Tag: cost

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Top 4 Car Myths – True or Untrue?

You hear the craziest things about how to maintain your car. And let’s admit it: most of us DO crazy things – or worse, we do things to our cars based on rumors and myths rather than concrete mechanical knowledge. In an age when most of us get 90% of our car knowledge from movies like “Gone in Sixty Seconds”, we could probably all use a little maintenance myth-busting that helps us know which mythical advice to follow and which to throw out the window.

1) Always keep your gas tank full. This is a major point of contention between my husband and me. Seeing how far I can get the needle to go below the big red E is like a sport for me – if worst comes to worst, I can always swerve to get the last remaining dregs into the combustion chamber. My husband is far more practical and points out the safety of having a full gas tank.

As it turns out, keeping a full gas tank not only means that you can jump in the car for trips to the emergency room without stopping for gas, but it also prevents water from getting in the tank. Particularly during cold winter months, condensed water forms on the inside of an empty tank, causing improper flow and, at times, stalling. I’ve had this happen numerous times; my poor little Focus even conked out on the freeway once when I’d been running it on fumes. Turns out, it just wanted a full tank to push the water out.

2) Premium gas will mean better mileage and fewer repairs. My penny-pinching side is happy to report that this is relatively bogus. With today’s fuel standards, even low and mid grades of gasoline have detergents and other additives that keep everything running smooth. Additionally, the mileage you’ll gain with premium isn’t nearly big enough to justify the cost. Unless you have a supercharged engine or a Hemi, premium doesn’t make much of a difference.

3) Always warm up your car. As unpleasant as it is to slosh through powder in your pajamas, this one is actually an excellent idea, as it benefits both driver and the car. Particularly on those nostril-freezing winter mornings Michigan is so famous for, giving your car a few minutes to warm allows it to move oil and other fluids to where they need to go. The difference in car function can be tantamount to the safety difference between a driver stepping into a warm interior and gazing out of a clear windshield and a driver gripping an icy steering wheel and asthmatically jerking from the cold.

4) Wait a while before going through a car wash after repairs. I was shocked to see in our analytics report that someone had searched the term “how long after repairs can I go through the carwash”, but hey – I’ve believed crazier myths. Let’s let Rob tackle this question: “I am surprised how frequently this question comes up and have found that most of the questioners have had body repairs done to their vehicles where the body man recommended waiting a certain period before washing the car. In the mechanical repair field, there are very few situations where the vehicle cannot be washed or driven right away. If such an occasion arises, typically, the vehicle is kept for follow-up and road testing to ensure a complete repair.”

Safe driving!

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What Are the Potential Dangers and Costs of Not Replacing Your Timing Belt Regularly?

Expensive damage can be caused to your engine: Many timing belt engines are “interference motors”, which simply means that the valves would hit the pistons if not kept in proper timing. This is not a problem under normal operating conditions but if the timing belt were to break or jump off the gears, the valves of one or more cylinders would strike the pistons and cause severe and costly damage.

If your car has more than the recommended mileage on the timing belt, you may be operating your car on borrowed time and the cost of replacing the belt is MUCH cheaper than having to rebuild or replace the engine because of damage caused by a snapped/worn timing belt.

Parts can be hard to find to repair damage caused by a failed timing belt: It’s obvious that timing belt replacement as a preventive maintenance measure is often ignored. This is so prevalent, in fact, that many car manufacturers and engine parts manufacturers don’t stock major engine components for timing-belt engines after the required 5-7 years because there will be only a handful of these cars still on the road. It can be quite difficult to find crankshafts, pistons, connecting rods, camshafts and the like for these older engines due to the economic infeasibility for the manufacturers to continue producing these parts for the few cars that they estimate will still be on the road.

In fact, many car manufacturers don’t expect timing-belt driven engines to last through more than two timing belts or approximately 120,000-150,000 miles and, moreover, they actually expect many to be taken out of service with the original belt still installed. Sadly, there are hundreds of thousands of 85,000-90,000 mile timing belt cars in junkyards because the timing belt was never replaced. What a waste when these cars could still be enjoying a useful life had the owner just paid attention to the recommended mileage replacement intervals for the timing belt.