arros 0 Report post Posted January 15, 2009 Never seen a foreign (mainly talking about Jap imports I guess) service book before. Anyone tried successfully to understand a jap service book- if you are lucky enough to have an import with service documents that is. So a car is imported at say 100,000 km and the seller says it comes with service history- but is it of any use. If you can't read it how can you tell what has been done to the car. I'm guessing you can read the service intervals but have no idea what was done Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
kiwi535 538 Report post Posted January 15, 2009 the format should be the same as a NZ service book .There are seperate pages for oil service,annual services,inpections....each "spot" on the page(say 6 on an oil service page) should have stamps,dates and kms for each oil service performed,and similar for the other pages. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
briancol 3 Report post Posted January 15, 2009 Numbers and dates are all written in English so it's not hard to look up at what kilometers the car was serviced. As far as the date goes, the Japanese have a different calender to us. Their years start when the Emperor takes the throne, so 1989 becomes year 1 and 2009 is year 20. If you are comming on the Aniversary Day cruise, bring it with you and I will try to explain things. Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
arros 0 Report post Posted January 15, 2009 Oh right- I was thinking the service book might be rather different than the NZ format- cool that means it will be pretty easy to follow. Hopefully the car checks out so that I can have it before the cruse day. Ta Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
hotwire 352 Report post Posted January 16, 2009 Got the Jap service book with the E39 when I bought it in. Bought car at nearly 5 years old, done 24k & showing two services with date & milage of each one documented. Everything matching. As for rest of info as to what was done - who knows?? Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
bmw.maniac 1 Report post Posted January 18, 2009 I always found taking anything down to one of the Japanese exchange students at school gave me a quick and easy answer Quote Share this post Link to post Share on other sites