If you’re thinking about acquiring a Wraith, or if you already own one, you may want to know about the upkeep. Join me as we follow a 2015 Wraith through its ten-year major service.
The deep blue coupe in question belongs to John K of West Hartford, Connecticut. John is a dapper fellow, always polite and well-spoken, and a sharp dresser. He’s the kind of guy who wears a suit to drop the car off for service. John manages a three-Rolls household with the Wraith, a Corniche, and a Shadow II. I thank him for volunteering his car, which he bought a year ago from Rolls-Royce Long Island.
We start with Rolls-Royce cars from the Goodwood era by connecting the vehicle to our test system. In our shop and in any dealership, the technicians use a BMW system called ISTA. ISTA is a bridge between the car and the mothership – a bank of servers at BMW in Germany. ISTA will identify the vehicle and run a series of tests and queries. ISTA is the standard workshop software for the BMW group, so it works the same for BMW, Rolls-Royce, and MINI. A shop that didn’t have ISTA could start by connecting its scan tool and manually checking the systems in the car.
Next, we query what BMW Group calls CBS or Condition Based Service. CBS monitors oil, brake fluid, brake pads, and vehicle check status, using the minimum parameters for warranty coverage. It notifies drivers when service is coming due and shares information about service history with BMW through ISTA.
The question is . . . will the CBS guidance be the best guidance for you, as an enthusiast? I ask because most readers of this magazine take pride in paying meticulous attention to their Rolls-Royce motorcars and keeping them for many years. If that’s you, your standard may be higher than the CBS minimum.
BMW Group has traditionally provided “free service” during the warranty period. In a typical 4/50 warranty period, based on CBS, this does not add up to much for most Rolls-Royce drivers - several oil changes, some cabin and air filters, and possibly brake fluid and some brake pads. BMW Group pays dealers a flat rate for these services, and the mechanic is paid the same way. There is no time budget for careful inspection, nor is there any allowance for the more frequent services needed to get maximum life from the vehicle.
I believe the service schedule is constructed for minimal cost for the carmaker and minimal generation of waste fluids, which is required to meet increasingly stringent European Union waste stream rules. You don’t think people pay attention to the waste generated in an oil change, but that’s this car’s biggest potential source of pollution.
If you are leasing a new Rolls-Royce and plan to move on from the car in a few years, CBS guided service is probably OK. If you care about cars and see your Wraith as a long-term investment, a more comprehensive service plan is likely your cup of tea.
Why Oil Specifications Matter
Today, to minimize oil changes, carmakers like BMW push lubricant technology to the absolute limits. BMW has gone beyond general industry oil specifications and created proprietary lubricant specs. It’s not enough to use a 5-30 or 0-20 oil anymore; it also has to meet the specific BMW spec, like LL-01. Mercedes, Land Rover, Porsche, and VW Group (including Bentley) have similar programs.
Most lubricants do not wear out gradually. If you change the oil in a Wraith engine and test it regularly (we have done this), you’ll see the results come back “good as new” at 1,000, 2,000, 3,000, and so on, up to about 7,000 miles. At some point beyond 8,000, the oil begins to break down, and by 10,000, it is significantly degraded. That is the point at which CBS will call for a replacement. The exact point of failure depends on many things and cannot be known precisely in advance.
If you change the oil when CBS begins to warn you, there should be minimal wear, and some risk of shortened life. If you wait till 11,000 or 12,000, the oil will fail, and there will be measurable engine damage and possibly failure. This breakdown can also happen over time – oil that has not worn out by miles can be spoiled by contaminants in 2 or 3 years. CBS is fixed on an interval of almost two years, which can be on the edge.
This isn’t just a BMW Group issue - as carmakers stretched service intervals, many faced class action lawsuits over engine failures. That should give us pause since no one will be there to buy us an engine if service advice proves inadequate ten years later.
Rolls-Royce has printed guidance for longer-term owners, detailing service plans for ten years and beyond. These are much more comprehensive than CBS guidance and, in some cases, go beyond what I would do in my car. That speaks to the range of opinions on this subject, and it’s all subject to judgment and the condition of the vehicle in question.
I believe a 7,500-mile/one-year oil change interval is optimum for these engines. If you follow that advice with the correct oil, you should never have a lubrication-related problem. As a general statement on more frequent maintenance, the cost of extra work is low, and the risk reduction is substantial.
On John’s car, we knew he wanted exemplary service and planned to keep the car a long time. He had driven 11 months and about 5,000 miles since the last service, yet his CBS said he still had 57% of his oil life remaining and wasn’t due for a service. The physical inspection uncovered issues that needed attention now, not next year, that CBS did not call out. That is why annual services are wise, regardless of the miles.
What About Check Engine Lamps?
