The roads are slick out there today in the east and there is more snow on the way. A trick I learned from racing cars is to control the steering wheel with one hand when things get slippery. Keep your arms relaxed. I alternate hands, but that is something you need to decide. Doing this increases your traction sense and keeps both arms from fighting each other if the front wheels start to slide. Look where you want to go and don’t fixate on the thing you may hit. If you perceive you are in over your head, there is nothing you can do about it anyway, so you might as well look where you want the car to go. Survival reactions in a car are actually detrimental to our health and well being. Target fixation (looking at the thing you may hit) is one of the hardest survival reactions to overcome.
Winter driving tip
January 26th, 2011How Often do I Change Oil? Let’s put this debate to rest….
January 20th, 2011How often oil should be changed is the subject of much debate, but there really is no mystery to this most common of maintenance services. Just turn a deaf ear to the marketing hype and follow the manufacturer’s recommendations, which will save a lot of time and money. Beyond saving time and money there is a huge benefit to the engine, catalytic converter, oxygen sensors and the environment. There is a caveat here, however. It only works with motor oil that meets or exceeds the manufacturer’s specification which is, surprise, also found in the owner’s manual. That specification found in the owner’s manual must appear on the bottle of oil somewhere or it is not an approved oil. this may come as quite a shock to some people, but no one brand of oil can cover all makes and models of vehicles. I often here that this person uses only brand X or this person only uses brand Y. However, if your goal is to maximize the service life of the vehicle and reduce cost per mile to the minimum, this is head in the sand thinking. For example, Volkswagen’s latest specification is VW 504/507 in a 5W30 weight, which covers most of its fleet at this writing. The weight of the oil is less important than that approval rating. This oil is not approved for use in an Asian vehicle such as an Acura that requires 5W30 and vice versa. Using an Acura approved oil in a VW will kill the catalytic converter prematurely, can cause deposits and can cause engine damage because it is not as “thick” as the VW approved oil. What? Isn’t a 5W30 the same across all brands? No. The Europeans have the toughest motor oil standards on the planet. That is why we put our customers on a 12 months/10,000 mile oil change interval, which is what VW recommends. The time is as important as the mileage. If the car isn’t driven 10,000 miles in a year, the oil should be changed because the additive package gets used up. Short distance driving is a killer for motor oil. The German makes (VW/Audi, BMW, and Mercedes) all have no problems with extended change intervals as long as approved oil is used.The slow death from the wrong oil that engines and emissions control devices suffer is insidious. It is like someone who only eats cheeseburgers his whole life. He looks fine until the moment he drops dead. When we replace catalytic converters, we invariably find that the owner was not using an approved oil.The same strategy can be followed with no problems for the Asian and Domestic makes. The secret is using the oil approved by the manufacturer. If the manual says you can go 12mos/7500 miles with the specified oil, then it is okay to do that with one exception. The exception is owners who drive extremely short distances. One way to tell is to examine the oil cap for deposits. If the approved oil is used and deposits are in evidence, then the change interval needs to be shortened. This analysis doesn’t work if the approved oil is not being used. Again, the car maker’s oil specs will appear on the oil bottle. If it is not there, it is not approved. Period. If you are in doubt, ask the shop that changes your oil to show you the bottle or the approval rating label if they keep their oil in bulk form. Surprisingly, many shops including dealerships are unaware of the long term damage (80,000 miles and above) caused by using the wrong oil. Car makers are being pressured more and more by the federal government to increase fuel economy and provide super warranties such as covering catalytic converters for 150,000 miles. The day will come, and it is not far off, when they will deny warranty service because their recommendations haven’t been followed. They know that super warranties will cost them big bucks if they don’t raise their standards for oil quality.There are really only two conditions that determine when oil should be changed – how long the engine is on after the key is turned, and the quality of the oil. High quality oils are better for the engine, save time and money, and reduce the volume in the waste stream helping to save the environment.
Safe Holiday Travel
November 16th, 2010Okay, so you did all the required maintenance, have a AAA membership and are ready for that long holiday trip to Grandma’s house. You are half way into a trip of hundreds of miles when……..well, as Robert Burns so aptly stated in his poem To a Mouse, “the best-laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft a-gley“. No matter how well prepared you are, something can go wrong. While AAA is a great organization, I find their website kind of cluttered and confusing. You can feel confident, however, that the shops they recommend will more than likely give you dependable service at a fair price. But it’s always good to have a plan B in case plan A doesn’t work out. Two other organizations that most people don’t know about are the Automotive Service Association (ASA) and the Alliance of Automotive Service Providers (AASP). Member shops are found on their websites by punching in your location. I would imagine finding one of them on a smart phone would be a piece of cake although it depends on whether you have cell service or not. Shops belonging to these organizations have good reputations and some may also be AAA authorized repair centers. So, if you are traveling over the holidays far from your local shop, keep these organizations in your toolbox. The shop finder at AASP is located at http://aasp-pa.org/. Then click on Shopfinder at the top of the page. Find the Shopfinder on the homepage of ASA at http://asashop.org/. Both sites will show a map with shop locations. Clicking on them will bring up address and phone information. No machine is 100% reliable. With hundreds of moving parts and hundreds of electrical devices, anything can go wrong at any time. Also, remember to pack a flashlight in the glove box, preferably one of those windup ones. Then you never need to worry about dead or leaking batteries. Cover yourself by having a plan before you leave home.
