolant was never changed by Ford. It (the coolant) would have surely turned up on my dockets (like the over-priced oil at my last service). So I've caved and bought a PWR heat exchanger as well. Thank you Pit Lane.

There's a lot of conflicting discussion about them, but I live in Canberra and it gets cold here so I didn't want to go an air/oil cooler. They have also been around now for a very long time and no-one has ever mentioned "the milkshake" problem with one. But that's not why I'm posting here.

Pit Lane quotes $195 for fitting. My quote was $280 + $40 for coolant. I had been told January for the booking so I didn't get the oil quoted (which I already bought along with the filter - to make sure I got what I wanted - which was already ~$130) because the oil really couldn't wait. They called me a week ago and said someone had cancelled so they could fit me in (for yesterday).

Upon getting my car back, I was charged $478 which was a bit of a shock but ok as long as everything was done right, but then I noticed something unusual with the coolant. I always check levels to make sure the car isn't experiencing issues and I've never seen the coolant this low:



I went to the business's website to question them about what was going on, I had asked them to let me know what they used so I could fix the problem. They wouldn't tell me, the bottom picture shows the correspondence. They called me but still wouldn't tell me the details, except to say it was bought in bulk and wasn't available to the public.

After agreeing it needed to be fixed, I said I would have to do it because the car would be hot if I drove in. So, it was also agreed (after some discussion) I could take 1L of the coolant home tomorrow to do so when the car was cold.

Being a bit annoyed, I checked the oil level:



I can see two lines, marked in red, both well above the full mark. I hope it's just the thicker oil making the very high mark.



Anyone else got horror stories like this? Should I buy a device to suck out a little bit of oil? Am I just expecting too much from the professionals?

(I've actually bought a jack, ramps and stands to do this myself in the future.)