John’s car arrived with a check engine light, and the scan revealed several misfire codes. There are many possible causes of a misfire, and all of them leave different trails of evidence between the fault codes and the data the car’s computers store when faults occur. This car had faults from spark plug or ignition coil deterioration. Spark plugs are a part of the printed ten-year service plan, so replacing them was a given for me, yet CBS did not call them out for John’s car. CBS thought they had 43% life remaining. However, if a car comes in with misfires, there is a problem no matter what CBS thinks, and there’s a significant chance coils have been damaged, so we replace coils and plugs together.
You might ask how a certified used car could have a spark plug failure a few thousand miles down the road. Dealers are not required to anticipate problems – they fix what’s currently broken and do what’s due. They weren’t failing then, and they were later. I always advise doing a service when you buy a car, so you have a baseline established by someone who’s working for you and not the seller or the seller’s used car manager.
Replacing spark plugs in a Wraith is a half-day project if you know what you are doing. The engine shields have to come off, then some of the air meters and ducting, and a few bits of the fuel injection. You’ll also need a special BMW 12-point spark plug socket and the tools to release the hose clamps BMW uses on the breathers and other pipes.
How About Corrosion?
In John’s car we saw white grit on the bare engine metal. That comes from exposure to winter salts. The salt had corroded several of his coils and plugs. Winter road salt is bad news for these cars. Systems like CBS can’t detect corrosion - only a physical inspection will reveal that. The final step, since John’s car had misfire codes logged, was to do a retest, verify the repairs, and clear the stored faults.
The air filters get changed at this service since they’ve been removed to access the plugs. If your car is like most, the air filters will look clean when you remove them. We change them anyway if they are on the service schedule. The reason we do that is simple: “pretty clean” filters are not new filters. If we skip changing them and several years pass before they are looked at again, “pretty clean” may turn into “dirty. ” New filters would still be ‘pretty clean.”
Deciding What to Change, and What to Leave For Next Time
Thirty-five years ago, when I learned how to be a Rolls-Royce service manager, I was guided by this question: If I leave a given part alone, will it remain serviceable until the next maintenance interval? If the answer is maybe or no, we should replace it.
Today, when cars are in warranty, the situation is different. Rolls-Royce instructs dealers to do only what CBS calls for if the vehicle is still under new car service coverage or has a pre-owned maintenance plan. The goal is to minimize the service the first owners pay for, but deferring work shifts the burden to the next owner, which in this instance may be you.
If an owner wants to go beyond the “free” CBS minimum offered, that should be an option. But most carmakers with systems like CBS train their service advisors insist no more is needed, which strikes me as cynical because no carmaker prints advice recommending items like fan belts be used more than a decade, and to ignore other fluids is to invite eventual disaster. Independent of factory guidance, we replace serpentine belts because the rubber gets brittle over time, and the belts will eventually split. If you have a fan belt shred and the strands get drawn into the engine, you will have significant problems.
You’ll need a lever arm to move the tensioners back and a pin to hold the tension open while the new belt is threaded into place. These are standard tools in a modern shop. When the covers are off the motor, changing belts is an hour’s work. It’s the same job on a Rolls-Royce as on a million other cars, just more intimidating because of the vehicle’s value.
The next steps require putting the car in the air. We use a twin post lift for that at Robison Service, and we start by raising the car about four feet off the floor. That’s a good height to remove the wheels. Being in New England, we looked for corrosion from winter salt, and found it between the steel hubs and the alloy wheels. On John’s car the corrosion got behind two of the hub caps and jammed them tight enough to break. Potential corrosion or other undercarriage damage are good reasons to check these cars at least annually.
After cleaning Mr. K’s wheels and hubs we greased the affected areas before reassembly. Failing to do this could make it impossible to change a tire if you ever had a roadside emergency. Many Wraiths need tires at the ten-year service, and John’s car was no exception.
Rolls-Royce designed these cars for run-flat tires, and most Wraiths have blackwalls. We like Continental’s ContiSeal tires, available through many outlets. If you want whitewalls, those can be requested through Rolls-Royce. Don’t be surprised if you go through tires every 15,000 miles due to the size and power of these cars.
Don’t forget the batteries in the sensors for the tire pressure monitoring system. Ten years is about when they start to wear out, and I prefer to change them before they fail. The best time to do this is when you are replacing tires near the ten year mark. That avoids the later hassle of dismounting and re-mounting tires just to do sensors. While generic sensors are available, the genuine sensors have different-looking stems and they are the only ones that look correct.
When the wheels are off the car you can look in at the brakes. In most cars, the rule of thumb is that the friction material needs to be at least as thick as the steel backing plate to insulate the brake fluid from the heat of stopping. Like most high-end carmakers, Rolls-Royce recommends replacing pads and rotors together in sets, except when it’s part of a maintenance plan, in which case they generally cover pads only. This minimalist approach often works out fine, but a discriminating owner may feel the difference. You can often change pads alone once but doing it twice on a set of rotors is begging for trouble.
