Hello. I've just taken over basically 100% of the maintenance for the 3 vehicles in our house, a bike, a car, and an SUV.

I'm trying to setup a nice excel sheet that contains the following things. Routine maintenance, valve inspections (gs500), mileage, oil changes etc.

I know a bunch of people run maint. logs on here so I wanted advice on how to set it up. Should I have an excel sheet for each vehicle or a sheet for maint., sheet for valves, and sheet for MPG?

Toss me some ideas. If you want to upload your log you can use http://www.mediafire.com/ or http://rapidshare.com/ Thanks!

 I have an excel one for the GS that someone else made.. It doesnt seem to detailed and I dont use it but you can check it out..

 http://rapidshare.com/files/311849220/Maintenance_Schedule.xls.html

Why not keep them all in the same Excel file but create different worksheets for each?  That way you can keep track of each one over time by creating columns for date, mileage, etc... and rows for each service you perform (plus a row for notes).  Then you have everything in one file, keep stuff organized and can easily chart what goes on.

Hope that this advice is useful

gave up on a computerized stuff for maintenance schedules. dirty finger + keyboards and all.

now i just use those freebie oil change stickers from autozone. stick all the cars/bikes on the trucks windshield, and check the milage when i wash em on saturday. easy cheese.

no help at all, but i'm consistant.

Tussey,

What you're talking about is setting up a maintenance program.  I've organized several for aircraft fleets, so my ideas are along those lines:

First, make a centralized editable (Excel or a whiteboard) log of the next maintenance event and event trigger (mileage) of each vehicle.  Update it after each maintenance event.  Make a sticky label to adhere to the windshield with the next maintenance event time.  Make it a new habit to check that label regularly and compare it with your odometer reading.

Second, prepare individual logbooks to document the work performed and after each entry, "look forward" to the next entry with a description of upcoming maintenance events.

Examples:

Quote from: Excel Spreadsheet / WhiteboardVehicle:  GS500  Next Maintenance Event:  64,500 miles  Description:  Valve adjustment plus new rear tire.

Quote from: Logbook11/27/2009 Recording odometer:  62,000 miles. 

Oil and filter changed this date, replaced with 2.4 quarts Shell Rotella-T 15-W40 and Suzuki brand filter P/N 123ABC.  Safety inspection OK. 

Next Maintenance Event:  Valve adjustment at 64,500 miles

Finally, on separate, editable log for each vehicle, which could just be a word file or a white board, make your Squak Sheet.  The Squak sheet allows you to manage both critical and non-critical REPAIR items. 

Let's say two weeks after changing the oil, you decide the rear tire will need replacement soon:

Quote from: Squak SheetRecording Odo:  63,500 miles.  Rear tire requires replacement.  Planned replacement Bridgestone Battlax BT-45 on-order.  Replace at next scheduled maintenance event.

With those three separate entities, you can:

1)  See and organize upcoming planned maintenance.
2)  Document the work performed, both planned maintenance and repair.
3)  Organize unscheduled repair items in order of priority and attach them to regular maintenance events, or trigger a special repair event. 

That will get you started.