It doesn’t matter if its a Vespa or a Peterbilt truck — if you ignore the maintenance needs of your vehicle, you do so at your own peril. But it can be difficult enough to keep track of basic oil changes, to say nothing of keeping records on what parts were changed when. Instead of cramming more receipts into your glove box, maybe give LubeLogger a try.
This free and open source software tool is designed to make it easy for individuals to keep track of both the routine maintenance needs of their vehicles, as well as keep track of any previous or upcoming repairs and upgrades. Released under the MIT license, LubeLogger is primarily distributed as a Docker image that makes it easy to self-host the tool should you wish to keep your data safe at home rather than on somebody’s server out in the Wild West of the modern Internet.
In perhaps the most basic example, LubeLogger allows the user to add their vehicle to a virtual garage and set up routine maintenance tasks (such as oil changes), and fire off reminders when tasks are due. But it can also do things like track your vehicle’s mileage and fuel efficiency over time, and break down its operating costs.
LubeLogger has been around for a little over a year now, and it seeing active development, with the last release dropping just a few weeks back. While not everyone is going to need such a powerful tool, we’re glad to see there’s a self-hosted open source option out there for those that do.
Thanks to [STR-Alorman] for the tip.
I just use a Calc Spreadsheet for each of our vehicles. Works just fine. My dad still uses a paper log. No need to get fancy for this task. Not rocket science. It is nice to look back and see when you got new tires, rotated tires, average oil change (do myself) mileage, air, oil filters, and such.
yeah that was exactly my thought…i have a flat text database that i sync between my phone and my PC, and i just have an entry in there for each bike, and i put a line in there whenever i replace a part or reset my odometer. most parts you replace when they fail anyways, so it’s just trivia to know “did that really only last 2 years?” sort of questions. i do some maintenance on a schedule, and i put that in my calendar in the same text file, just an entry that has the month name on the first line.
in a way, unless you’re actually in fleet maintenance as like your day job, i think this is actually worse than nothing because the last thing i want is another way to add scheduled reminders in my life. i made an android app that scrapes my calendar and shows me today’s entries on my phone’s lock screen. doesn’t everyone have some sort of calendar by now? i’d hate to have two.
I just let the garage deal with it. Service and MOT (annual roadwothiness test) once a year, job done, and they deal with responsibly disposing of the waste. 🤷♂️ given they’re dealing with it for the MOT anyway, it’s little extra hassle or cost for them to do it all.
Records are on their files and on the receipts which I just scan and shred (in that order, dammit!).
Which is the heart of my comment – with everything being so searchable these days, you don’t always need special databases for everything. It’s far easier to just file the PDFs in the big “car” folder and let search (spotlight) do the heavy lifting if I need to check it later. Seems like you’d need to do a lot of searching this for the overheads of running a separate system to outweigh the hassle of having a separate system.
Lubelogger, where is the user’s data stored? Where is the database? Cloud – not for me. I do see a backup.zip script.
Needs a category for tools purchased, a way to track oil consumption, tire life, costs for insurance, registration, license. Wife’s speeding tickets lol.
For decades, I’ve just used Excel to track the car expenses and maintenance.
Surprisingly- the bulk of the ownership costs ends up being fuel (unless you have a lemon).
One Toyota car at the 10 year point 2,300 US gal/8,500L of fuel, 210 gas fills around $10,000 spent on just that. It’s not driven a lot.
Oil changes I do myself, 17 so far. Total $3,000 on maint., the car has not needed any majors (brakes, muffler, driveline, new tires) yet.
You can get interesting data.
“Lubelogger, where is the user’s data stored? Where is the database? Cloud – not for me.”
I run it self-hosted on my media-pc.
It’s self-hosted, so you decide where to store the data. To be more specific, it looks like it uses postgres to store data.
Is nobody wondering why he needs a battery after only 2½ years?
in a 6Kmile/year ’92 jeep? With a lower line walmart battery? I’m wondering how he got two years out of one…..
Exactly, most store branded lead acid batteries are simply that bad. Infrequent charging will shorten its already poor lifespan even more.
I already do this with the Fuelly/aCar app. Tracks all costs and can set reminders for things if you want. It even breaks it down by cost/day and cost/mile (or km for the rest of the world).
Cool!
Does anyone know if there would be a sensor or measurement that would reflect oil quality/lifespan? My only thought so far would be miles per fuel but by the time your seeing a loss in fuel economy it’s a bit far along for timing the next oil change.
It would be interesting to see if there would be an in oil pan or on the block measurement that could be used to log this and then setup a baseline.
https://bsf-filtertechniek.com/en/product/rmf-oil-quality-sensor-oqs2-01-a-v/
Would be an example. 1500EUR ex vat is… a hard sell versus just following the schedule from the service handbook.
Huh, I didn’t know such a thing even existed. Interesting, thanks.
I sent a sample from each oil change to Blackstone Labs. They’ll analyze it and track trends over time. They’ll also let you know if you should do a longer or shorter oil change interval. My plugin hybrid is perfectly happy with changes every 20k as recommended, and Blackstone says I could go 25k between changes.
My car has what you could call an oil tracker built in, but I suspect it’s just a mileage counter and not actually monitoring the quality of the oil.
Every 10k I change oil and hit grease zerts. Every 100k I do timing, gear oils, suspension, and steering. No software or paper needed. Easy to add 10 and 100
I’ve used a small wirebound notebook and pen to keep my automotive logs, for my last handful of vehicles, or about the past 30 years. The only time this method has failed me was when a previously-unknown roof leak in an old pickup truck, and a heck of a rain storm, caused the entire glovebox to fill with rain water.
I’m at a point where I’ll be getting another vehicle soon, and this software looks interesting, so I may give it a real-world try. Cost tracking will be a very welcome improvement over my previous method. Thanks for sharing.
Sorry, did not mean that as a reply, James!
If you drive a luxury car there is so much more to track. Check engine lights, parts replaced in the active suspension. It could even have a function for when it makes sense to remove the active suspension and replace with a cheaper conventional spring and damper XD 😆
I need to save this one for later.
Another much needed feature is to tally upkeep of your car vs a new vehicle (on the off chance you own something reasonably reliable, or simple and cheap to repair), to remind yourself not to get taken in by shiny Nissan ads.