Brakes are expensive, so for local clients, I ask if they are comfortable returning when the brake wear light comes on. For people who drive 1,000 miles a year, a small amount of wear can take many years, so the guidance we’d apply for a daily driver is potentially excessive.
We remove the plastic shields under the car and look for leaks and damage. These are well-designed cars, and leaks are relatively rare. Draining and refilling the fluids takes several hours. You’ll need the scan tool to flush the brakes and test the system properly. We will update CBS when that work is done.
John’s car didn’t have any other problems, but these service inspections often reveal failing door latches, climate control problems, and other things that might be starting to act up but are not yet recognized as problems. One goal of major services is to find issues like these before they annoy our clients.
Always check the battery when servicing a Rolls-Royce. The Wraith battery is hidden under a power distribution panel in the spare tire well. We do an electronic test and consider battery age. When new, genuine batteries are stamped with the week and year of installation. A battery whose post is stamped 33 15 was fitted in week 33 of 2015. John’s car had an original battery that tested okay, but once these AGM batteries are over five years old, they fail without warning. I try to change batteries before failure, not after.
When replacing the battery, there is a procedure to update the car’s power management to tell it a new battery has been fitted. That is important because cars designed for AGM batteries have computer-controlled charging systems that account for battery age. We also connect these cars to “shore power” (a special battery charger) to keep car systems alive when swapping batteries. This is a best practice on any newer car to avoid module damage from electrical transients.
I am often asked if BMW parts fit these cars. Many do. Genuine spark plugs and coil packs for John’s car came to us in BMW boxes, and those same parts are also used in many 2010-2016 BMW models. Belts are BMW, as are batteries. But looking in the wheel openings with the wheels removed, you’ll see many suspension and brake parts with RR marks on them, indicating they don’t interchange. Rolls-Royce packages brake rotors in pairs, and they have unique numbers. Brake pads also have unique part numbers, and I don’t know the interchange for those.
While owners are free to choose any brand of part, professionals should be mindful of reputational risk using anything other than genuine parts. If you install aftermarket brakes for a customer and the car ends up at a dealer with a brake squeal, they will blame “shoddy aftermarket parts.” There may also be a liability risk – oil choice is an example of that. All oils are not the same, even if the rating seems identical. Two bottles of 5-30 synthetic oil may have the same general rating, but you need the one with the correct BMW type approval for your car. If there is an engine problem, Rolls-Royce will likely demand an oil sample before approving a goodwill repair. If the analysis shows the wrong oil, and you were the installer, you have a problem. Don’t make that mistake.
The same thinking applies to the other fluids in a Wraith. The cooling system uses a long-life coolant that will be changed at the big services. Brake fluid is changed every two years, and it’s not just DOT 4 fluid – these cars require a low-viscosity DOT 4++ fluid to allow the proper operation of the car’s electronic brake modulation. Unique (and costly) long-life fluids are used in the transmission, rear differential, and steering. Assuming those unseen fluids will last forever is foolish, and will eventually end badly.
The ten-year service includes checking/replacing small but essential things like wiper blades and cabin filters. When we do major services, we usually clean and polish the finish and apply wax or ceramic coating, whichever the client prefers. The ceramic products bead water better and last a bit longer, but they cost twice as much (or more), so it’s a tradeoff. My only advice is don’t do nothing. If you want the car’s paint to last, take care of it.
There is nothing tricky about servicing these cars, but the complexity of the electronics intimidates many people. If you choose to service your Goodwood RR outside the ISTA network, BMW won’t have a record of what you did, and you generally won’t qualify for goodwill assistance outside of warranty if there is ever a problem. But major problems are rare, and that may not matter to you.
In my opinion, on a $500,000 car, doing anything less than the best possible service is a false economy. At my company, I have Chevy trucks the same age as Mr. Kulesza’s Wraith, with 250,000 miles on them, and they look and run like new because we apply the same standard of care to all. If you take exemplary care of any modern car, it will never wear out. Most Chevy pickups are falling apart at ten years and a quarter-million miles, and maintenance or its lack is why ours are not.
Finally, EU environmental mandates affect these cars in another way you should know about. Regulations require many of the car’s plastic parts to be biodegradable. This means you will see things like air filter covers become brittle after 10-15 years. Don’t be surprised if plastic parts break on an older Wraith. When they do, 3D printing technology is our friend. If someone tells you, “The cover broke in my hand when I removed it,” that does not mean they were a careless lout. On an older car it means the plastic is degrading, and be thankful we can make parts anew if Rolls-Royce can’t supply them.
In all those aspects there is nothing fundamentally different about caring for a Wraith as compared to any other high-end car that is maintained with a view to making it last indefinitely. For me, as a lover of fine machines, that is always the goal.
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