Money Saving Tip for November
November 4th, 2010 
When your car needs repairs, make sure you set aside enough time to give the repair shop all of the information it needs to successfully repair it. Perversely, many folks don’t do this. A case in point is noise complaints. My policy is that the customer must bring the car into the shop and point out the noise to the mechanic who is going to fix it. You might think that makes sense, but it is surprising how many people consider it an inconvenience. I can’t tell you how many times in my past life that I have repaired a noise and it was the wrong one. From my perspective it a noise caused by safety or reliability issues should be addressed immediately. However, a noise of that type may have been going on a long time and the driver tuned it out. What they are hearing may be a mere annoyance, but since it is a new noise, it gets their attention. I don’t have a noise freshness meter to tell me whether the driver is hearing a new or old noise so if it isn’t pointed out to me, I may fix the wrong one. This has caused countless hours of frustration for both the customer and the shop. If your repair shop asks you to bring the car in so someone can listen to the noise, they’re doing you a favor and saving you money. They have your best interests at heart. They want the outcome to be successful for you and the shop. If the car is not making the noise when the mechanic is there, and it happens quite often, don’t waste time and money looking for it. Check engine lights are another situation that have outcomes that are less than satisfactory, but that is a subject for another post. Until next time, drive safely for the sake of your family and others.
Look Out! A Pothole!
October 5th, 2010How to Eliminate or Minimize the Damage
Sooner or later everybody hits one of these things. In the majority of cases even a deep pothole can be a non event. The natural reaction when someone sees one of these monsters is to hit the brakes, which is okay up to a point. The damage occurs because the driver doesn’t release the brake before hitting the pothole. When the wheel enters the hole with the brakes applied it stops rolling because it is now suspended in air. Now the stationary wheel slams into the sharp edge on the other side of the hole bending the wheel, damaging the tire, or both. The proper technique is to brake to maximum before the hole reducing speed as much as possible and then release the brake at the last instant so the wheel can roll through it. It may sound bad when it hits, but most of the time there is no damage. You will react correctly the next time you are confronted with Pennsylvania’s state treasure if you think through this technique and practice on some small holes.
Money Saving Tip For September
September 27th, 2010Fill up the gas tank before it hits reserve. Running the tank low creates two problems. The fuel pump can overheat causing it to fail intermittently or outright and creating a very expensive repair, typically $500 or more. At any rate fuel pump service life will be shortened dramatically. This situation can also cause a check engine light resulting in expensive diagnostic time. Fill the tank when it gets down to a quarter full and save yourself some money.
Fluid Leaks
May 20th, 2009Should you fix that minor oil seepage coming from the valve cover? If you spend a lot of time on the road, yes. If you use the car locally, maybe you can live with it. I make that statement at the risk of offending environmentalists, but the realities are that use is a definite consideration. I always query the customer about who the primary driver is and how the car is used before recommending any service procedure. If your teenager is using the vehicle around town or you are a retiree who only drives a couple of miles to the grocery every other day, it probably makes sense to spend the money on something of higher priority, like food and shelter. An auto repair shop should be finding, noting, and prioritizing every current and potential problem with the vehicle by doing an inspection whenever it is in for service. Knowing all the current and potential problems allows the customer to either budget for the repairs or start looking for another vehicle before the current one dies. The service advisor at the shop needs to have a good understanding of a customer’s situation relative to how he or she uses the car and then must help prioritize repairs.
Preventive Maintenance- Oversold Hype?
May 18th, 2009Does changing the fluids in a car really help? Well, it helps, but you have to consider your plan for how long you will keep those wheels and how they will be used. If you trade every couple of years, just changing the oil and keeping the other fluids topped off will be enough. On the other hand if your plan is to keep it until the wheels fall off, then preventive maintenance including changing fluids becomes very important. We see a lot of cooling system problems such as failed radiators and heater cores from not changing antifreeze. We also notice a lot of water outlet failures too (they’re plastic) in cars with old antifreeze. Antifreeze and power steering fluid should be changed every three years, and brake fluid every two. Heater core replacement in VW and Audi vehicles requires disassembly of the interior of the car and is a big job, so you can imagine how expensive it is. Power steering units for these cars are very expensive also. Cars will last many years and hundreds of thousands of miles by performing scheduled maintenance.
What Noise?
May 13th, 2009Believe it or not noise problems are some of the most difficult problems to cure. It starts with the customer’s vague description of the situation which results in a lot of time being spent by the technician who sometimes cures the “wrong” noise. See, the technician views the problem from a safety and reliability standpoint, whereas the owner of the vehicle views it as an annoyance he or she can’t live with. I have fixed the “wrong” noise so many times that I now require the customer to ride with a technician and point it out to him. It is surprising how many times a car is dropped off and it makes no noise, but if the owner of the vehicle is able to point it out when the condition is present, the technician may be able to find it. Or the owner may decide not to spend money looking for it. We have some sophisticated tools to locate noises – our ears and a 4 channel electronic listening device. Even with the electronic device the technician has to decide where to put the transmitters and that is where the owner comes in. A detailed description of the noise including what it sounds like (marbles in a can is one example), when it happens, and when it was first noticed is helpful. Any information that gets the technician in the right area as soon as possible saves time and time is money. Help him help you. It’ll save you money in the end
Replace that Timing Belt
October 22nd, 2008A couple of months ago we recommended a timing belt to one of our customers based on the age of the belt. It hadn’t reached the end of its life in mileage terms, but after over 30 years in the automotive business, I have noticed that the age of the belt is critical. Our shop has seen belts that have a 90,000 mile change interval tear at 60,000 miles if over 5 years old. The age of the belt increases the risk of failure enormously. Unfortunately, our customer didn’t heed our advice and instead of spending about $600 for a maintenance service, he ended up spending $2500 for the repair. Belt failure is without warning and instantaneous. Damage can include repairs as described above, to replacement of the whole engine. Just like batteries belts fail at the worst of times, on a vacation, late at night, or traveling to an important event or meeting.
PJ